House of Commons
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Prayers
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
On the front page of today’s Order Paper, it is noted that:
“On 6 November 1914 Captain the Hon. Arthur O’Neill, 2nd Life Guards, Member for Mid-Antrim, was killed in action at Zillebeke Ridge, Flanders.”
Captain O’Neill was the first Member of this House to die in action in the first world war. Today we remember him.
Oral Answers to Questions
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
1. What recent progress has been made on the EU 2030 framework for energy and climate policies; and if he will make a statement.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
9. What recent progress has been made on the EU 2030 framework for energy and climate policies; and if he will make a statement.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
15. What recent progress has been made on the EU 2030 framework for energy and climate policies; and if he will make a statement.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
17. What recent progress has been made on the EU 2030 framework for energy and climate policies; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will answer question 1 and questions 13, 19 and 21 together.
I am delighted to tell the House that European leaders recently signed an historic deal agreeing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, and that the UK played a crucial leadership role over two years to deliver that deal. It establishes EU leadership and influence ahead of negotiations for a global climate deal next year, and it provides business with additional certainty to help unlock billions for low-carbon investment. It reforms EU energy policy to give member states more flexibility so that they can go green at the lowest cost, and it helps to improve Europe’s energy security, sending a strong signal to Russia at a moment of heightened tension. I commend the EU deal on energy and climate change to the House.
Mr Speaker
The grouping is actually with questions 9, 15 and 17. I fear that the Secretary of State has not been as well served as he might have been. People must try to keep up.
Dr Whitehead
In the light of that deal, I am sure that the Secretary of State will now be anxious to make the UK’s contribution by laying down the order for the decarbonisation of the UK’s energy supply to 2030. Will he tell me when he intends to lay down that order and, when he has done so, what he has in mind for the decarbonisation range that will be in it?
Mr Davey
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman asks that question because, having been an assiduous member of the Committee that considered the Energy Bill, which became the Energy Act 2013, he will know that we cannot lay down that order until the fifth carbon budget, which is due in 2015-16. He will also know that this Government have met the first carbon budget and are on track to meet the second and third carbon budgets, and that in the summer I confirmed the fourth carbon budget at the ambitious levels we have set. We are meeting our Climate Change Act 2008 obligations.
Mrs Glindon
The Labour party has already set out its position on carbon capture and storage as a vital part of our future energy mix. Is the Secretary of State concerned that Europe appears to be falling behind on CCS, and does he agree that his Government need to do more to stop that happening?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for asking me about CCS. This Government are actually leading Europe on CCS; we have the only two commercial-scale CCS projects, one of which was the only such project to get funding from Europe. It was because of the UK Government’s actions that the conclusions of the recent energy and climate change deal included CCS. Like the hon. Lady, we are a strong supporter of CCS.
Kerry McCarthy
Given the non-binding EU targets on renewables and energy efficiency, does the Secretary of State agree that the Government now need to demonstrate how we can use that flexibility to increase the UK’s low-carbon programme, especially as it is being undermined by other Departments—for example, by stripping farmers of their common agricultural policy subsidies for solar farms and by rejecting applications for onshore wind farms? What will he do to encourage the Government to support renewables?
Mr Davey
No Government in history have done more for renewables than this one. We have seen renewable electricity generation more than double; we have a much better record on this than the last Government. We have also seen renewable electricity investment more than double, with a huge pipeline of investment in renewables, including onshore, offshore, solar and tidal power.
Mr Bain
More than 50 companies have called on the Secretary of State to implement a 2030 decarbonisation target, including Asda, Sky and PepsiCo. They have warned that the absence of a specific carbon intensity target is undermining investment. Does he regret the fact that he did not join the other 16 hon. Members of his own party who rebelled against the Government to vote for the target?
Mr Davey
It is interesting that not a single Labour Member has got up to congratulate the Government on leading in Europe and securing an historic deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, which is Europeanising Britain’s Climate Change Act 2008. It is absolutely pathetic that they are not prepared to show that they support the Government on this historic deal. As Secretary of State, I introduced into the Energy Bill—now the Energy Act 2013—the power to bring in power sector decarbonisation, and we will do it. The Liberal Democrats will support that policy at the election, and I hope that Labour will too.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State will know that there are times when many European countries have a surplus of electricity from renewable energy but cannot do anything with it because of failures in the energy market and a lack of interconnectors. Is that not the kind of issue the entire Government—not just him, but the Prime Minister as well—should be trying to sort out in Europe, rather than banging on about referendums and European exits?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, because it dealt with one of the big issues we were working on in the negotiations for the 2030 deal. I worked well with my Spanish and Portuguese colleagues, because one of the biggest blocks on renewable electricity flowing through the single energy market in Europe is on the Iberian peninsula because of France’s unwillingness to have investment in interconnections. The European Council’s conclusions were very positive on this, and we will continue to support the case for greater interconnections, both in the Iberian peninsula and, particularly, in central and eastern Europe and the Baltics.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
On reflection, will the Energy Secretary now condemn the Thatcher decision to shut not only the pits, but the clean coal technology plant in south Yorkshire? She was so determined to smash the National Union of Mineworkers that she closed that plant as well. When he thinks about it—the late ’80s—does he condemn it? Come on, stand up!
Mr Speaker
With reference to the EU 2030 framework. [Laughter.] I look to the Secretary of State now to deal with the matter pithily.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
2. What recent assessment he has made of the security of the UK’s energy supply.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
6. What recent assessment he has made of the security of the UK’s energy supply.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
18. What recent assessment he has made of the UK’s energy security.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Matthew Hancock)
Today we published our annual energy statement, which shows the action we have taken to deliver a secure supply of energy while reducing bills and carbon emissions, meeting the needs of households and businesses.
David Rutley
Given the approaching winter and the increasing uncertainty in our international relations, will my right hon. Friend tell the House what steps he is taking to secure energy supplies in the face of possible extreme weather and other external threats?
Matthew Hancock
Of course, secure energy supplies are the most critical part of our responsibilities in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. We have taken steps to ensure that the market operates better, through the electricity market reform programme. We have also taken steps to ensure that there has been £45 billion of investment in energy infrastructure since 2010. This winter, we have worked with the National Grid Company to make sure there is additional capacity so that energy needs are covered no matter what the winter throws at us.
Stephen Hammond
There has been much scaremongering in the newspapers and other media recently about lights being turned off and energy being switched off. The relevance of today’s annual statement to my constituents and those of Members across the House lies in the Minister’s assurance that the lights will be kept on and heating will continue to be supplied to constituents.
Matthew Hancock
Indeed, and over the summer we also had some impact on our energy generation, both in nuclear and hydrocarbon generation. The fact that we got 15% renewable generation last year—double what we had in 2010—of course adds to energy security, but, crucially, we have to make sure that this and every winter we take the action necessary to have the energy supply that is demanded by consumers, be they households or businesses.
Mr Cunningham
I would love to be able to praise the Secretary of State today, but I cannot because I have to ask him whether he can confirm that, under this Government, construction has begun on just one new gas-fired power station, and even that will not come online until after the next election. That compares with the 10 GW of new gas capacity built under the last Labour Government. I am very sorry that I cannot heap praise on him. I had to give him some bad news.
Matthew Hancock
Well, the good news is that the rate of investment in energy infrastructure has doubled under this Government; there has been £45 billion of investment so far, but we have a £100 billion programme because of the massive underinvestment that occurred in the previous decade. It is regrettable that the previous Government did not take the action that was needed, but we have done so.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The Minister will be aware of the many developments on the Humber estuary, onshore and offshore, that will boost energy security. In particular, the Joint Committee recently approved the Able UK development of the south Humber energy park. I urge the Minister to visit the area and meet Able and other developers to see what a boost it is to the local economy.
Matthew Hancock
I would be absolutely delighted to visit Cleethorpes and the Humber estuary, which is increasingly a crucial cluster for our energy supplies and energy security. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all his activity, and for his promotion of Cleethorpes and the whole of Humberside, specifically with regard to the role that they play in our energy generation.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
What role does the Minister see for the British deep-mine coal industry in future energy supply and future energy security in the UK?
Matthew Hancock
I have been working hard with UK Coal to ensure that we can refinance it. The Government have put in a £4 million loan on a commercial basis, so we are working incredibly hard in that regard. The hon. Gentleman should also take up this matter with his own Front-Bench team who voted to accelerate the closure of coal-fired power stations, which would of course to help to undermine the coal mining industry.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), last week the Minister stated in this House with his characteristic humility and good grace that he had
“secured the future of the existing pits.”—[Official Report, 28 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 247.]
He knows of course that, welcome as it may be, the commercial loan from the Government is in reality a short-term measure. Hundreds of jobs have been lost at both Thoresby and Kellingley. UK Coal told me this week that, with the help of the Minister’s officials, it will submit an application for state aid clearance to his office by the end of next month. Given how pressing this situation is, will the Minister now give the House an absolute and clear commitment that he will ensure that his Department will reflect and decide on the merits of that application, and on whether to submit it to the European Commission for approval before the dissolution of Parliament?
Matthew Hancock
Of course I will consider that submission, not least because we and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills put in a huge amount of effort to bring that about. We worked hard to secure a commercial loan to get us over the short-term cash-flow issues and to look at longer-term options. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for welcoming this work and for his support. It is good to know that there is support on both sides of the House.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
3. What steps he is taking to encourage the public sector to increase rooftop solar energy installations.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
4. What steps he is taking to encourage businesses to increase rooftop solar energy deployment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
The solar PV strategy set out how we will maximise the potential for deployment on mid-sized commercial and industrial buildings and on the public sector estate. We are taking actions to deliver on that ambition, including: making changes to the feed-in tariffs to protect the incentive for building mounted solar; consulting on allowing solar PV to transfer from one build to another without losing FIT accreditation; and working with the Cabinet Office on our ambition to see 1 GW of mid-scale solar deployed across the Government estate.
Sir Bob Russell
I thank the Minister for her encouraging response. The public sector, and the Government in particular, need to lead by example. Will she comment on the best practice by Colchester borough council, which already has rooftop solar energy installations on more than 1,000 houses and five public buildings, and more are planned, producing significant financial savings for tenants and the council tax payer?
Amber Rudd
I welcome the efforts made by Colchester borough council to promote the deployment of rooftop solar; it is to be congratulated on that. In our solar strategy, which was published earlier this year, the Government set out their own ambition to see 1 GW of mid-scale solar deployed across the Government estate. So far, a planning application has been made for an RAF location, and a pipeline of other potential sites is being developed.
Andrew Bridgen
Last week, work started to build the largest roof-mounted solar panel array in the UK—I am talking about the Marks & Spencer distribution centre at Castle Donington in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a far better use of solar technology than seeing thousands of acres of productive arable land covered in solar panels?
Amber Rudd
I congratulate Marks & Spencer on its solar rooftop project at Castle Donington. That is exactly the kind of project that we would like to see. The solar strategy set out a number of positive initiatives to encourage rooftop solar including the recent Department for Communities and Local Government consultation on increasing permitted development for solar PV. I recently led round-table discussions to identify some of the issues for rooftop deployment from the perspective of the landlord-tenant relationship. I look forward to seeing more of the actions that we discussed going forward.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
There are enormous technological breakthroughs in solar energy, which is really worthy of further investment, but they will not get us through this winter. In view of the Minister’s complacent answers to the last set of questions, if we have blackouts this winter, will Ministers on the Treasury Bench resign?
Amber Rudd
I do not accept the premise of that question. There will be no blackouts this winter, and Ministers will continue to deliver the renewable energy and the energy security that we so need in this country.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Rooftop solar is silent and invisible energy production, making it very attractive where we have unused roofs in urban and commercial centres where it is most needed. Will the Minister meet me and one of my constituents to discuss some sort of incentives to encourage landlords and landowners to use their roofs?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that rooftops are an ideal way to promote solar. We are working on a number of initiatives, but I am always open to suggestions and I will be delighted to meet her.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
5. If he will take steps to tighten the regulation of fracking in the UK.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Matthew Hancock)
It is incumbent on us to explore the potential of domestic supplies of shale gas safely and carefully. The UK has a strong regulatory system and we will be working closely with the public, regulators and industry to ensure that regulation remains robust.
Matthew Hancock
I agree that it is important to ensure that as we explore for this domestic energy resource, we do so cautiously and carefully. Environmental impact assessments are an important part of the planning process. The House is considering the Infrastructure Bill and we will listen to the debates on that.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that any decision about the exploitation of shale gas should be taken by local councils, and that, once taken, those decisions should not be overridden by officials in Whitehall?
Matthew Hancock
Local engagement is incredibly important, as, likewise, is ensuring that local communities benefit from the successful extraction of shale gas. After all, being able to get shale gas successfully out of the ground will bring a benefit for the nation in terms of energy security, but also a financial benefit. The Treasury, inevitably, is keen to make sure that it has a part of that, but local communities also should.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
Notwithstanding the changes that have been made in clauses 32 and 33 of the Infrastructure Bill, which is in the other place, will the Minister confirm that anyone wishing to explore or take part in fracking will still have to obtain planning permission from the relevant local authority and that the Government have no plans to change that?
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The fracking regulations relate mostly to exploration offshore. How can the Minister assure those living in Ryedale and Hambleton, who have seen seismic surveys being conducted this summer, that the regulations are fit for purpose and that there will be no pollution or contamination of water supplies?
Matthew Hancock
Not only does the regulatory structure surrounding the exploration for shale gas apply offshore, there is also a distinct regulatory structure onshore, precisely to take into consideration the sorts of concerns that my hon. Friend understandably raises. One of my first acts in this job was to increase the protections for national parks, in order precisely to deal with the concerns of those who are worried about the impact of shale gas.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
The historical birthplace of fracking onshore is Denton in northern Texas, where the people are familiar with its economic and job impacts. What does the Minister make of the decision this weekend by the people of Denton and the town council to ban fracking based on a public referendum? What discussions has he had with his officials on that?
Matthew Hancock
The lesson to be drawn is that it is very important to have a strong and robust regulatory regime in place from the start. We have one of the strongest regulatory regimes in the world for onshore shale gas exploration, but nevertheless it is in our national interest to support the extraction of this gas in a careful and cautious way, and that is why there is cross-party support for it.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
It is good to hear the Minister talk about a safe regulatory regime, so let me help him with that. In order for the public to have confidence that fracking is safe and environmentally sustainable, it is vital that we have baseline assessments before drilling begins. Otherwise, no one can know for sure what the effects of fracking actually are. The Royal Society is unequivocal about that: baseline assessments of the level of methane in the groundwater should take place at every fracking site for a full 12 months in advance. Will he therefore urge his colleagues in the other place to support Labour’s amendment on baseline assessments when the Infrastructure Bill is on Report next week?
Matthew Hancock
It is important to have baseline assessments and to follow the evidence on what is required, and the debates on that will continue, both in the other place and here. We are listening carefully to all stakeholders, including Opposition Front Benchers.
Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
7. What steps he is taking to help households manage the cost of energy bills in winter 2014-15.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Despite the energy price freezes this year, which were delivered by competition, not regulation, energy bills remain a huge concern for many people this winter. That is why the Government have delivered a £50 cut in the average energy bill by reducing our own policy costs, why we have introduced the warm home discount, to take £140 directly off energy bills this winter for 2 million households on low incomes, and why we have permanently trebled cold weather payments, to provide £25 for every week of a cold spell.
Mr Amess
As the promoter of the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, I am very keen on any efforts to reduce fuel poverty. Given that switching energy suppliers could make a useful contribution to that end, will the Minister please update the House on how we are progressing with the policy of 24-hour switching, and might it exclude political parties?
Mr Davey
First, may I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he has done on fuel poverty? It is something that is very close to my heart. We have done a huge amount in this Government. We will shortly be publishing the first fuel poverty strategy in over a decade. With regard to switching, we are seeing huge progress. I challenged the large energy companies to halve switching times by the end of this year, and that is on track. Indeed, some of the smaller companies will achieve that by the end of the year. Ofgem is currently consulting on an idea I have pushed for 24-hour switching, linked to smart meters, and we expect a decision next year.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West)(Lab)
19. Consumer electricity prices went up by 4.4% and gas prices went up by 3.5% between April and June this year, but the price paid by major energy firms for coal fell by 12% and for gas it fell by a massive 21% over the same period. Why does the Secretary of State not act to ensure that cuts in wholesale prices are passed on to consumers?
Mr Davey
I share some of the hon. Lady’s concern about that. Sustained falls in wholesale energy costs should be passed on to consumers. While we have seen some fixed-price tariffs come down, standard tariffs in the main have not, which is why I supported the regulator’s warning to suppliers this summer. When the Leader of the Opposition was doing my job, wholesale electricity prices fell by 62.5%, and what did he do? He called a summit.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
One of the best ways to help struggling households with bills is to improve energy efficiency, so will my right hon. Friend update the House on what progress is being made in implementing the minimum energy efficiency standard in the private rented sector?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, because that is something I have been pushing for strongly. We have had a consultation, which has now concluded, and we are analysing the responses, which have been very positive about our proposals for minimum energy standards in the private rented sector. We will update the House in due course.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister knows that many of us think that smart metering can deliver real energy efficiency to the consumer, but are the Government not getting themselves into a bit of a mess? First, it will no longer be compulsory, so it will be more expensive. Secondly, will he be very careful, because the technology is changing very fast? Much of the early smart metering is already out of date because of the innovation of companies such as Nest and Hive. Will he look at that carefully in case we end up spending £20 billion on the wrong technology?
Mr Davey
We have looked at this very carefully, taking on the programme started by the previous Government. The hon. Gentleman will understand that the smart metering equipment technical specifications—SMETS 1 for the first generation of smart meters and now SMETS 2—set a minimum floor for standards, but of course we are seeing energy companies, through the competition we put into the implementation, actually compete on improving the technology, so there is room for innovation over and above the standards that have been set.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
What progress is my right hon. Friend making in addressing the particular disadvantages faced by park home owners, who are unable to access a social tariff or the green deal and yet are people on very low incomes, for the most part?
Mr Davey
My right hon. Friend has been a huge champion of park home owners over a number of years, and I pay tribute to her for the work she has done. Partly due to the contribution she has made, we are looking at this issue in some huge depth. I hope to be able to report to the House before Christmas or early in the new year on the ideas that we have to tackle those issues.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
One of the largest components of an energy bill is distribution costs, which are rising while other wholesale costs are coming down. The nations and regions across the United Kingdom have varying prices. Does the Secretary of State agree that there should be a smoothing of this so that we can have fair pricing across the United Kingdom, because many periphery areas, including mine, that produce the electricity are paying more for it due to these distribution costs?
Mr Davey
As the Minister of State said to the departmental Select Committee, of which the hon. Gentleman is a member, the Government believe that we should look at this issue. However, let us be clear: if we were to socialise the costs across the UK, other people would be paying more, so it is not quite as simple as he suggests.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
8. What steps he is taking to help off-gas grid consumers manage energy bills in winter 2014-15.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
In addition to the measures that I described in response to the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess), we have already taken action, but intend to take yet more action, to help off-gas grid customers. We support the Buy Oil Early campaign to encourage people to stock up at good times for price and quick delivery. As my hon. Friend knows, because he attended it, this week we held the fourth ministerial round table on heating oil and liquified petroleum gas to bring together the industry, consumer groups and MPs to discuss these issues. Our amendments to the ECO—energy companies obligation—affordable warmth scheme provide stronger incentives for energy suppliers to install energy efficiency measures in off-gas grid homes.
Sir Robert Smith
One of the benefits of being on the gas grid is that people get use of the suppliers’ vulnerable customer register. What more can be done to ensure that those using other fuels can also see the benefits of being registered as vulnerable customers with their suppliers?
Mr Davey
That is a very important point that the ministerial round table discussed in some detail. The issue is not just price but resilience of supply of heating oil over the winter months, particularly when there is bad weather. That is one of the reasons why we have the Buy Oil Early campaign. My hon. Friend is right: we need to work with the industry to make sure that customers who are off the gas grid and could be vulnerable are registered.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Nearly 1 million measures have been installed under ECO to date, but fewer than 1,500 of those were installed under the rural sub-obligation—just 0.1%. That means that off-grid customers who have contributed £153 million towards ECO from their energy bills have received measures worth just £600,000. Do the Government agree that they have failed those people and that ECO is not fit for purpose?
Mr Davey
No. In fact, the Government have reformed ECO to address that issue. As I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would know, analysis of our ECO reforms, particularly in relation to the affordable warmth scheme to tackle the issue of the fuel poor in off-gas grid areas, shows that we expect to see a 30% delivery of affordable warmth measures in off-gas grid areas compared with just 2% previously.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to increase the number of new nuclear power stations.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Matthew Hancock)
We strongly support new nuclear as part of a balanced mix of energy supply. Hinkley Point C is paving the way, with three consortia now moving forward with plans to develop new reactors on a further four sites.
Bob Blackman
I thank the Minister for his answer. Clearly, after years of prevarication from Labour, at last the coalition Government are taking decisions on replacing our nuclear power stations which are going out of action. As part of the balanced programme that we desperately need, what further measures does he propose to ensure that we get more new nuclear power stations to replace those that are coming off-stream?
Matthew Hancock
This is unusual for me, but I think my hon. Friend is being slightly unreasonable to Labour Members, because, under the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, they did take the decision to restart a nuclear programme. Of course, it was slow going at first, and we have accelerated it considerably. This summer’s decision, announced on 8 October, was a big step forward that has demonstrated to other potential investors that this market in the UK is now open. We have eight approved sites in total, four of which have projects that are at various stages of development. New nuclear will play an important part in our future energy mix, and I am glad that it has cross-party support.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
11. What recent discussions he has had with his counterparts in European Union member states about carbon and renewables targets.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
As my hon. Friend knows, I have been engaging with a large number of my EU counterparts over the past two years on these issues. By engaging in Europe—by building relationships and trust over a period—I believe that a UK Minister is better placed to win arguments in the EU that are in British interests.
That is what we have done over carbon and renewable targets, so now we have more ambitious carbon targets than many thought possible. We have an EU-wide renewables target, not a rigid member-state-based target, so European countries can cut carbon emissions using the lowest-cost technologies for them while still providing a strong signal to Europe’s renewables industry.
David Mowat
I agree that decarbonisation targets, not purely renewables targets, are a good way forward. However, the Secretary of State may be aware that the Government of Austria—a country that since 1990 has increased its carbon emissions, which are more than 25% higher than ours—have reportedly said that they are going to sue us over Hinkley Point C. Could the Secretary of State give us his perspective on their comments? Is there anything we can do to counter-sue carbon junky countries such as Austria that repeatedly fail to meet their emission targets?
Mr Davey
I probably will not answer the last part of that question, because the Foreign and Commonwealth Office might want to have a word with me. On the first part of my hon. Friend’s question, Austria has reportedly been considering taking the European Commission to court, to judicially review its state aid decision. We are confident that that decision was taken in a robust way and we were very supportive of it.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
Given that Germany obtains a higher proportion of its energy from renewables than we do, why is it that it has higher emissions per head and that those emissions are rising as it replaces nuclear with lignite-burning coal-fired power stations?
Mr Davey
A number of final investment decisions were taken around 2007, before the 2020 agreement, and they are now resulting in some coal power stations coming online. Since then, however, almost all of the proposals for new coal power stations in Germany have been turned down. My right hon. Friend is right to say that there is an effect, but in the long term I am clear, from talking to German Ministers, that they will get their carbon emissions on a downward trajectory.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
12. What steps he is taking to promote investment in energy generation.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Matthew Hancock)
We are working through our long-term energy plan for a further £100 billion investment in energy infrastructure up to 2020. Since 2010, we have delivered £45 billion of that, with much more to come.
Andrew Jones
Will the Minister give a bit more information about how much investment there has been in the energy sector under this Government?
Matthew Hancock
With that £45 billion, the investment per year is at least twice its previous rate, as is our investment in renewables. Renewables investment has been a large part of that overall investment, not least as a result of electricity market reform and the support for renewables under this Government. That means that 15% of electricity last year was generated from renewables, demonstrating that we are meeting our goal of being the greenest Government ever.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
My constituents would be keen to see more electricity generated via solar panels, but they would prefer to see those solar panels on the acres of warehouse and factory roofing in and around Kettering, rather than on the acres of green agricultural fields. There are currently three major planning applications in the pipeline for solar farms on agricultural land, but very few applications, if any, for solar panels on warehouse roofing. What can the Department do to encourage solar panels on industrial roofing?
Matthew Hancock
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We have changed the way in which feed-in tariffs work precisely to incentivise and support solar on roofs. Having said that, 1 million people now live under roofs that have solar panels on them. That is up from a very small number in 2010, which is a big step forward, and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) is putting enormous personal effort into driving it even further.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
13. What progress he has made in negotiations with the European Commission on a derogation from the ban on the import or manufacture of incandescent bulbs for those with photo-sensitive health conditions; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
The European Commission has proposed changes to lighting regulation, including amendments to the definition of special purpose lights, but those have yet to be agreed. The Commission will be further reviewing lighting legislation, and we will continue to press for that review to take full account of any potential health implications of artificial lighting. That review is due to start in early 2015.
Sheila Gilmore
The Minister may—or may not—be aware that I have been pursuing this matter for some time, previously with a different Department, and it is important for that relatively small group of people to know that the Government will be pressing the matter. Can she give a more definite time scale for when she thinks there will be success?
Amber Rudd
I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue. I am aware of how serious it is for her and her constituents, and of her history in this matter, and that is why my Department met the Spectrum Alliance in her constituency in September. We will do our best to press the European Commission for an early answer, and we will remain committed to the issue on behalf of her constituents.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
14. What recent steps he has taken to help households with energy bills.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
In addition to the average £50 off bills, the £140 warm home discount, and the trebling of cold weather payments that I set out in answer to the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess), I point the hon. Gentleman to the big energy saving network we have established with the voluntary sector to help the most vulnerable get better energy deals. I also recommend to him the collective switching movement that I boosted when becoming Secretary of State, with the £5 million cheaper energy together fund. The Sun newspaper is now partnering with the Big Deal to help its readers come together to save money, and MoneySavingExpert.com launched its collective energy switching scheme this week.
Graeme Morrice
But the Government must go further to support ordinary families who are struggling to pay their rising energy bills, because households in my constituency and across the United Kingdom continue to suffer from fuel poverty. According to the Scottish House Condition survey, 26% of households in my constituency are in fuel poverty, and an energy price freeze will save money for 27 million households. Will the Secretary of State finally recognise that we need a proper energy bill price freeze to help those struggling with the cost of living crisis?
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman has not noticed that in the competitive energy market that we have helped deliver, the large energy companies are announcing price freezes that have been delivered by competition, not regulation. Moreover, a lot of smaller independent suppliers that have come into the market are offering good deals that people can switch to and save literally hundreds of pounds. I hope he will recommend those to his constituents.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
According to Government figures nearly 2.5 million households are in fuel poverty in England alone, with 1 million more in Scotland and Wales. A written parliamentary question to me on 4 September revealed that the Government’s flagship policy—the energy companies obligation—will lift just 10,000 households out of fuel poverty between 2015 and 2017. Will the Secretary of State explain why out of a budget of nearly £2 billion, and with hundreds of thousands of measures due to be installed, so few people living in fuel poverty will be helped?
Mr Davey
Fuel poverty increased massively under the previous Government and it is falling under this Government because of a range of measures that we are taking. We are about to publish—either this year or early next year—the first fuel poverty strategy in a decade. I think we have been very active, and I am totally committed to helping people in fuel poverty.
Caroline Flint
Under Labour fuel poverty fell by 1.7 million, but this Government have changed the definition of fuel poverty—that may be the reason for the answer given by the Secretary of State. Let me tell him why the ECO has done so little for the fuel poor. It is because nearly half the funding goes to people who are not in fuel poverty, and households in fuel poverty get only one measure, which is not enough to make a difference. Despite that, the Government have announced a further £100 million for the green deal home improvement fund—another scheme that goes to people with no assessment of their ability to pay or need for energy efficiency improvements. Is that just throwing good money after bad, and will the Secretary of State make a decision today to ensure that all that funding goes to the people who need it most?
Mr Davey
Fuel poverty increased under the previous Government under both their measures. We changed the measure of fuel poverty after an independent review because the previous Government measured fuel poverty so inaccurately that the Queen was deemed to be in fuel poverty. We thought that needed to change. Under the right hon. Lady’s approach, a lot of the money she would have spent would have been wasted—it would not have gone to people in need. Under our more accurate approach, we are ensuring that the money goes to the right people. She should know not only that more than 50% of the ECO goes to those in fuel poverty, but that because we have protected the affordable warmth part of the ECO for fuel poverty until 2017, even more people will be taken out of fuel poverty.
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Since the previous Energy and Climate Change oral questions, we have made significant progress for consumers, with all the large energy firms confirming they will have met my target to cut switching times in half at the end of the year, and with the good news this week that some independent energy retailers such as First Utility have committed to halving switching times this year.
I can confirm to the House that the EU has agreed ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets following two years of negotiations in which the UK played a leading role. Thanks to the Government’s long-term, medium-term and short-term plans, our energy security remains rated the best in the European Union and among the best in the world.
Sir Andrew Stunell
My constituent Sara Martin has been ripped off by Network Green Deal Ltd of Oakham, Rutland, a green deal assessment firm. She complained but her complaint has fallen because she did not take out the green deal itself. Her complaints to the regulator and the Department of Energy and Climate Change were brushed off, as were mine. Will the Secretary of State meet me to find an urgent remedy for my constituent and others like her who are victims of assessment firms that recklessly, or perhaps fraudulently, take money from them?
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Last month, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced that solar farms would no longer be eligible for common agricultural policy payments, under the guise of ensuring that more agricultural land is dedicated to growing crops and food. The Government have since admitted that they have made no estimate of the potential annual reduction in energy capacity; that they have no idea how many solar farms include livestock grazing; and that they do not even know how much arable land has been taken out of production as a result of solar farms. They do not like onshore wind and they do not like solar, so will the Secretary of State tell us whether they support any clean energy?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
This Government are proud of our record on clean energy and renewables. Solar farms are not particularly welcome because we believe that solar should be on the roofs of buildings and homes, not in the beautiful green countryside. We are proud to stand on that record. I should take this opportunity to point out that this Saturday is the 25th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher becoming the first leader to speak at the UN on climate change. That was a very Conservative approach to ensuring that we preserve this planet, and we shall continue it.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
T3. With several major oil and gas projects coming to fruition and a downturn in confidence in the industry, what will the Government do to encourage greater investment in exploration and production so that we can ensure the protection of the vital jobs that are supported by that industry?
Mr Davey
As I am sure my hon. Friend is aware, Her Majesty’s Treasury is looking at the tax issues for the North sea and the UK continental shelf. It will report in due course, but he will know that the Wood review, which I commissioned last year, is pressing ahead with legislation. I can today announce the appointment of the future chief executive of the Oil and Gas Authority: a Mr Andy Samuel.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
T2. As part of the discussions on further devolution, it has been suggested that the powers of the Department to grant licences for fracking in Scotland should be devolved to the Scottish Government. That seems an eminently sensible suggestion and I support it. Will the Government support it?
Mr Davey
Of course we are looking at all issues around future devolution of energy policy following the referendum and the commitments made by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. On fracking, it is often not understood that the Scottish Government, the equivalent of the Environment Agency in Scotland and local planning authorities in Scotland already have a huge role to play in the development of fracking in Scotland.
Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
May I commend the Secretary of State for the role he played, along with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in securing a tremendous outcome on the 2030 package? Given that the agreement will mean we can drive an ambitious target through the most cost-effective pathway, will he look again at the Solar Trade Association path to zero subsidy? One of the most exciting things about solar is not only the opportunity for deploying on roofs, but the fact that it offers a near-term opportunity to get to a zero-subsidy world where we can really contemplate renewables at scale.
Mr Davey
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has been a champion for both the climate cause internationally and solar. He is aware that solar offers the prospect, as indeed do other renewables, of a subsidy-free energy future. The cost of solar has plummeted in recent years and experts suggest that it will continue to fall. That is very exciting and he has been right to champion it. The Government also champion it.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
T5. Consumers in both south and north Wales face higher electricity costs than most of the rest of the country. In his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), was the Minister really suggesting that this is just too difficult to tackle, or will he now tell us more about what talks he is having with regulatory bodies on this problem and what his commitment is to trying to get a fairer system right across the UK?
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Matthew Hancock)
It has long been the position that the higher costs of distribution in some areas of the country are in part paid by those who live in those areas. Actually, we have reduced the gap in costs between the most rural areas and the areas where it is cheapest to distribute electricity—that gap has shrunk. Whether we go to a single position across the whole country is worth considering. There may be benefits to remote areas that have the highest cost now, but there would be a cost to others because it has to be paid for.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
In the very welcome mission for more renewable sustainable energy, what is the Minister doing to ensure that, in the rush, we do not commit to biofuel technologies that are not sustainable? What is he doing to ensure that residents, such as those in Avonmouth in my constituency, do not have to fear dangerous pollution from biomass energy production? Will he visit my constituency to hear their concerns?
Matthew Hancock
I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and other constituencies in Bristol over the next six months. I pay tribute to her work on this front. Of course, making sure that energy supplies defined as renewable are indeed renewable and sustainable and have low overall carbon emissions is very important. We are working to ensure that that distinction is reflected in the Department’s policy.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
T6. What is the origin of the £128 million funding that the Secretary of State has committed, over 40 years, to communities affected by the Hinkley C development? Will it come from the developer, as is the case with other technologies, or will it come from his Department’s funds or another Department’s funds?
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The Minister will have seen the Solar Trade Association’s standards for proposals for field-based solar projects. Does she agree that they should incorporate proper respect for listed buildings in our countryside? Will she encourage local councils to give short shrift to any developments that do not attempt to live up to the industry’s own standards?
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. While promoting solar power, we need to support local communities and the local environment, and we are confident that our policies will continue to do that.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
When he spoke to the all-party group on steel and metal related industry, Karl-Ulrich Köhler, the chief executive of Tata in Europe, cited the higher manufacturing energy costs in Europe compared with the rest of the world as one of the key contexts for putting the long products division up for sale. What will the Government do about the competitiveness of our manufacturing in relation to energy costs?
Matthew Hancock
Europe has higher energy costs owing to European legislation. We have taken action— £7 billion of action—to reduce costs for energy-intensive industries, but of course, if there is more we can do, within the European rules, including through negotiating more competitive European rules, we will do it. There is no point simply moving carbon emissions out of Europe if that means that the same amount, or more, will be emitted in some other jurisdiction.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Just a few years ago, the country came close to a major national power outage because of a three-week blocking, high-pressure weather system that sat over the UK, resulting in lots of cold nights and very little wind. Has the Department modelled for such an eventuality again, given that the capacity gap is even smaller now?
Matthew Hancock
Yes, we have. The capacity gap was actually smaller at the start of the last decade, but of course we have modelled for these things, and crucially, with National Grid, we have ensured that power stations are on standby to secure energy supplies this winter.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State get the message that most people in this country, including my constituents, are quite fair-minded about new ways of producing energy and know of its urgency, but that, be it energy from waste, solar or wind power, they want to know why the incentives and benefits for local communities cannot be more generous and are not more widely known?
Mr Davey
This Government have done more than any other to enable that to happen: we have worked with industry to increase the community benefits on offer through the community energy strategy—Britain’s first ever—that I published in January; and we have set up several taskforces, one of which, the shared ownership taskforce, is reporting today and will enable the co-ownership of new energy by local communities. I therefore refer the hon. Gentleman to all the work we have been doing.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The world price of oil has fallen to $84 a barrel—almost a 25% reduction—yet it does not appear that the benefit is being passed on to consumers through domestic oil or other energy supply. What representations is my right hon. Friend making to ensure that consumers get the benefit of this welcome fall?
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Oil and gas companies get tax breaks to exploit narrow seams of oil; renewables get subsidies; nuclear power gets subsidies; the only industry that does not get any help is the coal industry. [Interruption.] I put it to the Minister, who is anxious to get to his feet, that we need £70 million to save three deep mine pits. If they got that kind of money, they could exhaust all their reserves. The Government stole £700 million from the mine workers pension scheme last February. We only want £70 million. Come on, let’s have a bit of balance. When will he tell us he is going to hand over the money?
Matthew Hancock
Last month, we put £4 million into keeping UK coal running, thank you very much, so of course we are acting on this, and we are working towards further support if we can make it state aid-compliant and if it provides value for money. As somebody who comes from Nottinghamshire coal mining stock, I am working to support UK Coal.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
On the recent bans on fracking in towns in Texas, Ohio and California, the residents voted overwhelmingly to stop what they describe as noise, disruption and the constant traffic and fumes from wells and trucks in residential areas. Fifty million Americans live within a mile of an oil and gas well, so they know what it is like, but they were dismissed by regulators and energy companies as misinformed. How will the voices of local people who do not want fracking—they do not want to be paid off—be heard in their communities?
Matthew Hancock
We have a stronger regulatory system than in the United States, and I think that is a good thing.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
Had the Secretary of State accepted my invitation to Anglesey day last week, he would have seen a microcosm of the United Kingdom’s energy future. Will he genuinely thank the officials who helped with giving consent to the biomass plant, which will have an eco plant alongside it, creating real green jobs? Is not that the way forward for Anglesey and the United Kingdom?
Mr Davey
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, both in thanking my officials, who are extremely hard working and talented people, and on the future of low-carbon energy on Anglesey. He has been a real champion of those sorts of projects and the Horizon project for the new nuclear power plant there.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
Earlier in Question Time the Secretary of State made the point that the 2030 agreement was the export of our Climate Change Act across the EU. I very much welcome the 2030 agreement, but does he agree that the rate of decrease implied by that agreement is quite a lot slower than our Climate Change Act? Does he intend to harmonise the targets in the two agreements?
Mr Davey
It is a little more complicated than sometimes the headlines show, because there is an effort-sharing decision that is being worked on. Some countries will take more of an effort share in reducing their carbon emissions than the 40% average and others that will take less, but I am happy to talk to my hon. Friend about that.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Last night, as we have heard, the planning committee in Bristol rejected an application for a controversial biomass plant. Is the Minister confident that Ofgem has sufficient powers to enforce planning conditions against wood-burning biomass plants that claim to use only waste wood but actually use virgin wood, for example by revoking their renewables obligation certificates?
Business of the House
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr William Hague)
The business for next week will be:
Monday 10 November—Consideration of a Business of the House motion, followed by motion to approve the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations.
Tuesday 11 November—Remaining stages of the National Insurance Contributions Bill, followed by debate on a motion relating to the medium-term financial plan for the House of Commons and draft estimates for 2015-16. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Colleagues will also wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 12 o’clock on this day.
The business for the week commencing 17 November will include:
Monday 17 November—Remaining stages of the Childcare Payments Bill.
Tuesday 18 November—Remaining stages of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill (Day 1)
Wednesday 19 November—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill, followed by Opposition half day (10th allotted day, 1st part). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 20 November—Debate on a motion relating to devolution and the Union, followed by general debate on money creation and society. The subject for both debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 21 November—Private Members’ Bills.
The provisional business for the week commencing 24 November will include:
Monday 24 November—Remaining stages of the Recall of MPs Bill.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 20 November will be:
Thursday 20 November—Debate on the first report from the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, followed by debate on the ninth report from the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee on carbon capture and storage.
Ms Eagle
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. May I take this opportunity to congratulate the Deputy Leader of the House on his promotion in the fallout from the spectacular exit from the Home Office of the right hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker)?
On Sunday, I will attend a remembrance service by the war memorial on Egremont prom in New Brighton, overlooking the River Mersey. On that day, we will remember all the men and women who have given their lives to protect our country. Does the Leader of House agree that such events will be especially poignant this year, the centenary of the start of the great war? I note that we are commemorating on the Order Paper the Members who gave their lives in the great war. Does the Leader of the House agree that we should also find an appropriate way to commemorate all House staff who lost their lives in that war?
A week on Monday, we will debate the remaining stages of the Childcare Payments Bill. The Bill is too little, too late for parents for whom child care costs have risen five times faster than pay since 2010. They do not want to wait until after the next election for the Government to do something about it. Surely the answer is to nearly double the hours of free child care for three and four-year-olds.
Every week in Wallasey, I meet people struggling to feed their families at the end of the month, despite the fact that they are in work. Thanks to this Government, more than 12,000 people were forced to rely on food banks in the Wirral last year alone. This is living wage week, which Opposition Members are proud to support. Twenty-eight Labour councils are now accredited living wage employers, and Labour-run Brent council is putting our policy into practice early by incentivising local employers to pay the living wage. Does the Leader of the House remember his fight to prevent the introduction of the lower but statutory minimum wage, and does he remember declaring that it would price people out of work? Will he now apologise for getting it so wrong, and will he tell us why he is proud of an economic recovery that is leaving so many hard-working people behind?
As Tory Back Benchers continue with their never-ending plots to drive Britain out of the European Union, it is clear that the German Chancellor is losing patience with the Prime Minister’s desperate attempts keep his party together. She let it be known this week that tinkering with free movement was a point of no return for Britain’s membership. Yesterday, all the Prime Minister could do was to attempt an in/out hokey cokey that fooled no one. Before the Leader of the House is tempted to follow in the Prime Minister’s footsteps and quote extensively my deputy, my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), will he tell us if he agrees with his Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), who this week wrote that
“the anti-immigration and EU minority tail, is wagging the majority British dog”?
May I thank the Leader of the House for heeding my call last week and for announcing that we will vote on opting back in to the European arrest warrant on Monday, just 10 days before the Prime Minister’s self-imposed deadline? Will he confirm troubling reports that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has in fact refused to approve the draft regulations because they are riddled with errors? Lords rules dictate that a statutory instrument will not be taken unless it has been approved by the Joint Committee, but the Government are now so desperate to get this vote out of the way that they appear to have scheduled the vote in the Commons before they are sure that they can get the Joint Committee’s consent. Will the Leader of the House explain what he will do if the Joint Committee rejects the proposals after the House has voted on them on Monday? Will he admit that Ministers should have been spending less time worrying about the revolt on their Back Benches, and more time ensuring that the Home Office got its drafting right?
I understand that after business questions last week the Leader of the House and his fellow Tories travelled to the Prime Minister’s constituency to shed the accusation that they are out of touch and privileged by recreating the Bullingdon club at a £200-a- night hotel. Apparently, it was billed as a “How to beat UKIP summit”, but the campaign effort appeared to consist of knocking back free champagne and cognac until 3 am. The Chief Whip played a special game of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”, but we know that already. The right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) unveiled an excruciating painting of the Chancellor naked and brandishing a carrot, and some after-dinner jokes were in such dubious taste that Bernard Manning would have been embarrassed to use them. I know the Leader of the House is a man of the people, so will he confirm that he had his usual 14 pints?
Mr Hague
On that point, I had one pint actually, which another hon. Member paid for—it is a fine Yorkshire tradition that somebody else buys the round—so I do not know where that comes from. I have had to cut back quite considerably since the days of having 14 pints.
The hon. Lady is quite right, of course, to refer to the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, which makes this year’s remembrance services especially poignant, exactly as she said. We will all have that in our minds as we attend local or national remembrance services this weekend. There was a service in the Undercroft yesterday, which you attended, Mr Speaker. It is important for us to commemorate on the Order Paper the sacrifices of House staff as well as former Members, and I am sure we can all join together in giving further thought to how to do that.
On Commons business, the hon. Lady asked about next Monday’s debate. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has not completed its consideration of this statutory instrument, which is a substantial one, because it brings together all the measures necessary for opting in to those of the 35 measures that require regulation to be passed. It is substantial, and I understand that the Committee will return to this on Tuesday. It is not unprecedented for the House to consider a statutory instrument—[Interruption.] It is unusual. It has not happened in this Parliament, but it has happened in previous Parliaments. [Interruption.] I am assured that it has happened in previous Parliaments, and I think the assurances I have received should be good enough for the rest of the House. There is no barrier and no ruling to prevent this from happening. We will do so on Monday—subject, of course, to the Joint Committee completing its consideration on Tuesday. Our rules are different from those of the House of Lords in that respect. By having the debate on Monday, provided that the business of the House motion is carried at the beginning of the day, we will be able to have a full day’s debate—a much longer one than would be usual on statutory instruments. We are also able to ensure that the issue can return to the European Council agenda, for which we need to give 16 days’ notice before 1 December—and there are very good operational reasons for us to have completed our consideration before that date. [Interruption.] I am explaining to hon. Members on both sides why this is being timed when it is, and why it is important to do this on Monday. We shall do so, subject to the clearance of the JCSI the following day.
The hon. Lady asked about a number of other subjects, including the cost of living, food banks and the living wage. I remind her that this Government have cut tax for more than 26 million people and frozen fuel duty for the rest of this Parliament. We have helped to freeze council tax for the fourth year running, when council tax doubled under the last Labour Government and energy bills increased hugely. Town hall charges doubled and fuel duty was increased 12 times, so when it comes to the cost of living, the Opposition have nothing to teach us.
The hon. Lady asked about the minimum wage. Government Members have long supported it, and if everybody is to apologise for past errors, we are waiting for some very big apologies from the Opposition. Perhaps the hon. Lady will supply them on one or two of these occasions.
She asked about the article by my Parliamentary Private Secretary, which strongly supported the immigration policy of Her Majesty’s Government—she can be assured of that. I commend the shadow Leader of the House—I try to find some way to do so every week—for being so cheerful about the situation of her party. An examination of this morning’s media shows that their election guru is losing patience with Labour. The Opposition have had a reshuffle in order to forestall a coup—and things are getting pretty bad when that happens. The editor of the New Statesman, the only publication to support the Leader of the Opposition when he was elected, has now disowned him. One shadow Cabinet Minister said to the newspapers:
“Morale has never been lower”.
Another said that they were all “very concerned”. On the subject of real congratulations this week, however, we have a special guest appearance by the shadow Deputy Leader of the House for sheer honesty. Because he is not really allowed to speak at business questions, I will helpfully read out his words for him:
“The state that the Labour party is in right now is we are in a dreadful position. And we’ve got to be honest about ourselves…The electorate looks at us and has no idea what our polices are. We have a moribund party in Scotland…And we have a membership that is ageing and inactive.”
That is the hon. Gentleman’s own description of his own party—to which he assents, for he is nodding. It will take a lot more than a reshuffle to forestall the judgment of the voters on that party next May.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
May we have an early debate on the costs of paying in-work benefits to foreigners? The Migration Advisory Committee said this week that the cost just of paying tax credits to foreigners is £5 billion a year. I tabled a question to the Department for Work and Pensions asking for more information, but so far I have received only a holding reply. I think this is an issue of increasing urgency, and I hope my right hon. Friend agrees with me.
Mr Hague
As my hon. Friend will know, we have cracked down on the number of benefits to which European Union jobseekers can gain access. There is now a three-month delay before they can receive jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit or child tax credit, entitlement to housing benefit has been removed from them, and we have taken a number of other measures. The benefits bill is being reduced in that respect. However, I am sure that my hon. Friend will receive a detailed reply to the question he tabled.
Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
More and more Members are becoming frustrated at the length of time Departments take to reply to our constituents’ inquiries. Will the Leader of the House present a report to the House, naming and shaming the worst-offending Departments?
Mr Hague
It is very important for Departments to answer letters promptly. When I was Foreign Secretary, I took a good deal of action to ensure that the Foreign Office improved its performance in that regard. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Procedure Committee reviews the issue each year and, I believe, publishes data, but if he has a problem with a particular Department, I should be happy to help him pursue it.
Sir George Young (North West Hampshire) (Con)
In his written ministerial statement on the northern powerhouse, which was published on Monday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:
“The Government will now prepare legislation to enable these changes”.—[Official Report, 3 November 2014; Vol. 587, c. 37WS.]
Now that the House’s appetite has been whetted by the prospect of more local government legislation, will my right hon. Friend tell us when we will see the Bill? Will it appear before the curtain falls on this Parliament?
Mr Hague
My right hon. Friend knows very well that current Session is now pretty full of legislation, and there is, of course, further legislation to come, on counter-terrorism powers, which I hope will receive wide support from Members on both sides of the House. My colleagues in the Treasury are considering the legislation that will be necessary to make the changes outlined in the written statement, and will introduce it when parliamentary time allows.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Did the Leader of the House see a television programme entitled “Baby P: The Untold Story” last week? If he did, is he as concerned as I am about the role of those who save and protect children in our country, and does he agree that there are great lessons to be learnt? Lessons about the behaviour of Ofsted might actually lead to an inquiry, but, in the short term, may we have a full debate on the real story behind Baby P? Many people wrongfully lost their livelihoods and their reputations.
Mr Hague
I did not see the programme, but Members in all parts of the House will of course be very concerned about that and related issues. The hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to take the issue further on the Floor of the House during questions to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on Monday—I know that he is always assiduous in asking questions to a wide range of Departments—and he could also promote it by means of Adjournment debates and Backbench Business motions. I have no Government time to give away in the next couple of weeks.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Yesterday I visited Chatsworth primary school with the aviation Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), to hear about the impact of Heathrow airport on the learning and development of the young pupils, who spoke of suffering sleep deprivation because of the aircraft that arrive throughout the night. The Airports Commission is due to report next year, but it has said that the options are Heathrow and Gatwick. Will my right hon. Friend arrange a full and frank debate, in which we can discuss what is best for the United Kingdom and take account of the views of residents?
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend always speaks up strongly for her constituents on this matter. The impact on residents is of course one of the issues that the airports commission is considering in its review. It is crucial that we take long-term decisions on our aviation capacity that will keep Britain competitive for years to come. As she knows, the commission will make its final recommendations in the summer of next year, and I am sure that hon. Members will have many opportunities to make their views on this issue known and to represent the views of their constituents in the coming months.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
A constituent of mine found that his payslip showed a deduction of £50. When he asked why, he was told that it was for making toilet visits. It appears that call centre staff, who are provided with copious amounts of water to keep their voices lubricated, are also being fined for going to the toilet. May we have a debate on the toilet tax?
Mark Hunter (Cheadle) (LD)
May we please have a debate on green belt policy and on the threats posed by greedy developers and the local councils that wish to profit from their actions? Residents in my constituency have been appalled to discover plans by the neighbouring Cheshire East council to allow 2,500 houses to be built on green fields opposite the Marks & Spencer store in Handforth Dean. If that were allowed to happen, it would have a massive impact on local traffic volumes across my constituency and on the A34 in particular. Will the Leader of the House join me in condemning those who seek to exploit valuable resources to the detriment of local communities?
Mr Hague
I will make it crystal clear, as the Government always do, that the green belt must be protected from development so that it can continue to offer a strong defence against urban sprawl. Recently issued rules have strengthened those protections further to ensure that, whether a project involves new homes, business premises or anything else, the developers first look for suitable brownfield sites. Those rules exist in addition to the range of other measures that the Government have taken to protect the green belt, and I hope that they will be of help to my hon. Friend’s constituents.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) recently raised the question with the Prime Minister of the firefighters pension dispute. May we have a statement from the Department for Communities and Local Government on why the dispute has been settled in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales but continues in England, given the optimism that met the arrival of the new fire Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt)? Her appointment heralded the possibility of the dispute being looked at with a fresh new pair of eyes, and a real hope that the matter could be dealt with.
Mr Hague
Of course we all want to see that matter resolved, and the Prime Minister commented on it yesterday. There will be questions to the Department for Communities and Local Government on Monday, which will provide a further opportunity to question the responsible Ministers about the issue.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
One of the untried technologies that we are not getting right in this country is wave power. There are two opportunities to use it in Sedgemoor in my constituency, but the money we need for the studies to find out whether it would work is not available. Will the Leader of the House find time in the next couple of weeks for us to discuss this matter? We have the opportunity to produce energy through wave power around the country, but we are unable to get the technology right.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
May we have a debate on the impact of the Tory obsession with leaving Europe on the family of nations throughout the United Kingdom? If big brother England votes to leave the EU but the smaller members of the family vote to stay, we will be treated like upstart children, told what is good for us and dragged out of Europe against our will.
Mr Hague
The Conservative party is advocating that the people should make the decision in a referendum. I thought that the hon. Gentleman and his party were in favour of people being able to make decisions in referendums, but, evidently, he does not like the answer that the people give. When we come to have that referendum it will be one of and for the whole of the United Kingdom, of which the people of Scotland have voted to remain a part.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Following on from that, the European Union (Referendum) Bill passed this House by 283 votes to nil—the biggest majority for any private Member’s Bill—yet the Leader of the House has still not tabled the money resolution. We are led to believe that the Liberal Democrats are blocking it, though they did not have the courage to vote against the Bill. May I suggest to the Leader of the House that he brings in an emergency statement tomorrow and introduces that money resolution, so that it can be debated and the Bill makes progress? If the person sitting to the right of him, the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) wants to leave the Government at that stage, so be it.
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend rightly says that that Bill was carried by a very large majority, and he and I both voted for it. He asked about the money resolution, but, as I explained last week, there has not been agreement in the Government on money resolutions for two private Members’ Bills: the Affordable Homes Bill and the European Union (Referendum) Bill. Such a resolution can be moved only if there is agreement in the Government on it. But what he says is further evidence that only the Conservative party will and can deliver in the future an EU referendum.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
This week is national youth work week. May we have a debate about the utter destruction of youth services across the country because of Government cuts, so that the Minister can explain how, despite the cuts, he is making sure that local authorities can and do fulfil their statutory duties to provide a sufficient youth service?
Mr Hague
There is a lot of demand evident today for DCLG questions next Monday. The hon. Lady is asking about local authorities’ obligations, which are a matter for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and so she will be able to ask him and Ministers about that on Monday. During the short recess next week, we will also welcome here the Youth Parliament, where young people will be able to discuss in here these and related issues, and I will join in welcoming them. I encourage the hon. Lady to raise these concerns with the relevant Ministers.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
May we please have a debate on the effectiveness of our international aid budget? Recent research by the TaxPayers Alliance has shown that of 20 countries in receipt of UK aid 10 had shown little or no improvement in the amount of political, economic and press freedom they enjoyed and five actually enjoyed less freedom.
Mr Hague
I am sure that my colleagues in the Department for International Development would welcome a debate. We have, of course, had a good deal of discussion about this issue in the debates on another private Member’s Bill and on its money resolution, carried just a few days ago, and in DFID questions just yesterday. Investing in overseas development is creating a world that is healthier, more stable and more prosperous, but that does not mean that the issues about freedom and human rights to which my hon. Friend refers do not remain. Development does not always deal with those.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Following on from the question from the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), may we have a debate or a statement on accountability within British airports, as London City airport is planning to spread misery among my constituents by changing the flight paths and the concentration of flight paths over my constituency?
Mr Hague
Those are legitimate things to debate and to raise with Transport Ministers. Of course, changes in flight paths have a major effect on constituents, particularly those in London. The hon. Gentleman can pursue that issue through Adjournment debates or through the Backbench Business Committee, and he is entirely entitled to do so.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
My constituent, Christine Solley, has raised concerns about the sale of offensive and illegal weapons such as knuckledusters over the internet and through popular online auction sites. May we have an urgent debate on tackling the sale of illegal weapons online?
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend raises an important matter, but the position on that is already clear. The legislation says that the sale, importation or possession of such weapons is an offence for which there is a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment. All concerns about the sale of knuckledusters or any offensive weapons should be reported to the police or local trading standards department. If the seller of those things is based abroad, then concerns should be reported to the helpline run by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. So we already have a clear position on those things.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Post-polio syndrome is a neurological condition suffered by 80% of all polio victims nationwide—100,000 people—yet awareness in the primary care system, especially among GPs, is very low, and there is no national strategy in the NHS to recognise the condition. May we have an urgent statement to the House on what the Secretary of State will do to remedy that?
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
May I bring to the attention of the House early-day motion 455, which stands in my name?
That this House believes that the UK’s air passenger duty is acting as a barrier to allowing hardworking families to take holidays abroad, when the majority already have to pay a premium due to school term-time restrictions; and calls on the Government to reduce the financial impact on hardworking families by scrapping the air passenger duty applicable to children.
Currently, all children aged two and over flying from a UK airport pay the same amount of air passenger duty as an adult. That puts a significant amount on the cost of flying for families and the policy is out of line with most taxes, including on clothes and books, where children are exempt. British families face the full whammy of paying full APD on all flights plus a premium for taking their children on holiday out of school time. May we please have a debate on the amount of tax levied on children’s flights in the UK?
Mr Hague
The right time to debate air passenger duty is after the Chancellor presents his autumn statement or his Budget each year. My hon. Friend will recall that the time when the House decides whether to pass what the Chancellor proposes is after the Budget each year. Of course we will take what he has said as a Budget representation. He will remember that the Chancellor recently simplified air passenger duty. I think that that will have been of assistance to a lot of people, but it did not deal with the point that he has raised.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
May we have a debate in Government time on the state of local government? Coventry, Birmingham and the rest of the west midlands are facing horrendous cuts and redundancies. Why do we not have a proper debate on local government and treat it with the respect that it deserves?
Mr Hague
We do debate in different ways the condition of local government. Sadly, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government had to make a statement about Tower Hamlets earlier this week. Again, there are further opportunities to raise such issues in questions to him next Monday. It is also open to the hon. Gentleman to apply to the Backbench Business Committee for a debate.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
The European Commission unveiled its latest forecast on Tuesday, predicting that the UK economy would grow 10 times faster than that of France. May we have a debate on why the British economy is winning the European growth race, on what lessons we can learn, and on what lessons the Leader of the Opposition might choose to learn?
Mr Hague
Again, we might well want to debate such matters at the time of the autumn statement, which is only a few weeks away. As my hon. Friend says, the British economy—according to the European Commission —is growing 10 times faster than that of France. It is only two years since the Leader of the Opposition said:
“What President Hollande is seeking to do in France…is to find that different way forward. We are in agreement in seeking that way.”
That is the policy of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
There is a crisis on our high streets throughout the country, as anyone who attends the all-party group on town centres will testify. May we have a debate on the impact of VAT rises on small businesses in our constituencies, so that the Prime Minister can make clear the Government’s position, which, again, he did not do yesterday?
Mr Hague
The Government’s commitment to small business is clear and strong. We removed £2,000 from employers’ national insurance contributions, which means that many small businesses, including some high street businesses, do not have to pay any such contributions at all. There is a good case for debates not just about VAT, but about a changing economy and the impact of social and economic trends on the retail world. The appropriate time to debate VAT and other taxation matters is around the autumn statement and the Budget.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
May we have a debate on the Youth Select Committee’s recommendations in its report launched yesterday “Lowering the voting age to 16”? The inquiry was carried out by many young people. Some 478,000 young people voted to select the topics debated by members of the Youth Parliament last October in this Chamber, and votes at 16 won the day. Does the Leader of the House agree that we should debate the committee’s well considered findings?
Mr Hague
I am sure that this will be debated in many different ways. It is one of the issues that the UK Youth Parliament itself will debate in this very Chamber. Members of the House have strongly held and opposing views on the issue. They were aired here in the debate brought forward by the Backbench Business Committee in January this year. Our noble Friend Lord Tyler has introduced a private Member’s Bill in the other House on this issue and tabled amendments to the Wales Bill. I am sure that there will be opportunities for further debate in this House.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Further to what was said earlier about the so-called northern powerhouses, I urge the Leader of the House not to forget that cities elsewhere in the country, such as Bristol, would very much benefit from devolution of powers, particularly on issues such as transport and housing. May we have a debate on that, and perhaps discuss the issue of elected mayors at the same time, as we might have some salutary lessons for our friends in Manchester?
Mr Hague
The Government are conscious of this issue, and since 2010 have set out on more decentralisation than has happened for decades to many cities and towns in the UK. I think, from memory, that Bristol has entered into a city deal. There are further opportunities to push that forward. When we have the debate that the Backbench Business Committee has nominated for two weeks today on devolution and the Union, it will be entirely right to raise those issues.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Many residents in the village of Bishopstone, just 5 miles from Salisbury, have been cut off without a landline for most of the last three months. That is a massive challenge when so many of them are elderly and there is no mobile signal. Unfortunately, BT has given conflicting advice about when the problem can be resolved. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on how we can avoid such a thing happening in future, and how better connectivity can be achieved in rural areas?
Mr Hague
I can understand my hon. Friend raising this in the House when people have been cut off from their telephone service for so long, which is obviously not good enough. This year, Ofcom introduced a series of performance targets for providers—in particular for Openreach—which they are required to meet or they will face penalties, including fines. This year, Openreach announced the creation of 2,400 new engineering roles. I hope that providers will listen carefully to what my hon. Friend has said, so that the problem will be rectified and we will not need to have a debate on it in the House.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-postmasters in this country with an air of criminality hanging over them based on the outcomes of the Second Sight report into the Horizon computer programme. On behalf of cross-party MPs, may I urge the Leader of the House to seek agreement from his Cabinet colleagues to publish in full Second Sight’s final report into the Horizon computer scandal so that these people can move on and clear their names?
Mr Hague
I will certainly inform colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter. They will be answering questions in the House on 20 November, so he will have a further opportunity then to raise it with them directly. I will tell them of his concern in advance.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend well knows, the Pitcairn Islands are one of the most remote British overseas territories, and their environment is pristine. Will he consider making time available for a statement from our right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on establishing a marine environment protected zone around the territory’s thousands of square miles, as supported by the people of the Pitcairn Islands?
Mr Hague
We have a strong record of not only giving stronger and more coherent support to the overseas territories over the past four and a half years than ever happened in the previous decade, including taking a great deal of care over the Pitcairn Islands, but of advancing marine protected areas around some of them. What my hon. Friend asks for is absolutely in line with that, so I will encourage colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to provide more details.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Given the current uncertainty about the future of Long Products UK, may we have a statement from the appropriate Secretary of State outlining what the Government are doing to ensure that foundation industries such as steel are there as a bedrock for future manufacturing success?
Mr Hague
The steel industry is very important for this country. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that steel production here has risen in recent years. The Prime Minister commented on the matter recently at Prime Minister’s questions and there was an urgent question within the past two weeks on the future of the industry. It will remain an important topic of discussion in the House. As I said, BIS questions will be on 20 November, which might be the next opportunity to pursue the matter.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
A continuing concern in our country is the disparity in infrastructure spend between London and the English regions—roughly speaking, it is a ratio of 10:1 in terms of spend per capita. Much of that has been driven by Crossrail 1. Will the Leader of the House give an assurance that Crossrail 2 will not have significant sums spent on it without a proper series of debates in this House?
Mr Hague
Debating infrastructure investment in many different places and in many different ways is very important for the House, so I can assure my hon. Friend that there will always be plenty of discussions on these matters. He will also be aware that part of what we are trying to do with our regional growth fund and city deals is ensure that there is investment in infrastructure, transport and science across the regions of the United Kingdom. We now have the largest rail modernisation programme taking place since Victorian times. We are investing nearly £800 million in superfast broadband. There are many infrastructure developments benefiting the whole of the country, and we must ensure that they continue to do so.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
When will the Leader of the House schedule a debate on the third report of the Committee on Standards, “The Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Rules”?
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
May I tell my right hon. Friend that I am a member of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and that I was present at its meeting yesterday? I can confirm that there was only a slight administrative delay, as he has told the House, due to the length and complexity of the measure, not because there were any specific problems. Also, my understanding is that on at least one occasion in this Parliament the House has debated a statutory instrument before the Joint Committee did, and I seem to recall that it had Labour support.
Mr Speaker
I am sure that there was a request for a statement or debate somewhere in the interstices of the question and that we just did not find it.
Mr Hague
Indeed, my hon. Friend is right that there have been previous cases, including in this Parliament—for example, the debate on prevention and suppression of terrorism on 10 July last year. I am grateful for what he says about yesterday’s deliberations by the Committee, and we all hope that it will complete those deliberations next Tuesday.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend knows, I am the Government’s pharmacy champion. Plymouth’s Peninsula medical school is very keen to have a pharmacy school attached to it. May we have a debate on pharmacy schools and on the much wider issue of pharmacies as a whole and their contribution to the national health service?
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend does a very good job of representing these issues. Pharmacists do indeed make a crucial contribution to the health service, and it is very important that we have well-trained pharmacists for the future. I cannot promise him a debate, although of course he can pursue one in all the normal ways, but by raising the issue today he has already drawn attention to it very successfully.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
In Harrogate district there are nearly 800 charities and voluntary sector organisations making a difference in their communities every day. Last week, the work of the volunteers was recognised at our volunteer Oscars organised by local councillor John Fox. May we have a debate on what more can be done to better recognise and celebrate the work of the voluntary sector bodies and charities that are so active in all our communities right across the country?
Mr Hague
We cannot do much better than my hon. Friend, who is a great champion of volunteering and the voluntary sector and does a great deal of it himself. He draws attention to the sheer scale of such activity. The figures show that last year 74% of people volunteered in some way—an increase from 66% just four years ago. We recognise the tremendous contributions that people make through the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the Big Society awards, and the Points of Light awards. I hope that all hon. Members will join in that effort, with or without a debate.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The Leader of the House will recall a memorable visit to Cleethorpes around the end of 2009, when he launched a policy document called “No Longer The End Of The Line” outlining policies that would re-invigorate seaside towns. May we have a debate to review those policies and to outline what future Government initiatives await us?
Mr Hague
I do remember visiting Cleethorpes in 2009. Actually, I also remember visiting Cleethorpes around about 1966, when I was five years old, so I have many fond memories of Cleethorpes. Like my hon. Friend, I very much believe in the future of our seaside towns. This is an important topic for debate, and I encourage him to pursue it through the Backbench Business Committee and other opportunities.
Mr Hollobone
This morning my right hon. Friend has shown his appetite for reviving obscure parliamentary procedures by asking the House to vote on Monday on a measure that will not have completed its other Commons stages. Will he therefore revive the obscure parliamentary procedure of debating Opposition policy in dedicated Government time? Given the importance to our democracy of having a healthy Opposition, and as a reward for the refreshing honesty of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who said that the public have
“no idea what our policies are”,
may we test the proposition that this House has identified Her Majesty’s Opposition’s alternative programme for government?
Mr Hague
That would be a fascinating debate. Perhaps the shadow Leader of the House could lead it for the Opposition in order to clarify and expand on all the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about Labour being a “moribund” party, rather than the Leader of Opposition leading it and demonstrating that it is a moribund party.
Bob Blackman
Yesterday I had the honour of captaining the House of Commons bridge team in our annual match against the other place. I am happy to report that we successfully retained the Jack Perry trophy with an outstanding victory. Sadly, I was the only sitting Member participating and I had to enlist a number of ex-MPs— former distinguished Members of this House—to join me. Even more sadly, UK Sport refuses to recognise bridge, chess and other mind sports as sports. May we have an early debate, in Government time, on ensuring that there is recognition of those mind sports, which are important for sporting purposes in schools and for older people, so that we can encourage participation in them?
Mr Speaker
I am sure the House is pleased to learn of the hon. Gentleman’s prowess and distinction at the bridge table. It is a prowess and distinction of which I was hitherto unaware, but I am now better informed.
Mr Hague
I was also unaware of it, Mr Speaker, and I congratulate my hon. Friend. To defeat the House of Lords at bridge is no small matter, although I do wonder how many former world champions he recruited to his team in the absence of any other Members of Parliament. I hope hon. Members will join him in future years so that the title can be retained. He makes an important point about the importance of games such as chess to the development of young people. I would certainly welcome a debate. I am not able to offer Government time for it, but I encourage my hon. Friend to pursue it in all the normal ways.
Annual Energy Statement
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Today I am publishing the Government’s annual energy statement and supporting papers alongside the annual update on electricity market reform. This fulfils the commitment set out in the coalition agreement to present an annual statement of energy policy to Parliament. This will be the last annual energy statement in this Parliament before the next general election. It sets out the significant progress the Government have made since 2010.
In 2010 it was not just the country’s finances that needed immediate action. It would be fair to say that back in 2010 the UK faced an energy crisis, too. There was an historic record of underinvestment in energy infrastructure that threatened our energy security. There had been a decade of rises in energy costs, with consumers getting a raw deal from the big six energy suppliers in a market that had too little competition. Even on climate change, there were plenty of legal obligations to cut emissions, but little practical policy to achieve them cost-effectively.
Today’s energy statement shows how we have turned that situation around. Given how fast bills had risen in the previous Parliament and how fuel poverty had increased under the previous Government, helping consumers has been a top priority, starting with those on lowest incomes. Payments to vulnerable people to help with bills have been protected and expanded under this coalition, with the addition of the warm home discount, which will mean a £140 cut in bills for 2 million households most in need. Despite all the pressures on energy bills, this policy and other Government measures have helped to cut the number of households in fuel poverty during this Parliament by more than 100,000 in England alone. I strongly believe, however, that we should be doing more to help people out of fuel poverty, and after this summer’s consultation we are finalising the first new fuel poverty strategy in more than a decade.
We also needed to help every household and that meant reform of the energy markets to promote choice and competition. Ofgem’s retail market reforms now mean energy bills are easier to understand and tariffs are simpler, providing consumers with a greater ability to shop around. Slow switching times were also clearly a barrier to competition, so those times are being slashed in half this year, and Ofgem is consulting on its road map for moving to 24-hour switching, with a decision due by the new year.
Thanks to our deregulation, there are now a dozen new suppliers taking on the big six, to give consumers more choice and competition. In the past, we had switching between the big six, driven by doorstep selling or, too often, mis-selling—switching that favoured the big six. Now we have switching that favours the consumer. Some 3.5 million people switched their electricity supplier over the past 12 months, with 1.2 million moving away from the big six to the smaller suppliers. The independents now boast more than 2 million customers and regularly top the best buy tables.
uSwitch has recently talked about a new atmosphere of aggressive pricing, proving that competition is indeed hotting up. Moreover, after years of rising bills, there have been no new price rise announcements from the big six this year, reflecting the increasing competition and the efforts the Government have made to reduce policy costs.
The latest review of prices and bills I am publishing today shows that this year we estimate that policy costs now account for 7% of an average household energy bill. That is down from the 2013 levels of 9% as a result of the package of measures announced in the autumn statement last year. I will place copies of the review in the Libraries of both Houses this morning.
Even those lower costs are, on average, more than offset by the bill savings that our policies deliver through energy efficiency. By 2020, household energy bills are estimated to be on average around £92 lower than they would have been if we had sat on our hands and done nothing. For example, three quarters of a million homes are already benefiting from lower bills, thanks to the Government’s energy efficiency policies such as the energy companies obligation and the green deal. We have also acted to help business with energy costs. Together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, we introduced a number of measures to help limit energy costs for those electricity-intensive industries most at risk from carbon leakage. That will reduce the impact of policies on eligible industries by up to 80% in 2020.
But we can and will do more, with policies ranging from our electricity demand reduction to our leading role in reforming Europe’s carbon market. Most importantly for consumers, however, as a result of the first annual competition assessment that I announced in last year’s annual energy statement, Ofgem has referred the gas and electricity markets to the Competition and Markets Authority. That is the right way to restore trust in our energy markets, and ensure that consumers get the best deals possible.
As well as affordable energy, people want to know that power will be there when they flick the switch. Ofgem’s report on energy security in 2010, “Project Discovery”, showed the sheer scale of the problem that we were facing, with a fifth of our existing power stations set to close by the end of the decade. It suggested that the mid-decade period we are now coming to would be particularly challenging as power plants came offline, but as today’s annual energy statement demonstrates, we have acted to turn around that dire situation. In the short-term, our plan ensures that we will comfortably meet supply security standards this winter and next. As National Grid confirmed last week, it has new balancing measures in place that will ensure that the risk of supply disruption remains at very low levels over the next few years, and well within reliability standards.
Looking further ahead at future electricity supply challenges this decade, as part of electricity market reform we are reintroducing a capacity mechanism to the UK. We have delivered all major electricity market reform milestones. The first allocation round for contracts for difference is now open for bids, and the first capacity market auction will take place in December. However, those measures alone will not guarantee the UK’s longer term energy security. For the next decade, we are building a diverse lower carbon energy mix—predominantly home-grown—that ensures that we will not be over-reliant on one source, one fuel, or one import market. With the Energy Act 2013 gaining Royal Assent on 18 December last year, we now have one of the best legal and financial frameworks to support the cost-effective growth of low-carbon electricity anywhere in the world.
Record investments of £45 billion in electricity generation and networks since 2010 have put us on target to meet our future low-carbon power requirements. Indeed, in four years under this coalition, the available evidence suggests that we have surpassed the total electricity investment in the whole of the previous decade under the last Government.
Average annual investment in renewable electricity has more than doubled this Parliament with 2013 being a record year. We now have more installed offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world. Onshore wind—the cheapest of the large-scale renewables—now supplies 5% of our electricity, and the good news is that we have a strong investment pipeline for more onshore wind, worth up to £5.8 billion to 2020. Solar power has had £6.4 billion of investment since 2010, and biomass and bio-energy £6.3 billion. Renewable electricity generation has more than doubled during this Parliament. Indeed, in the first quarter of 2014, 19% of UK electricity was provided by renewable resources. With our continued focus on renewables, from our community energy strategy to our work on tidal and marine power, that is set to rise much further.
It is not only renewables that have seen massive investment. More than £16 billion has been invested in onshore and offshore electricity networks since 2010. Interconnection projects worth £1 billion have been delivered, and projects in the pipeline aim to more than double our interconnector capacity by the 2020s. Those include another link to France with a cable in the channel tunnel, and a link to Norway’s hydropower capacity with what would be the longest subsea cable in the world.
We also have £2.5 billion in gas-fired power plants; more than £3.8 billion in gas transmission and distribution networks; more than £40 billion in the North sea, which is a doubling of private investment on the UK’s continental shelf since 2010; and development capital expenditure higher in 2013 than at any point in the past decade. Last year, the Government agreed key terms for the first new nuclear power station in a generation at Hinkley Point C, and the UK has Europe’s only two commercial-scale carbon capture and storage projects. We have a strong set of low-carbon electricity options. All that investment has been achieved in the face of considerable fiscal restraint, with largely private sector investment rebuilding our energy infrastructure.
Before I leave the subject of energy security, there is one international aspect I should raise with the House that has domestic implications, namely the response by the G7 and the EU to Russian aggression against Ukraine, and the increasing threats by Russia to use energy supplies as a weapon. It is vital that we co-operate internationally to help our allies, especially in eastern and central Europe and the Baltic, many of which are highly dependent on energy imports from Russia, but it is also vital that we remember how fortunate the UK is to have such diversity in its oil and gas supplies. We should therefore not turn our backs on the shale gas opportunity, for as we decarbonise our economy, we will still need large amounts of oil and gas in the next three decades for heating and transport.
The implementation of the Wood review, which I commissioned last year to maximise economic recovery from the North sea, remains an urgent task. I am therefore delighted today to confirm that Andy Samuel has been appointed as the new chief executive of the Oil and Gas Authority I am establishing.
Finally, we have achieved that turnaround in energy security and energy investment while continuing to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. I was delighted to announce in February 2014 that the UK had met its first carbon budget, covering the period 2008 to 2012. We are also on track to meet the even more demanding reductions required to meet the second and third carbon budgets. I was particularly pleased, after a cross-Government review, to confirm that our ambitious fourth carbon budget would not be changed.
The Government have delivered on our commitments under the Climate Change Act 2008, but to deliver on climate change more broadly, we also need international action, so in September, I published the Government’s strategy for achieving a legally binding global climate change deal in 2015. With the successful agreement last month on the EU’s 2030 energy and climate change framework, which was based on the UK’s proposed blueprint, Europe is now well placed to lead on the world stage and secure the global deal that is so crucial for future generations.
Despite political differences, energy policy has enjoyed a high degree of cross-party consensus over the past decade or so. I am pleased that that remains the case today on the vast majority of our policies. The Energy Act 2013 enjoyed the same level of cross-party consensus that the Climate Change Act 2008 enjoyed. That is crucial for the long-term investment decisions that energy infrastructure needs.
Of course, differences between the parties remain. There is an anti-competitive approach towards the energy market in parts of the Labour party; an anti-renewables, anti-wind tendency in parts of the Conservative party; and all parties have members with a history of opposition to nuclear power. However, it is imperative that those tendencies are resisted, particularly in the run-up to the general election. Short-term populism is the most dangerous enemy that energy and climate change policy has.
After the hard-won gains for the UK’s energy and climate change policy of these past four years, I urge right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House to cleave to the consensus we have achieved. That is the best way to keep energy bills down, to keep the lights on and to keep our pledges to our children to tackle climate change.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for what I hope and expect will be his final annual energy statement. What a curious statement it was. He looked very satisfied with himself, but consumers worried about how they will afford their energy bills this winter are not satisfied with the Government; families living in cold and draughty properties are not satisfied with the Government; and businesses—people who want to invest in this country, create jobs here and put us at the cutting edge of innovation in new forms of clean energy—are not satisfied with the Government either.
Let me start with consumers and the energy market. In his statement, the Secretary of State seemed to suggest that the energy market has never been working better, but will he confirm that, with the exception of a brief spike at the end of last year that followed Labour’s price freeze announcement, switching levels are at their lowest point for almost a decade? If things have improved so dramatically, will he also explain why, according to Ofgem, in the past year the profits of the energy companies have increased, as have the number of complaints about poor customer service? Is that what a functioning competitive market looks like? For the record, will he also confirm that under this Government energy bills have risen twice as fast as inflation, four times faster than wages, and faster than those in almost any other developed country in the world? That is why, on the Government’s latest figures, fuel poverty is rising, not falling. Is that a record he can be proud of?
One of the reasons why households and businesses have been hit so hard by recent energy price rises is that we have such low levels of energy efficiency. Looking back at the annual energy statements delivered in this House in 2010 and 2011, it is very interesting to see what high expectations the Government had for their beloved green deal. Yet today, there was barely a mention. I think we all remember when the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) said that he would be having sleepless nights unless he achieved 10,000 green deals by the end of 2013. Well, maybe he left the Department to get a decent night’s sleep. So far, despite being billed as the biggest home improvement package since world war two, just 2,500 households and no businesses—not a single one—have had measures installed under the green deal. Does the Secretary of State also regret that, in his panicked response to our energy price freeze announcement last year, he announced sweeping cuts to the energy company obligation that will result in nearly half a million fewer households receiving energy efficiency improvements? Let me tell him that the next Labour Government will not make the same mistakes that he has, as will be clear when we publish our energy efficiency green paper next week.
Never let it be said that I am not a fair woman. Some things have moved slightly further forward in the past year. On oil and gas, we support the Government’s intention to implement the Wood review and establish a new regulatory body. A greater share of our electricity is coming from renewable sources. However, two thirds of the projects that have come online in this Parliament started under the previous Labour Government. The energy legislation we supported is now finally on the statute book. Progress has been made at Hinkley, too. Thanks to the European Commission, consumers will now get a better deal than the one the Government were able to negotiate. In a similar vein, does the Secretary of State agree that the National Audit Office should publish its analysis on the Hinkley deal before he finally signs the contract? Figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance published just a few weeks ago show that investment in clean energy this year is substantially down on last year. After well-publicised spats and U-turns in Government—first on wind, now on solar—is it any surprise that Ernst and Young has downgraded the UK to seventh in its index of attractiveness for renewable investment?
I understand the Secretary of State has leadership ambitions. Does he agree with me, however, that those ambitions, and the investment climate for low-carbon generation, would be better served if he, like 16 of his Liberal Democrat colleagues, had supported a decarbonisation target for the power sector for 2030, as Labour proposed? The fact that we are missing out on this investment is not just a loss for the jobs and growth it would have supported but for our energy security, which the Secretary of State covered in his statement. As he said, this winter National Grid is taking precautionary measures to maintain the security of our energy supply, which, again, we have supported. However, is not the reason why those measures need to be taken precisely that we have seen so little investment in our energy infrastructure in the past four years? In our last few years in Government, construction on six new gas-fired power stations began, but will the Secretary of State confirm that under this Government just one new gas-fired power station, at Carrington in Manchester, has been commissioned and that even this will not be operational until after the next election?
One area on which there is greater consensus is international climate change. I welcome the progress made with the EU 2030 package last month, which, as the Secretary of State knows, we supported. I also send our best wishes to him and the officials who will be representing us in Lima as we build towards the Paris climate conference next year. In that regard, he has the full support of the Opposition, even if the same cannot be said for all Members on the Government Benches.
I am afraid that that is as far as my good wishes extend, because this time next year I hope that I will be delivering the annual energy statement, as part of a Labour Government who have capped energy prices and begun the work of reforming our energy market, ending the scandal of cold homes and securing the investment that our country badly needs.
Mr Davey
I thank the right hon. Lady for her reply, even if her last bit was slightly delusional, and for her support for things such as the Wood review, the Oil and Gas Authority and the European deal we secured and led on.
On the energy market, the right hon. Lady talked about switching levels. It is true that switching levels were higher under the last Government, but that was because there was an awful lot of doorstep selling and mis-selling. Does Labour plan to encourage doorstep selling to increase switching levels? Unfortunately, it was a very bad strategy. Under the last Government, we saw lots of people switching between the big six—the big six quite liked that approach to switching—but under this Government we have seen record levels of switching from the big six to new suppliers. That is why consumers are getting a better deal. Switching levels in this country are among the highest in Europe, and are higher than in telecoms or the banking industry, so I think we have a very good record here.
The right hon. Lady rightly talked about profits and complaints about energy companies. We are very focused on that, and it was one reason why I was keen to support the independent competition inquiry into the energy market—it is a shame that the Leader of the Opposition did not do the same when he was doing my job. Energy bills rose faster under the last Government than they have under this one. Between 2005 and 2010, they rose 10.3% in cash terms, whereas, under this Government, they have risen by 8% in cash terms. So she and Labour have a very poor record on electricity and gas bills.
The right hon. Lady talked about the green deal, but she did not mention the green deal home improvement fund, which was so successful it unfortunately ran out of money quicker than we expected, or the fact that in response we have announced another £100 million for the fund. She also failed to notice that the number of green deal finance plans being taken out is at long last beginning to rise.
The right hon. Lady’s characterisation of ECO will not be recognised by the hundreds of thousands of people benefiting from this scheme, which has been much more successful than its predecessor. As a result of the green deal and ECO, we are on track to install energy efficiency measures in 1 million homes. She also keeps making this astonishing request that the NAO audit a contract before it is finalised. It sounds like a rather odd approach for an audit. I have told the House before that, of course, I would expect the NAO to look at the contract after the deal has been agreed and that we would co-operate with it.
The right hon. Lady made some rather odd points about renewables investment. If the investment was all down to the last Government, why was last year a record year for investment and why do we have such a healthy pipeline set to more than double investment in renewable electricity? Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which she quoted, marked the UK down as fourth in the world in 2013 for clean energy transactions, with more than $21 billion of transactions. I think she was referring to the 2014 figures, which she says are coming out soon, but I am afraid she needs to check her facts, because there is a bit of a difference between raw data and model data. I am happy to explain that later, however, because it is an important debating point.
I was glad to have the right hon. Lady’s support for the 2030 deal—it was significant, as was the confirmation that we would keep to the fourth carbon budget, meaning that the Government have met their climate change objectives. She talked again about the power sector decarbonisation target and I have made it clear that the Liberal Democrats will pursue that. I also made it clear why I put in the Energy Act 2013 the power for the next Government to implement such a target.
The right hon. Lady also talked about gas stations. I can confirm that fewer gas stations have been constructed during this Parliament than were previously expected. That has been the case, by the way, across the whole of Europe, because of the changes in the relative prices of coal and gas, which have affected all European countries. That is one of the reasons why we were right to put in place a carbon price floor and reform the EU emissions trading scheme, so that we can get the incentives to move from coal to gas, as part of our climate change strategy.
But overall, I think I detected some consensus from the right hon. Lady.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
In the event that the positions are swapped for next year’s energy statement, I hope the Secretary of State agrees that it would be a shame if we went back to being 25th out of the 27 countries in the EU for renewables, as we were in 2010. However, my substantive question is about coal. Across the world we are seeing a renaissance in coal—I believe that last year coal increased by eight times more than renewables in absolute numbers. As the Secretary of State goes on trying to secure a worldwide agreement, does he really believe that we can make progress on this?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend is right to focus on the last Government’s poor record on renewables. On coal, global investment in clean energy was outpacing global investment in fossil fuels last year and has been for the last few years, but he is right to warn about coal, because global coal prices have fallen, which has meant that some people are investing. That is one of the reasons why it is important that we have a price on carbon. We have policies such as contracts for difference, which give investors in low carbon security for the future.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Prepayment meters are still causing problems for many of the most vulnerable customers. The problems include long delays in recalibrating the older meters when prices rise or fall, which leads to arrears or overpayments. The best deals are still not available for prepayment customers and many do not know that they can switch suppliers for a much better deal. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that these customers are fully informed and treated more fairly by the energy companies?
Mr Davey
The hon. Lady had a distinguished career working for Citizens Advice, which has been a real champion on this point. Its latest campaign on prepayment meters is something we are looking at seriously, and we are grateful to Citizens Advice for its evidence and research. Longer term, the introduction of smart meters will be important, because they will reduce the higher differential costs that prepayment meter users face, which is one of the reasons I called on the obligated suppliers to move further and faster to roll out smart meters for prepayment meter users. That is part of the solution, but no doubt we need to look at other issues as well.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
The deal in the EU on climate change shows the benefit of engagement and co-operation. How optimistic is the Secretary of State that that can be taken forward to Paris? In particular, does he draw any optimism from the fact that the Chinese are expanding renewables, experimenting with carbon capture and storage and also introducing pilot emissions trading schemes?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. Engaging in Europe over a period of time, building relationships and building trust, is critical if we are going to argue for British interests. The green growth group, which this Government set up in Europe to bring Ministers together, was critical in securing that deal. The green growth group will continue to help the European Union to lead at this level in the climate change talks ahead of us.
My hon. Friend is right to point to the action that China is taking. Indeed, I am more optimistic about a good climate deal in Paris 2015 than I have ever been, not just because of the EU deal but because of the actions being taken by President Obama in the United States and by the Chinese Administration and, indeed, the leadership that I believe Prime Minister Narendra Modi is showing in India.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
This winter many of my constituents in Blackpool will face poorly insulated homes and high bills because wholesale reductions in cost have not been passed on to consumers. Why did the Secretary of State not include any measures to bring that about in the Energy Act 2013, and what can he tell us about stopping the green deal becoming a snail race?
Mr Davey
I am afraid the green deal has in fact been hotting up—the hon. Gentleman obviously missed that. I can also tell him that, thanks to extra competition and choice and faster and easier switching, if energy companies are not passing on falls in wholesale costs to his constituents, his constituents now have the ability to move to companies that are. I urge him to look at the new fixed-price tariffs—and to show them to his constituents—which are enabling people to save money on their energy bills this winter.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Given that the myriad tariffs and deals in many respects led to gross mis-selling on the doorstep, will the right hon. Gentleman never tire of reminding the electorate that one of this Government’s biggest achievements has been to oblige energy companies to be much more transparent about whether they are offering the best possible deal to their customers? Such transparency has helped many customers.
Mr Davey
May I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has done an awful lot in this regard? The Government have listened to many of his arguments, as I believe has the independent regulator, Ofgem. There has been a reduction in the number of tariffs—frankly, they led to obfuscation and got in the way of competition, on which the previous Government failed to take any action—and bills have become simpler, which all helps to promote competition. The fact that energy companies now have to tell their customers whether they have a tariff that could save them money is another step forward.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Energy co-operatives such as Baywind Energy in the Lake district or Brixton Energy Solar in south London make a small but important contribution to meeting our energy needs and to reducing CO2 emissions. Given that a number of other countries have a far larger energy co-op sector, what further steps will the Secretary of State take to encourage the growth of energy co-ops in the UK?
Mr Davey
I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have very much been going down this path. I urge him to read Britain’s first ever community energy strategy, which I published in January. Later, I am going to meet community energy groups, co-operatives and others that are working with the renewables industry on something called the shared ownership taskforce, which is launching its report today. With that we are ensuring that there is an option for communities to buy in to renewable projects in their area, thus extending the options for new types of energy co-operatives.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
Candu Energy is in talks with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to commission its new nuclear technology. If the talks are successful, it has indicated that it is interested in building a new nuclear power station at Heysham. Will my right hon. Friend use any means at his disposal to facilitate a new build for fission low-carbon energy at that site and secure jobs in my constituency for generations to come?
Mr Davey
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his information, but he will know that I cannot comment ahead of the negotiations or discussions that Candu is having with various stakeholders in the industry. At the moment, we are working at Heysham to ensure that EDF gets the reactors back on line.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
The Secretary of State talked about the amount of offshore wind that has already been installed. Despite the vast amount that has been put into nuclear energy, it seems to me that relatively little is going to offshore wind in the first CfD allocation round. In fact, I understand that it may be sufficient only for one major project, despite the fact that three are proposed off the coast of my constituency alone. Does he think that that is a sufficient incentive to the offshore wind industry to meet his offshore wind industry strategy?
Mr Davey
It is quite difficult to argue that this Government have not put huge amounts behind the offshore wind industry. We have more offshore wind installed and under construction than in the rest of the world put together. We are on track to meet 10 GW by the end of this decade, which is a huge amount. If, when thinking about the allocation of CfDs from the levy control framework—that is what lies behind the hon. Gentleman’s question—we had allocated all of it in the first round, there would have been less to allocate in future. One of the things the industry has said is that it wants a much smoother deployment of offshore wind. By the way, that will also enable us to get the benefit of cost reductions, which is vital for consumers.
Mr Speaker
In two days’ time, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) will celebrate 41 years since his election in a by-election. I call Sir Alan Beith.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Thank you for your kind comment, Mr Speaker.
My right hon. Friend has given welcome support in the European state aid negotiations for the Lynemouth power station’s conversion to biomass. May I stress that it is now becoming urgent to get a favourable decision, because the permission to continue to burn coal expires in June next year? May I ask for the Secretary of State’s continued help?
Mr Davey
Let me first mention that my first job in politics was working for my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith)—[Interruption.] I hear a comment from a sedentary position that it was downhill all the way from there, which may be right, but it was a great privilege to work for my right hon. Friend, whom I consider to be one of the greatest parliamentarians of our time.
On my right hon. Friend’s constituency project, my officials are very much engaged with the Commission. It is a new Commission, which has contributed to a little delay, but we are trying to push forward as rapidly as possible for exactly the reasons my right hon. Friend outlined.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Ovo Energy—an alternative supplier to the big six—which employs 550 people in Bristol. It tells me that it will pass on falls in wholesale energy prices to customers, so why can the big six not do the same?
Mr Davey
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I think Ovo Energy has given a real boost to competition in the retail energy market—something that we have welcomed and, indeed, championed. I would say to the hon. Lady’s constituents and to those of every right hon. and hon. Member that companies such as Ovo Energy are offering good deals, although it is not the only company to do so. I urge people to look to those alternatives if their energy supplier is not reducing its tariff in line with falls in wholesale prices.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
I am delighted to hear about Hinkley C, although you would expect me to say that, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is important to recognise that we have all worked hard across the House with the Department’s officials, EDF Energy and Sedgemoor, not only to explain to Europe and the Irish why this is important but to take on Germany and Austria, which were very keen on making sure this did not happen. This shows that we understand the importance of energy security and that we can build a large-scale infrastructure project on time in the way necessary to keep the lights on in this country. Will the Secretary of State praise EDF and everybody else who has participated in this humungous project to get it to where it is today so speedily?
Mr Davey
First of all, I would like to praise my hon. Friend, who has shown great leadership. He is right that it has been a collective effort, and it is also right to say that we have greater consensus across the House on these issues. This sends out a strong signal to the European Commission and to other European countries. This is fantastic news for energy security in the 2020s, and fantastic news for our climate change objectives.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The mitigation of the impact of the Government’s unilateral carbon floor tax has been too little, too late. In the light of that, will the Secretary of State and the Government look to bring forward support for energy-intensive industries in relation to the renewables obligation from 2016 to 2015?
Mr Davey
This Government have done more than any other to assist in these areas. I spoke to a group of manufacturers earlier this week at the Engineering Employers Federation, and I found there was real recognition that we had done a huge amount domestically and on the European front, with the 2030 deal and getting much more of a level playing field across Europe. The hon. Gentleman asks me to announce a new policy from the Dispatch Box, but I am certainly not going to do that. I can tell him that we keep this issue under close review and that I work very closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on this matter.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the record levels of electricity generated from renewable sources, but those sources could be more diverse, which would benefit us all. What role does he see over the next 10 years for the construction of tidal lagoons to contribute to our renewable electricity generation?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is important to look at all forms of renewables to see whether they can provide a cost-effective addition to our low-carbon strategy. Tidal power and especially tidal lagoon power look increasingly attractive. It is clearly up to private investors and companies to come forward with their proposals, and I very much hope they will.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
There has indeed been a lot of progress made at the European level in the recent negotiations, but there were disappointments as well, one of which was the failure to have any binding targets at any level on energy efficiency. What is the Government’s approach to that issue, and if they agree that there should be more energy efficiency measures at the European level, what steps are they taking to bring them about?
Mr Davey
The Government were comfortable with a non-binding target, which is the type of target that was agreed by the last Government in the 2020 deal, but, like the last Government, we were concerned about having a binding target. We believe that our existing energy efficiency policies will be able to meet a non-binding target at the European Union level of 27%, because they are very ambitious. We also believe that should there be a review of that energy efficiency target— which there will be, according to the European Council conclusions—we shall need to look again at energy efficiency as one of the lowest-cost ways of going green as we develop our policies for the fourth and fifth carbon budgets.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Secretary of State has said that interconnector capacity should double by the 2020s. Would he be kind enough to give us more details? For instance, what is the size of the present interconnector with France and to what extent is it currently used? What is the capacity of the new channel tunnel cable and the new cable connecting us with Norway, and are there any plans for interconnectors with both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend has asked very detailed questions. Let me refer him to two recent publications. At the end of last year I published a policy statement on interconnectors, because I think this is a critical issue that has been long overlooked, and Ofgem has published proposals for a new regulatory regime to facilitate investment in interconnectors. However, we will gather the information for which my hon. Friend asked specifically, and I will send it to him in writing.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Finally, I call the irrepressible Thomas Docherty.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The Secretary of State will obviously be aware that ScottishPower, which owns Longannet power station in my constituency, has decided not to bid for the 2018 market at this stage. When I met representatives of ScottishPower last week, they expressed concern about German-owned RWE’s legal challenge to Project TransmiT. When does the Secretary of State expect that legal dispute to be resolved?
Mr Davey
I cannot, because I am not sure of the timetable, but it is interesting that the hon. Gentleman should raise the issue. When I spoke to representatives of ScottishPower about Longannet, I asked specifically what issues there were, so that we could ensure that Longannet was on the bars for security-of-supply reasons, because we had expected ScottishPower to bid for the capacity market initially. However, its representatives reassured me that it would keep the plant open, and they did not raise the issue that the hon. Gentleman has raised with me. I will ask my officials to look into it.
Backbench Business
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Iran (UK Foreign Policy)
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and I are grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to the debate. The hon. Gentleman and I are joint chairmen of the all-party parliamentary group on Iran. Flagged on today’s Order Paper is the report on Iran from the Foreign Affairs Committee, published in July. I know that the whole House will be grateful for that.
The debate comes at an important moment. In less than three weeks, on 24 November, the deadline for the current phase of the E3 plus 3 nuclear negotiations with Iran will be reached. Before I say more about those negotiations, let me put the debate in context. Here in the United Kingdom, too little is either known or understood about Iran. With a population of 77 million, it is second in size only to Egypt in the wider middle east, but it is much more prosperous than Egypt. It is “middle income” on the United Nations’ GDP measure, ahead of Bulgaria, which is a member of the European Union. Iran has a distinguished three-millennium civilisation, with as many connections, cultural and political, to Europe as to its southern and eastern neighbours. Its language is Indo-European. The words “Iran” and “Aryan” share the same root. Although it is Muslim, it is Muslim in its own singular way, through its practice of Shi’ism. It is a great mistake ever to suggest to an Iranian that Iranians are Arabs. It may sound counter-intuitive today, but traditionally lran’s strongest links in the region had been with the Jewish communities of the middle east.
Iran’s relationship with the United Kingdom has over many decades been close but difficult. “Behind every curtain you’ll find an Englishman,” goes one familiar saying in Farsi. From an Iranian perspective, one can appreciate why. From the late 19th century onwards we saw relations with Iran in mercantilist, neo-colonialist terms only. Iran was divided into spheres of influence by Russia under the Tsar and the United Kingdom. In the early part of the last century, highly preferential terms for the D’Arcy petroleum company, the forerunner of BP, were extorted from the then Government. Subsequently, we were instrumental in removing the Qajar dynasty, putting Reza Shah on the throne. We jointly occupied Iran with the Soviet Union for five years from 1941 to 1946. We and the United States then successfully conspired to remove the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953.
We then continued this rather dismal record by propping up the Shah even when there was every indication, if only we had recognised it, that he was heading a decadent and decaying regime which was highly likely to collapse. A year after the Islamic revolution came the Iran-Iraq war, in which by common consent Iraq was the aggressor and Iran the victim, but the west, including the UK, sided with the aggressor.
At the end of this week we have our Remembrance Sunday, when we remember the fallen who gave their lives for us in two world wars. Those wars are part of the definition of contemporary Britain. Similarly, we understand nothing about Iran if we do not understand the deep and still contemporary trauma that the Iran-Iraq war inflicted on Iranian society—the near-million killed and the sense of isolation which that war reinforced as one western nation after another, the UK included, unworthily supported Iraq. With that isolation came the sense that Iran could rely only upon itself.
Despite its complex and difficult relationship with the United Kingdom, the US and other western nations, Iran principally looks west, not east or south, for its future. Of course, there are those in the system who define themselves against the “Satans” of the west and who have a vested interest in the status quo, including in sanctions, but there are many, many more who want a normal relationship with the west. It was that demand that lay behind President Rouhani’s surprising victory in the presidential elections in June 2013, and there are, indeed, more American PhDs in President Rouhani’s Cabinet than in President Obama’s.
In the 1980s—and under the cover of mutually rebarbative, but carefully controlled, rhetoric—the one country from whom Iran gained some understanding, and very significant arms supplies, was Israel. David Menashri, of Tel Aviv university, one of Israel’s foremost experts on Iran, subsequently commented:
“Throughout the 1980s, no one in Israel said anything about an Iranian threat”
to Israel. He continued:
“The word wasn’t even uttered.”
That, however, was all in the days of the cold war.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I am listening intently and with great interest and I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. However, he will perhaps agree that it was not just a question of the election of President Rouhani; there have been attempts in the past by Iran to reach out. While accepting that mistakes have been made by both sides in this difficult relationship, one only has to think of immediately after 9/11 when the Iranians reached out, and the early days of Afghanistan when they tried to help and did, indeed, help, but were rebuffed by the “axis of evil” speech by President Bush, for example.
Mr Straw
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was heavily involved after President Khatami reached out to the United States in the moment of need. Iran provided significant practical help, without which it would have been far more difficult to remove the Taliban and to retake Kabul. Iran got no thanks for that, however. It was unnecessarily rebuffed by the United States at the time, as it was during the 2003-05 nuclear negotiations. It was also rebuffed when it sought a comprehensive bargain with the west. I am afraid that that prospect was greeted in parts of the United States with suspicion. In my view, there was a worry that if a deal was struck that resulted in the normalisation of relations with Iran, the part of the American system—and, indeed, the part of the Israeli system—that always likes to define itself against some kind of enemy would have had that enemy removed.
Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Berlin wall, the metrics of the middle east have all changed. The view of the Netanyahu Government in Israel, which is echoed by many in the United States Congress, is that Iran now poses an existential threat to the state of Israel because of the doubts as to whether Iran’s nuclear programmes have a military purpose. Those programmes are the subject of the intensive negotiations that will, we hope, have reached a satisfactory conclusion by 24 November.
As it was I, along with my French and German counterparts, who began the original E3 negotiations with Iran in 2003, I offer the following observations. Iran is not an easy country to negotiate with. That is partly due to cultural and linguistic problems and partly for historical reasons, but fundamentally it is a product of Iran’s complex and opaque governmental system, in which the elected President has constantly to broker decisions with unelected elements, including those in the revolutionary guards and those in the Supreme Leader’s office.
Unlike North Korea, which pulled out of the non-proliferation treaty, or India, Pakistan and Israel—all nuclear weapons states which have never accepted the treaty’s obligations—Iran has stayed within it. The treaty protects
“the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”.
However, the treaty is silent on the question—critical to the outcome of the negotiations—of the enrichment of uranium. The Iranians claim a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and I hope the whole House will support them in that. The interim agreement signed last November explicitly recognised that.
The last set of negotiations, which took place between 2003 and 2005 and in which I was directly involved, ran into the ground. The Bush Administration had undermined the Khatami Administration through the “axis of evil” speech, and they did so again by refusing to offer Iran any confidence-building measures until it was too late. By that time, conservative forces in Iran had re-gathered their strength, with President Ahmadinejad the result.
When parliamentary colleagues and I met Foreign Minister Zarif in Tehran in January this year, he pointed out that when I had been negotiating with him in 2005, Iran had fewer than 200 centrifuges. After eight years of sanctions, it now has 18,800. We should be careful what we wish for. The good news about the current round of negotiations is that both sides have kept them confidential. However, it is no secret that the Iranian Government cannot do a deal unless it includes a continuation of enrichment for peaceful purposes, and unless the scale of the programme allowed does not involve the Government having to make significant numbers of its scientists redundant.
The negotiations are predicated on the basis that, because of Iran’s past failures to make full disclosures to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there remain unanswered questions about the true intent of Iran’s nuclear programmes. None of us outside the inner workings of the Iranian Government can know for certain what this is. My own instinct is that after the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war, Iran probably did begin work on a nuclear weapons system. More recently, however, a 2007 US national intelligence estimate—which has been reconfirmed by the White House in the past two years—concluded that Tehran had halted nuclear weaponisation work in 2003. If that is the case, there is no reason why, with some flexibility on both sides, a deal should not be concluded. If that happens, the gradual lifting of sanctions—which Iran so desperately needs—will help to bring Iran back fully as a partner in the international community.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman’s well-informed speech, and I am impressed by it. In 2004, Hassan Rouhani, who was then the chief nuclear negotiator, stated:
“While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the facility in Isfahan…by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work”.
Is not that an ominous warning for the current negotiations?
Mr Straw
I have seen that quotation before. One of the truths about the Iranians is that they have a history of sticking to the letter of what is agreed while trying to make that agreement as accommodating to themselves as possible. They are not the only country to do that. However, it was Hassan Rouhani—now President Rouhani—sitting across the table and leading the negotiations, and I believed that he was a man with whom we could do a deal. I am glad that the present British Government self-evidently still think that; otherwise, they would not be sitting across the table from his representatives now. There is no evidence one way or the other that what was being installed at Isfahan was related to the weaponisation of the nuclear programme. I have seen no such evidence whatever, and Iran has a right to a nuclear power programme in the same way as any non-nuclear weapons state does.
My plea to the British Government is that they do not make the best the enemy of the good in these negotiations. Just as the world changed 25 years ago with the collapse of the Berlin wall, so it is changing again before our eyes, especially in the middle east. With chaos in Iraq and in Syria, many now see the potential of Iran to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. A deal that is good for both sides would have other benefits, not least for human rights. There cannot be anyone in the House who does not share the profound concern about aspects of Iran’s human rights record, including the recent incarcerations and executions.
One of the truths about Iran’s complex and opaque system of government is that the elected Government do not control the judiciary. There are other unacceptable elements of the regime. The more we are able to do a deal—of course on acceptable terms—the more it will empower the elected Government and the better able we will be to secure a resolution of the other concerns, including those on human rights. The reverse is also true.
Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (Ind)
Has there been any evidence from the right hon. Gentleman’s past negotiations with Iran, or prior to that point, that any “give” on the part of the west has done anything to improve the lot of the people in that country? In my view, there is little or no evidence of any movement in relation to Iran’s human rights record.
Mr Straw
I think there is. For example, we can look at the human rights record under President Rafsanjani, and it got better under President Khatami. As long as President Khatami had power and authority in the extraordinary and very competitive power game that takes place in Tehran, he was able to do things. Moreover, the level of media freedom these days is infinitely greater than it was under Ahmadinejad. The licence to break the controls on the internet, including from President Rouhani himself, also illustrates that changes have taken place. There is a long way to go, however. I am certain that improvements in human rights will come about only through the empowerment of the forces for good in Iran and a diminution of those who are opposed to change. If there is no deal, the consequences are likely to be adverse not only for Iran but for the international community.
Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman knows my views on this. I support exactly what he is trying to do, and I take the view that the Government must, if they can, move all this forward. Does he agree, however, that one of the most difficult things in dealing with Iran is that, rather like China and Russia, it has absolutely no regard for the rules, other than the rules it chooses to set itself. The complications for America are shown in the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) just now, in that it is impossible to know whether or not the Iranians are going to abide by the rules, and that makes it much more difficult to reach a conclusion.
Mr Straw
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and I recognise the support he gives on this issue. I do not generalise between Russia and China; they have similarities, to the extent that they refuse to accept obligations, but they differ. These days we can see in China a real determination by many elements of its Government better to impose a rule of law. Going back to what I have said, those who have dealings, both diplomatic and business, with Iran say that the Iranians are very hard negotiators—and they are—but when, in the end, they have done a deal, they stick to it. It has to be said that there is no evidence that Iran has resiled from what it agreed on 24 November 2013; the IAEA reports that it has implemented what it has agreed.
If there is no deal and negotiations break down because of unacceptable red lines from some, but not all, of the six countries involved, over time the international consensus will break down. First China and then Russia will peel away, and then we are likely to see a reappraisal of policy within the European Union. That reappraisal will be fuelled in part by a belief that US sanctions against Iran have a greater effect extra-territorially, on European banks and trading entities, than they have within the domestic jurisdiction of the US itself. That belief is well founded, because the US authorities do provide greater certainty, and therefore greater protection from penalty, to US banks and entities trading with Iran than they do to similar banks and entities outside the US; I am talking about legal trade allowed under the sanctions regimes.
That may explain the curious irony about exports in recent years to Iran. Across the EU, such exports have slumped in the past 10 years, whereas in the US they are on a rising trend. Ten years ago, US exports to Iran were one ninth of ours, but now they are double. One reason for the fall in our exports, proportionately greater than any other western country’s, is that the UK is alone in maintaining a policy of not supporting any trade with Iran. I have heard no credible explanation for that, and I ask the Minister to have it revised.
I have to be brief, given the time, but the last matters I wish to raise are important and they relate to the reopening of the embassy. The Foreign Affairs Committee reported in July that the reopening was imminent, and indeed it was. As I understand it, that has fallen away not only for some practical reasons, but because of the Home Office’s refusal to accept the re-establishment of a visa regime without categorical undertakings from the Iranians about returns. Iran is difficult on the issue of returns of overstayers and illegals, but so are China, India, Nigeria and a long list of other countries. Iranians do not feature in the top 10 of foreign national prisoners here, or of returns. So I very much hope this is not an area where British foreign policy, and the importance of reopening the embassy fully, is being led not by King Charles street, but by 2 Marsham street, the headquarters of the Home Office. That would be an eccentricity which this House should not tolerate.
I have spoken for too long, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to have this important debate on Iran.
Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) for securing this debate. I was delighted that the right hon. Gentleman, with whom I have disagreed over the years, although I have the highest regard for his intellect and his tone and approach to foreign affairs, started with the context in which we have to look at Iran, because that is incredibly important.
In a way, I see Iran almost as two nations, which are sometimes contradictory. Iranians are sophisticated and proud people—they do not want to be humiliated—and it is important to remember that they are Persians, not Arabs. Yet there is quite a strong liberal streak inside Iranian society. One very good example of that is the widespread acceptance of family planning. Iran has the most effective family planning regime in the world. In 1979, Khomeini wanted to expand the population of Iran to fight Iraq, but was told he did not have the infrastructure to support an expanding population. So a complete U-turn was done and Iran has stabilised its population growth, without any of the draconian methods that China, for example, has had to impose. Tehran university has more female undergraduates than male undergraduates at the moment, so there are indications that a young, youthful, well-educated society is on the way up, which may yet change the face of Iran. I am pleased to say that the Prime Minister was able to meet President Rouhani at the United Nations the other day and supported the conventional thinking that we need to keep the dialogue going. On the other hand, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn has said, Iran has the most appalling human rights record, with child executions, political prisoners, the presidential candidates from 2009 still under house arrest and almost non-existent press freedom.
Iran is a foreign policy nightmare: its support for President Assad in Syria, through Hezbollah funding and the positioning of the revolutionary guard in Syria, is causing immense difficulties; it is undermining the Government of Bahrain by support for the Shi’a minority there; it openly supports, and is funding, Hamas in its criticism of and aggression towards Israel; it is running a complex network of weapons-smuggling routes into Gaza, through Egypt, with the sole intention of attacking Israel—it is in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions on that; it has engaged in the funding of and support for attacks on Israeli diplomats around the world; and its antipathy towards Saudi Arabia is legendary, although this goes both ways. I will return to that point in a minute.
Iran’s nuclear ambitions have serious implications for a number of different factions and groupings around the country. For the EU and the west, there is an impact on our security if the Iranians have a nuclear capability. There will also be economic consequences, with a loss of stability in the middle east. Israel is rightly concerned about Iran’s ambitions. The regional consequences are also serious, with Saudi Arabia now developing its own nuclear research programmes, as is Jordan—surprisingly. That just shows the nervousness in the region.
Iran has a complex and cumbersome structure of government, and one often asks oneself, “Who is actually running the show?” The ultimate power lies with the Supreme Leader, who does not exercise his power in an authoritative, dictatorial way, but does so in a more consultative way, with occasional nudging, sometimes aggressively, as we have seen in the nuclear negotiations. Just to add to the complications, the Supreme Leader at the moment is ailing and, as he has to make difficult decisions about the negotiations, that is not helpful. On the other hand, we have the President, who is more the chief executive, but a strong one, and he is the head of the nuclear negotiations.
When President Rouhani was elected to office—to the surprise of many as he was the most moderate candidate—we all said that he was a man with whom we could do business. He is a moderate who suits the situation. But we must judge him by his actions, not his words, and reining in a few hotheads in the revolutionary guard is about all we have seen, and we are still waiting for the beef.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend also aware that Ban Ki-moon’s annual report to the General Assembly in October highlighted the fact that President Rouhani was expected to be a very moderate leader, but in fact the number of executions, especially of juveniles, has increased? The expectation has not been borne out in his actions in the country.
Sir Richard Ottaway
Yes, I am aware of that comment. However, the interpretation that my hon. Friend puts on it may be slightly unfair to Rouhani who does not necessarily control the judicial system or the sentences that are being handed down. The question is: can we trust him?
Mr Baron
I am listening with intent and interest to my right hon. Friend’s good speech. May I suggest to him that we should not look at this relationship just through the prism of executions and human rights? There are many of our allies in the region that have a similarly poor record, and yet that has not stopped us from calling them allies.
Sir Richard Ottaway
I have great regard for my hon. Friend’s views, but there are not many countries in the region that have a human rights record quite as bad as Iran’s. None the less, he makes a valid point, and it has to be taken into account. The question I was asking was: can we trust President Rouhani? The right hon. Member for Blackburn, who has known him for many years, suggests that we can, and I hope that he is right. The question is: what if he is wrong? That is the challenge we all face.
Rather worryingly, the Supreme Leader has been interfering in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, with his call for industrial levels of centrifuges and nuclear material production, which caught the negotiators by surprise. When President Obama suggested enriching nuclear rods in the United States in 2009, the Supreme Leader pulled the rug from under that issue as well.
At the UN, President Rouhani suggested there should be a link between helping the west deal with the situation in Iraq and concessions in the nuclear negotiations. I have only one response to that, which is no, no, no. That cannot be the basis on which we proceed. To have a few more enrichment centrifuges for a bit of co-operation is exactly the wrong sort of deal.
Looking at the negotiations—the deadline is fast approaching—a number of deals have been suggested. Any settlement must have two main features. One is the break-out time. The Foreign Affairs Committee proposed a minimum of at least six months. The second is a verification programme that must be as robust as possible. That must be supported by a rigid inspections regime. It is critical that the International Atomic Energy Agency stays involved throughout the whole process and brings its professionalism to any verification and inspection. There is, in any settlement, a trade-off between reduction in capacity and the relaxation of trade sanctions as an incentive to encourage progress.
There is much talk about the number of centrifuges that can be used for peaceful production. I have been advised that the figure is somewhere in the region of 2,000 to 4,000, against the 18,000 currently in use. Obviously, the fewer centrifuges there are, the greater the time for break-out, and that has to be right at the centre of any negotiation settlement.
We also need to be satisfied that the objectives of the base at Arak, which is the home to the heavy water reactor, are peaceful. Iranians have yet to come up with a good explanation of those objectives. They argue that the facility is being used for medical research, but there is far too much capacity there for that, and no economic reason has been forthcoming.
Mr Hollobone
I am listening with interest to my right hon. Friend’s hugely impressive speech, particularly to the bit about the lack of inspections. I believe that the Arak facility was last visited in August 2011 and, despite repeated requests from the IAEA, no further visits have been allowed since.
Sir Richard Ottaway
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that goes to this question of trust. If visits are prevented, how can we trust people when they say what is going on there?
As we approach the deadline, there is little sign of a deal. There is still prevarication. The Foreign Office should be prepared to sign up to an extension of the deadline if that is what is needed. The time is on the west’s side at the moment: the sanctions have had an impact, even though they are a crude weapon; the oil price is falling; and the Iranian economy is shrinking fairly significantly. This is the right time to do the deal, but the window is narrow, as the situation has become more complicated by the mid-term election results in the United States. An increasingly confident Republican-controlled Congress is set to make life more and more difficult for President Obama as he reaches the end of his presidency. Rouhani’s time is also limited, as he is trying to fight off the hardliners. If there is no deal, Rouhani will be weakened, the hardliners will be back and they cannot wait for this deal to fail, and the hostility to the west will grow.
If Iran gets a bomb, the middle east arms race will accelerate, and the security situation will get worse. Russia has a role to play. There were reports yesterday that some processing may be done in Russia, which is a great idea if it is possible and achievable. As has been said about Ukraine over recent months, we must keep the lines of communication open with Russia, mainly because they are a key player in settling the deal in Iran.
Sir Nicholas Soames
Does my right hon. Friend agree —I tried to make this point to the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) —that, in the wider sense, the key to all this is confidence? In doing this transaction with the Russians, which is both sensible and welcome, we must ensure that, for the success of future negotiations, there is proper verification at all times and at every stage.
Sir Richard Ottaway
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Trust and verification go hand in hand. Without good verification and trust, there will be no basis for a settlement.
I have spoken for far too long. We should not compromise on this matter because, at the end of the day, no deal is better than a bad deal.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
May I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace) for his exceptional service until recently as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Iran? I was asked to replace him when he submitted to the purdah of the Government Whips Office. It is only fitting in this particular debate to describe his departure thus, given the root of the word “purdah”, which is the Persian for veil or curtain. I do not expect to fill his shoes easily. He is a source of considerable knowledge and wisdom on this subject and is always worth listening to, as is the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), whom I am pleased to join as co-chair of the group.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, Iran is for many of us a land of which we know too little. To create through a revolution a state in which citizens are required to accept one supreme source of divinely inspired authority, which fuses together religious, legal, social and political obligations, and in which the Head of State acts both as the supreme political “guardian” over the people and also as a supreme spiritual leader, while assuming the supreme command of all armed forces and also appointing the Head of Government may seem rather strange to us, or, on the other hand, it may not.
The motto, under the coat of arms of our own sovereign, “Dieu et mon droit”, makes an unvarnished claim of the divine right to rule. The state prayers from the “Book of Common Prayer”, which we repeat each day in this House Commons, make precisely the same claim by referring to our Father as
“the only Ruler of princes”.
The mace, sitting in front of us, which symbolises the authority from our sovereign to sit, and without which we cannot sit, has above the crown a Christian cross, connoting the fusion of supreme political authority with our state religion. Thus the idea that Government should be run according to God’s laws should not be strange to us.
Indeed, when my co-chair, the right hon. Member for Blackburn, was the Lord Chancellor, one of his jobs was to administer the oath for bishops of the Anglican Church, in which they
“do hereby declare that Your Majesty is the only supreme governor of this your realm in spiritual and ecclesiastical things as well as in temporal”.
The oath continues:
“I acknowledge that I hold the said bishopric as well the spiritualities as the temporalities thereof only of Your Majesty and for the same temporalities I do my homage presently to Your Majesty”.
It is therefore more than possible to build a society whose foundational cornerstones for its constitutional arrangements are deeply embedded in a religious tradition, and where the fabric of the state and the fabric of that religious tradition are so intertwined that they form an inseparable tapestry, and do all of this while still creating a space for human flourishing and freedom. That is what we seek to do ourselves. I dare to hope that as the Islamic Republic of Iran continues on its journey, it will weave the future strands of that tapestry in ways that are consistent with its Islamic traditions, and which respect and do homage to those traditions, and meet the needs and desires of its people.
The last time the House held a debate on Iran in February 2012, the motion, which was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), called for a recognition
“that the use of force against Iran would be wholly counterproductive and would serve only to encourage any development of nuclear weapons”. —[Official Report, 20 February 2012; Vol. 540, c. 635.]
I think I am being fair to my hon. Friend when I say that he did not carry the House on that day. Indeed, among the many contributions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) said:
“I repeat that an attack is the least bad option”.—[Official Report, 20 February 2012; Vol. 540, c. 668.]
My hon. Friend did not carry the House on that day, but I read his speech again last night, and it repays re-reading. It was an excellent contribution and stands the test of time.
At that time, the prospect of military action against Iran seemed very real. There was a considerable increase in the level of rhetoric against Iran, particularly by the United States. The foreign policy analyst Trita Parsi suggested in his book “A Single Roll of the Dice” that relations between Iran and the west, particularly between Iran and the United States, had become so polarised over 30 years that it was no longer merely an antagonistic relationship, but had become “institutionalised enmity”—a set of behaviours so entrenched on both sides that the participants could not find a way out. The then US Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, predicted that Israel would launch an attack on Iran by April or June 2012. The then Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), said at the time that an attack would not be wise and that it would have “enormous downsides”, but the option of military action was left firmly on the table.
I found all this rather puzzling. When I visited the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna later in the spring of 2012, I discovered that I was among fellow sceptics, including my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay. All the parliamentary colleagues on that visit—or at least, those who had been in Parliament at the time—had, as it happened, voted against military action in 2003 against Iraq. We met the nuclear inspectors who were visiting Iran, including Herman Nackaerts, the then deputy director general of the IAEA, who was quite explicit—while certainly also laying out a set of serious concerns—that
“We have no evidence of weapons grade material”.
Like the right hon. Member for Blackburn, I have serious concerns about Iran, including its approach to human rights. The right hon. Gentleman made the important point, as have others, that some of these issues are outside the control of Dr Rouhani, the President of the Islamic Republic. I believe than an Islamic Republic of Iran that felt more secure and respected, and less threatened and demonised, would also, in time, become a kinder Iran. My greatest single concern is that we do not lose the enormous opportunity that faces us. Unfortunately, there is form here.
The Iranian offer, which Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador to Iran, carried to the United States in 2003 included an offer by the Iranians to end their support for Islamic jihad and Hamas and to pressure them to cease attacks on Israel; to support the disarmament of Hezbollah and to transform it into a purely political party; to put their nuclear programme under intrusive international inspections in order to alleviate fears about weaponisation; to provide full co-operation against all terrorist organisations; and perhaps most astonishingly of all, to accept the Beirut declaration of the Arab League—that is to say, the Saudi-sponsored peace plan from March 2002 in which all the Arab states offered collective peace, the normalising of relations with and diplomatic recognition of Israel, in return for Israel’s withdrawal from all the occupied territories, an agreement to share Jerusalem, an equitable solution to the Palestinian refugee issue and the adoption of the two-state solution.
What an opportunity that was for the world. But just as Israel’s late foreign Minister, Abba Eban, used to say of the Palestinians that they
“never lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity”,
so it took a very special combination of qualities in an American Administration to ignore such an offer. History produced just such a combination in Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush. The offer was spurned, and we have been living with the consequences.
Let us contrast that with the position today. As a distinguished group of diplomatists, including Javier Solana, Carl Bildt and Robert Cooper, suggest in The Guardian this morning, if a deal can be reached it could
“reshape the west’s engagement with Iran by opening new options for pursuing overlapping regional interests”.
As the right hon. Member for Blackburn said, if we do not get a deal, we will not simply go back to the status quo ante: as he pointed out, nine years of sanctions have produced a rise from 200 centrifuges to 18,000 centrifuges so, frankly, I do not think that sanctions have achieved their principal aim.
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator who is now at Princeton university, made a similar point when he wrote:
“The best strategy is to pursue a broad engagement with Iran to ensure that the decision to pursue a nuclear breakout will never come about. Iran and the United States are already tacitly and indirectly cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State…A nuclear agreement would be a great boost to mutual trust and provide greater options for dealing not only with IS and the Syrian regime but also Afghanistan and Iraq—where both Washington and Tehran support the new governments in Kabul and Baghdad”.
As Christopher de Ballaigue, one of the most acute observers of Iran has noted:
“It is one of the perversities of modern politics that the west does not have a decent working relationship with the most important country in the Middle East.”
It is in all our interests that this should change.
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
It is a huge privilege to follow my hon. Friend and near neighbour, the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), who speaks with huge expertise. It is a pleasure also to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) and the incredibly distinguished former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw).
We should not forget that our disengagement from Iran started with the dramatic events on 29 November 2011, when the embassy was ransacked and a number of staff had their lives put at risk. It was an appalling event, and we were obviously right to disengage from that moment onwards. Even now I pay tribute to the ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, and his staff for their bravery at the time, and for the incredibly dignified way in which they behaved in the face of this horrendous event. Since then, there have been some extraordinary changes.
I will focus my remarks on the reasons why we should re-engage with Iran. The first is the extraordinary changes taking place in that country. The right hon. Member for Blackburn spoke about our historical links with Iran and the importance of the diaspora in this country and elsewhere, for example in Switzerland and Canada. I have not visited Iran recently, but many of my friends have, and one of the observations I keep hearing is how much change there has been, even under the Ahmadinejad regime.
Huge amounts of petro-revenue are going into infrastructure, and not only in Tehran but in other cities such as Isfahan, Tabriz and Shiraz. Major investment on the ground, for example in social housing, is empowering a growing middle class. They want change, and they want better education. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South mentioned higher education. Some 55% of school leavers in Iran now go into higher education. Indeed, Azad university now has more than 100 campuses. Ambitions and expectations are changing.
Were we to talk to our average constituent about Iran, we might find that they have a vision of a fanatically religious state in which public executions take place in every city, with people being hanged from cranes. That is an absolute parody of what is happening there, and it is hugely misleading. Religion in Iran is on the wane. The mosques, far from filling up with people on the key days of the week, are pushed to attract the congregations they once had.
I entirely accept that there is a long way to go on human rights. Yes, there has been a release of political prisoners, but like others, I was appalled by the case of Mohsen Amir-Aslani, who was sentenced to death for insulting the prophet Jonah; and we have heard about the case of Ghoncheh Ghavami, the young British-Iranian woman imprisoned for a year for attending a volleyball match. There is still a long way to go on human rights, but since the election of Hassan Rouhani—like the right hon. Member for Blackburn, I welcome his election—there has been a very significant change indeed.
The second reason we should re-engage, and perhaps the most important, is the progress being made on the nuclear programme. Rouhani has driven that process, which culminated in the interim agreement in Geneva on 13 November. That was an extraordinary breakthrough. Yes, there is still some way to go, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, who is an expert on the matter, went into great detail—I shall not try to match him—but the IAEA has given assurances that Iran has complied with the terms of the agreement.
There is obviously now a need for a permanent solution. I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) said a moment ago about the need for trust and verification. That echoes the Foreign Secretary’s recent statement. There has been significant progress, and there is a need for patience. I certainly endorse the suggestion from my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South that the deadline needs to be extended. Linked to that is the reduction in the number of sanctions and the various reliefs announced by the P5 plus 1 on oil sales, frozen funds and humanitarian trade. Important and significant progress has obviously been made in that regard.
The third reason for the need to re-engage is what is happening elsewhere in the region. I will not go into too much detail, because we could spend all day talking about it, but I think that what is happening with ISIS/ISIL is incredibly worrying. That organisation’s desire to create a caliphate and step back into the dark ages threatens this country. We need only look at the number of jihadists going out there, the number who have been killed already and the number of radicalised youngsters who have gone there or may well go there in future. That affects Britain and other western countries. I think that we should give credit to Iran for the role it has played. It has been constructive in so far as it has helped to push out Maliki and bring in a new Prime Minister, Abadi.
Furthermore, I think that we should press Iran to play a role in trying to ensure that the different Shi’a militias are rolled up into the Iraqi security forces. Iran obviously has an important role to play in that regard, and we need to recognise and understand that role and be sensitive to it. We need to encourage it as much as possible, because Iran has a role to play in combating this wretched, vile, evil organisation—ISIS or IS.
The fourth reason we should re-engage—again, this is a regional point—relates to Afghanistan. We should look back and see how incredibly constructive Iran was about 10 years ago in a number of areas of our engagement with Afghanistan. We should now look to Iran to be a really positive voice in favour of national reconciliation in Afghanistan and to support the proposed peace settlement with the Taliban. The key point is that Iran can be a pragmatic and flexible actor in that process. I know that there are colleagues in the House who will say that Iran backed the insurgency that killed British troops and must therefore be condemned. Ultimately, we have to remember that Iran’s interests lie away from the Taliban in its present form and in favour of a stable and united Afghanistan, and we should bear that in mind.
The fifth reason we should re-engage is the need to look at the trade agenda. The prospects for the UK to do more trade with Iran are very significant indeed. We have to look after our interests in this world. It is very good news that our trade outside the EU has expanded and is expanding, but our balance of trade with Iran is, depressingly, about $200 million, despite very tight sanctions. The right hon. Member for Blackburn pointed out that US trade with Iran is about four times that figure.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn touched on another important reason why we need to engage with Iran: financial services. He did not mention Standard Chartered bank, but I shall mention it briefly. As the Minister will know, Standard Chartered was recently fined £670 million by the US authorities for breaching US domestic sanctions. I find that very worrying, because there is now a new investigation under way. The bank was punished for quite legally facilitating UK company trade with Iran. It did not break any UK or EU sanctions, or indeed any US sanctions, but it fell foul of some US domestic legislation. The issue, of course, was that a lot of those trades were denominated in dollars, which is the world’s reserve currency, and the US authorities latched on to that fact and threatened to withdraw the bank’s licence, which was quite outrageous. The bank—a world-class, British bank—decided to pay the fine. It is now under investigation again. I regard that as incredibly serious. It was basically threatened with financial blackmail.
What is the view of Her Majesty’s Government on that matter? Is the Minister aware that Andrew Bailey of the Bank of England warned of the consequences of such action? Is he aware that, at a time when we are trying to look proactively at re-engaging and increasing our financial trade with Iran, many companies will look at Standard Chartered’s experience and say, “We want to look at possible contracts in Iran, but we have to be financed by British institutions that will have dollar-denominated packages, so we could fall foul of US domestic sanctions as a result.” Will he look at that urgently? What discussions has the Foreign Office had with the Treasury on the matter? Can the Minister intervene to ensure that it is sorted out?
Mr Bacon
I am listening to my hon. Friend with great interest. He may not have noticed a news piece on the Al-Monitor website that was published on 4 November—only the day before yesterday—with the headline “Direct US-Iran banking channel could cement nuclear deal”. US and Iranian officials refused to comment on that piece, which says that the Americans are considering
“the creation of what is known as a ‘blessed channel’”
to facilitate further, easier financial transactions.
Mr Bellingham
That is very interesting. On the one hand, this financial blackmail is taking place against various UK banks, but on the other, the US is trying to encourage and facilitate trade. This does need looking at, and I hope that the Minister will comment on it.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. May I help a little bit? We still have another debate to follow this, and a lot of Members to get in. I was hoping that I would not have to put on a time limit, but we are in danger of stretching that approach.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. So many points are being raised that I might not have time to cover them all.
My hon. Friend is aware that we are discouraging all trade with Iran because there is the bigger issue of trying to affect behaviour. That does not mean that we do not consider what trade can take place. Companies, including banks, are allowed to trade now within the confines of the sanctions that take place. I will certainly look at the banking issue, as he asks, but we are discouraging—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I will not have the Minister give his speech now. Interventions have to be short. You are knocking your own time off, and I do not want that. We have to be considerate to all the other Members who wish to speak in this debate, and, quite rightly, I want to hear them. I do not understand why they must have a reduced amount of time because people are taking advantage.
Mr Bellingham
I will therefore reduce my response to one sentence, Mr Deputy Speaker. When I was responsible for our relations with Sudan, we discouraged trade, but we also helped companies that had trading problems and looked at problems just like this one.
I conclude by saying that now is an ideal time for Britain to re-engage with a country with which we have historically had very close relations. I hope that by reopening our embassy we can look forward to a new era in those relations with an incredibly important country in the region.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I should like to use the opportunity of this debate to raise the case of my constituent, Ghoncheh Ghavami, who has already been mentioned by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham). I think the case will be familiar to Members. A young woman—a British citizen— has been in prison in Tehran since the end of June for joining a group of women who wished to attend a volleyball match. I intend perhaps to be slightly less than forthright in speaking about this case because of its sensitivities. I will limit what I say to what is the public arena and to what I would like the Minister to respond to as regards the Foreign Office’s role.
As I say, I think the facts are relatively well known. Ms Ghavami was arrested on 20 June, released, and then rearrested 10 days later. She is charged with, and has now apparently been sentenced for, the offence of spreading propaganda against the system, but that arises out of the incident I described. She has been in solitary confinement. She has been on one hunger strike and is now on a second, more severe, hunger strike. There have been allegations of mistreatment against her during this period. She is a young woman of 25—a very bright law student with joint British-Iranian nationality who is resident, when she is the United Kingdom, in Shepherd’s Bush in my constituency with her brother. Her parents are resident in Tehran. A substantial amount of attention has been devoted to this case. The family, as one would expect, have acted in every possible way to try to secure her release, including lobbying the Iranian President in New York and lobbying and meeting members of the UK Government. Her family in Iran are doing the best they can. A petition calling for her release currently has more than 700,000 signatures.
I am not going to dwell too much on this aspect, but, for the record, I say to the Minister that I have not been impressed by the way in which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has dealt with the matter thus far. I think it uncharacteristic of the Minister to take three weeks to reply to a letter, to send that letter by post, and to say that because of the Data Protection Act he will not go into details without Ms Ghavami’s “express permission”. I am not quite sure how I was supposed to obtain Ms Ghavami’s express permission. However, during the course of this debate I have received a letter from the Foreign Secretary admitting that that was the wrong approach and saying that there will be full co-operation with my office, and with the family, from now on. I will therefore say no more about it. I welcome what the Foreign Secretary has said to me in that letter. I do not intend to go into the detail of it.
Mr Ellwood
I tried to catch the hon. Gentleman’s eye before the debate, and I am sorry that I was unable to do so. I am aware that we have had correspondence on this issue and that he is concerned about the latest correspondence I sent to him. If we can have a meeting about the case, I will be delighted to go into more detail.
Mr Slaughter
I am grateful to the Minister.
I think it appropriate that the House’s attention be drawn to this matter. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has tabled an early-day motion on it. It is a serious matter, not just to me as a constituency issue, but in that a British citizen is being treated in this way abroad. These matters can be better dealt with. I welcome the fact that the Minister is prepared to meet me and the family—that would be the right way forward.
I conclude by putting it on the record that the family have been clear throughout that this is not a political issue but a humanitarian one. It should not be tied up with wider geopolitical negotiations between the two Governments. The only relevance of that is that the thaw in the relationship—the more constructive relationship —between the two Governments should perhaps provide the opportunity for the early release of Ms Ghavami so that she can return to her life in the UK.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
It is pleasure to follow the remarks of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) about his constituent. Obviously, all of us in this House hope that the case can be resolved in a satisfactory way as soon as possible.
I have been hugely impressed by all the speeches I have been privileged to hear in the debate so far. We have heard from the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), and my hon. Friends the Members for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham). I am sure we will hear an excellent speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) in due course.
What we have not heard, explicitly, is anyone saying that it would be completely unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That is the position that I stand by. I think it would be unacceptable to this country, and to the world, for a dangerous regime such as that in Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I do not particularly want to cast aspersions, but I suspect that some Members of this House would actually be content for Iran to have a nuclear weapon; indeed, I have heard Members say that. That is a perfectly defensible position, but I have not heard it put forward today.
What we have also not heard today is the Israeli perspective. Iran, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn said, is a country of 77 million people, second only in the middle east to Egypt’s 85 million. If we stack that up against the Israeli state, with 8 million people, we can see that from the Israeli perspective Iran is the biggest bully in the playground.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex said, it all comes down to a question of trust. Why should we trust Iran? I very much respect the judgment of Members of this House who know far more about this subject than I do, especially former Foreign Secretaries and hon. Members who have been to Iran and know some of these individuals. However, if I were a citizen of Tel Aviv, despite the huge respect I would have for the right hon. Member for Blackburn, I would say to myself, “Well, this gentleman obviously speaks with a huge amount of experience, and he has spoken to Hassan Rouhani and others, but what if he is wrong? What if the regime in Tehran is mad enough and bad enough to want a nuclear weapon and to use it?”
We had a similar debate when China was developing nuclear weapons and Mao Tse-tung said, “What does it matter if we lose several million Chinese people? We can take out our enemies in one go.” It would be possible to take out most of Israel with one nuclear weapon. The holocaust was not really that long ago in strategic terms. Half the Jewish population of the world was wiped out in Europe, supposedly under the safety of a Christian civilisation, so if I were an Israeli citizen, although I might respect the right hon. Gentleman’s wise words, I would be saying to myself, “What if he’s wrong? Where’s my insurance?”
That is why this House has to wake up, smell the coffee and realise that there is simply no way on earth that Israel is going to allow Iran to have a nuclear bomb. It represents an existential threat to half the Jewish population of the world. It does not really matter what we in this Chamber think about that; Israel, quite rightly, will say, “We are not going to accept this.”
The Iranians are going about things in all the wrong ways. We have heard that there are cultural aspects to that. We are told, for example, that the Iranian way of approaching the world is different from that of the west; that there are complications of language and history; that the only rules they want to stick to are those that suit them; and that we should look at this through a diplomatic prism. At the end of the day, however, we are talking about 8 million Israeli citizens who fear for their lives. They fear that Iran will get enough nuclear material to stuff into one of its Fajr-5 rockets and launch it at Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
Iran is going about the negotiations in all the wrong ways, because it is doing all the bad things that none of us like. Iran is a major exporter of terror, not just to the middle east, but around the world. If it really wants to do a deal with the west, why has it not backed off from supporting Hamas or from stocking up an arsenal of 100,000 rockets in southern Lebanon? Another Israeli fear, of course, is not just nuclear weapons, but Hezbollah launching 100,000 rockets all in one go at the Israeli population. It does not matter how sophisticated Iron Dome is—it is not possible to take out 100,000 rockets launched in one go.
The exporter of this terror—its funder—is Tehran. These are not nice people. They might have gone to English universities and they might have an understanding with very senior Members of this House, but this regime is extremely unpleasant, not only to its own people, but to others in the region and further afield.
Mr Mike Hancock
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most important things the right hon. Member for Blackburn said was that we should be careful what we wish for? I think that some people sometimes wish for something that cannot be delivered. I strongly support the line taken by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone).
Mr Hollobone
The hon. Gentleman and I both hope that the right hon. Member for Blackburn is right, but what if he is not? That would put Israel in a really serious situation.
Ms Abbott
The hon. Gentleman has said that the Iranians are not nice people. Does he think it is wise to characterise an entire nation, and even an entire regime, in that light? Even within the regime there are different factions. Is it helpful to talk about them in those terms?
Mr Hollobone
The hon. Lady is quite right, to be fair. If I have implied that the Iranian people are not nice, I apologise. What I mean is that the regime is not pleasant. I perfectly understand that the Iranian people—the Persian people—are among the most sophisticated people in the middle east, and we have heard a lot about that in this debate. The hon. Lady is right to pick me up on that point. What I am saying is that the regime is extremely unpleasant and extremely bad and that some of its members are potentially mad. That is what worries the Israeli Government.
If I were an Iranian who wanted to impress the west with my intent and why I should be trusted, I would be keen to allow the nuclear weapons inspectors into my nuclear facilities. Despite repeated requests to access Natanz, Parchin and Fordow, inspectors have been either stopped or obstructed in undertaking their work.
Enrichment is also an issue. Iran has enough fissile material at 3.5% or 20% enrichment to be able to develop, if it has enough centrifuges, enough nuclear material at 90% enrichment for six nuclear bombs. That is the worry. The Supreme Leader has said recently that Iran has an absolute need for 190,000 centrifuges, which is 10 times the number it has at present. Any deal done on anything remotely like that basis would be a very bad one, because Iran would then have the ability to break out of any restrictions placed by any such treaty on developing the material for those six missiles. Of course, it already has the ballistic capability to deliver that material on to Israel or Saudi Arabia at very short notice.
The central question posed to all of us by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex is: can we trust the Iranians? My answer is that I have not seen enough evidence to suggest why we should trust them. Of course, the big problem is that, if we get the answer to that question wrong and if the Iranians really are not trustworthy, it is not so much us in the United Kingdom who will pay the price, although the situation will be bad for us. The people who will really be at peril are those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the middle east, and there will be a nuclear arms race that will add fuel to the flames in an already volatile region.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate on Iran. If we look at the middle east today—which is at risk of conflagration from end to end, whether it be in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine or even Afghanistan—we will see that Iran is a key player. If we are to resolve some of the issues, Her Majesty’s Government and this House must take a nuanced and sophisticated approach to our relationship with Iran. It is not helpful to talk about Iran, or even its regime, as a monolith. As most of us should know, there are separate and distinct factions within the regime that are jostling for supremacy at any given time.
I do not wish to take away from the seriousness of the human rights issues in Iran. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) has mentioned his constituent, Ghoncheh Ghavami, a British resident who is subject to imprisonment, apparently for a year, for going to watch a men’s volleyball match. I think that any British person would be shocked at any regime that treated somebody in that fashion. As we have heard, she is on hunger strike for the second time in protest against her illegal detention, and her lawyer has seen court documents stating that she has been sentenced to a year in prison. The prosecutors, however, have not confirmed her sentence, so she is in limbo. That is an appalling way to treat a young woman. Although I think it is correct that this particular case should not form part of the issues relating to international relationships and so on, she is a British resident who is being treated extremely cruelly and unfairly. This is an humanitarian issue and I want Her Majesty’s Government to do more to help this British resident, who is subject to a cruel and unusual punishment for doing no more than going to watch a sporting match, which British women do every day of the week.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I apologise for missing the first part of the debate. I was part of the delegation to Iran, and I constantly raised issues of human rights and human rights concerns. Does my hon. Friend agree that as appalling as this case is, it is unfortunately not that unusual in Iran, and that any future relationship with Iran must include a tough human rights dialogue to insist that it signs up to and obeys all the human rights conventions and has a genuinely independent judicial system, so that such appalling travesties of justice cannot continue?
Ms Abbott
It is very important that any negotiations with Iran have a human rights component.
In any agreements that we reach with Iran, it is important that we make due speed before the effects of the mid-term elections in the USA work through, because those results risk jeopardising the success of the negotiations. There are people in the US Senate who are desperate to see Obama fail, and who are preparing additional sanctions against Iran. They have just made enormous gains in the mid-term elections, and are emboldened. I believe that additional sanctions will be a disaster. They will play into the hands of hardliners in Iran, who have a vested interest in the status quo and no interest in Iran having relations with the rest of the world. Additional sanctions will kill the negotiations. The big players who have sponsored the new sanctions Bill are Kirk and Menendez. They are strong supporters of the state of Israel and also want nothing more than to inflict lethal damage on the Obama presidency. It is important that we make due speed on negotiations with Iran before American domestic politics intervene and make such negotiations impossible.
As some Members have recognised, there is a reformist wing within the Iranian regime—Rouhani, Zarrafi and others—who despite a massive uphill battle are challenging the conservatives, and have promised the Iranian people that better diplomatic relations will end the sanctions. If the US and its allies are seen to backpedal, that will prove the reformists wrong in the eyes of the hardliners, and set the situation back. Her Majesty’s Government must ensure that that does not happen and that domestic US politics do not threaten what the rest of the world community has patiently created, and there should be a strong message to that effect.
We must also offer a carrot to the Iranians, and not just sticks that reinforce the idea that the UK is siding with the US as an imperialist aggressor. One long overdue carrot would be to reopen the British embassy in Tehran, as was said earlier. It would be illogical to try to have open and honest dialogue with a country, or even to criticise it, if there is no diplomatic presence. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by not having a formal diplomatic presence, and we have left an open vacuum for Russia, China, India and the rest to fill. Furthermore, a British embassy is symbolic of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the people of Iran. As I have tried to say, one should not conflate the regime with the people, and we want at all times to make it clear that we as British people want a good relationship with the Iranian people.
My final point is one that was made earlier: the importance of dialogue and diplomatic relations. That is not just important for the nuclear deal, but it is in the UK’s national interest to have diplomatic and economic ties with Iran in terms of exports and our general economic interests. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, Iran has influence over Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, and it might be key in defeating ISIS. It is probably the only player that can force Assad to compromise.
I am sorry to say this to hon. Members, but nothing is gained by simply regurgitating a cold-war narrative or realpolitik when it comes to “explaining” Iranian motivations in the middle east. It is one of the few countries in the region that has enjoyed a level of peace since the end of the Iran-Iraq war 25 years ago. It has developed into a nation comprised mostly of young people, with 80% being under 40, most of whom are urban—70% of Iranians live in cities—and far more progressive in relation to women than some of the regimes in the region to which we are allied, such as Saudi Arabia. For example, 60% of university enrolments in Iran are women.
While being clear and firm in its condemnation of human rights abuses in Iran, I urge the House to recognise that we are nearing an historic point. Sanctions have artificially stunted economic growth in Iran, and it would be a missed opportunity not to establish ties with it now. The regime is not a monolith, as I have said, and it has the second biggest reserves of gas in the world and the third largest oil reserves. It is in the interests of the British economy, British business and the British people, as well as of peace in the region, to try to establish a more sophisticated, nuanced and constructive ongoing diplomatic engagement with Iran than we have seen in the past.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who made a thoughtful speech. I associate myself with her comments, and those of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) about his constituent, which I think the whole House will endorse.
This is another debate that highlights the importance of the Backbench Business Committee, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing it. As a Welsh non-conformist, however, I might be slightly more cynical about the concept of a state-sponsored religion—something that we dispensed with at the end of the first world war in a Welsh context.
This is an important debate, and we heard a superb contribution from the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who is no longer in his place. It is important that the context for this debate includes that Committee’s report, which was published in June, and I argue that it is essential reading for anybody who takes an interest in the middle east.
This is undoubtedly an interesting time in the middle east. It is a period of huge unrest in the region, and it is right for us to discuss the UK’s position on Iran. There is no doubt that the way the whole western world has been almost traumatised by the development of ISIS has led to a discussion about how Iran can be brought back into the fold. However, although we might see the possibilities of working with Iran in the context of what is happening in Iraq, the situation is much more complex than that. In Syria, Iran is supporting elements that the UK Government would not be keen to support, and our support for the democratic statelet of Kurdistan within Iraq can be contrasted with the way that the Kurdish minority in Iran is treated. The complexities of the situation must be understood. We should be aware of the dangers of starting to argue the case on the basis of the old saying, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”. It is important not to fall into that trap because time and again, history has shown that such an approach to international politics never leads to a good result.
This debate has rightly highlighted the many concerns held by hon. Members about Iran’s human rights record. I accept entirely the point that the human rights records of many states in the middle east leave a lot to be desired, but two wrongs do not make a right. The fact that we deal with allies in the middle east that have atrocious human rights records does not mean that we should forgive or forget the human rights situation in Iran. The report by the Foreign Affairs Committee stated clearly:
“No concessions should be made on human rights in the interests of making progress in negotiations in other fields.”
The Committee is not arguing that there should be no progress in other fields, but we should not turn a blind eye to Iran’s human rights record.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) spoke passionately and correctly about concerns in Israel, not least about the support given by Iran to Hezbollah and Hamas. It is difficult to deny that the strategic threat to Israel is not only the development of a nuclear capacity in Iran, but the daily threat faced by Israel from southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip. Clearly, there has been a degree of breach between Iran and Hamas, but the support to Hezbollah continues to be a strong element of Iranian foreign policy, which should concern anyone who wants a long-term settlement in the middle east, not least a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian entity.
There are human rights concerns with the Iranian regime, but there are also concerns with the regime’s ability to destabilise part of the middle east and other parts of the world by sponsoring terrorism. From a UK perspective, we cannot deny that the question we need to ask is this: would it be in the UK’s national interest for Iran to develop nuclear capacity? We need to address that key question. It is currently difficult to argue that stability in the middle east would be enhanced by Iran’s ability to develop nuclear capacity. It is striking that political leaders and leaders in other middle east countries have accepted the claimed nuclear capacity of Israel—I say “claimed” with a smile on my face, because all hon. Members recognise that Israel has a nuclear capacity. Saudi Arabia and Jordan, for example, have not said that they need nuclear capacity because Israel has nuclear capacity, but those states have made the argument strongly that, if Iran develops nuclear capacity, they would need to have a nuclear warhead. We should take that seriously if we are trying to bring stability to such an unstable part of the world.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn made the important point that a sovereign country such as Iran has every right to develop a civilian nuclear strategy. I believe very strongly in the UK developing and investing once more in our civilian nuclear capacity. As a north Wales Member, I am keen for the development of a second power station in Anglesey. It is very difficult to argue with that case. However, my support for a nuclear power station in Anglesey would be somewhat tempered were Wales sitting on the second largest gas reserves behind Russia’s. If Iran has such large gas reserves, why is civilian nuclear capacity so important to it? I accept that the right hon. Gentleman’s point is a fair one—a sovereign country has that right. Therefore, as an international community, we need to ensure a settlement that allows that civilian capacity to be developed, but with assurances that it will not lead to a military capacity, which would further destabilise the middle east.
We must question seriously whether Iran has moved sufficiently towards giving assurances on whether its intentions are peaceful. The Foreign Affairs Committee, which has looked at the issue in detail, concluded:
“There is no convincing explanation for why Iran might need for civil purposes the stocks of enriched uranium which it held in January 2014. We believe that the primary reason for Iran’s decision to build such a capacity to enrich uranium and to amass stocks to current levels was to give itself the option to develop a nuclear military capability.”
The FAC is not renowned for highlighting dangers that are not reasonably identified. We should pause to consider those words when we think about how we deal with the negotiations that are supposed to conclude by 24 November.
In 2012, the Prime Minister highlighted the fact that the Iranian regime is currently flouting six UN resolutions —1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835 and 1929. His statement was clear:
“The regime’s claim that its nuclear programme is intended purely for civilian purposes is not remotely credible.”
In view of the developments of the past few months, do we believe that those words are not relevant? If they are relevant, it is imperative that any developments are considered carefully, and that we have assurances that concessions made to Iran do not allow the development of a nuclear military capacity.
As I have said, it is expected or hoped that the P5 plus 1 negotiations will conclude by the end of November. I accept that there is a possibility of a breakthrough, but certain things must be guaranteed in any deal. The British Government should be clear that, in any agreement, we need to ensure that Iran’s ability to develop a military nuclear capacity is not enhanced. We should consider the number of centrifuges—2,000 should be a maximum but, currently, there are 18,000, and Iran claims the need for 10 times more. We need clarity on that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering highlighted that sources in the middle east have identified that the stockpiles of enriched material were sufficient for six nuclear warheads. The point has been strongly and passionately made that one warhead would be enough to wipe Israel off the map. Would hon. Members be comfortable with such a development? What will be done to ensure that Iran’s stocks of enriched material are dealt with?
On the Iranian enrichment programme, it is important that the 3.5% level is monitored. Despite the best efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are concerns over whether the Iranian regime is co-operating fully. I argue that there is a need for full and immediate compliance with the IAEA on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme. Inspectors should be given unfettered access to Iranian military installations because, if the aim or intention is for a sovereign state to develop a civilian nuclear capacity, one must ask why the regime would be reluctant to allow such an investigation. An investigation would give confidence to the UK and other states that the Iranian regime’s intentions are not in any way militaristic.
We also know that the Iranian military has the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead not only on Israel, but on a significant portion of Europe. We need to ensure that any agreement that allows the development of a civilian capacity takes into account steps to ensure that that ballistic missile capacity is not a threat to any part of the middle east or Europe.
We should grasp the opportunity to ensure that the sanction regime is monitored carefully as part of an overall package that allows the development of civilian nuclear energy capacity in Iran. The opportunities of trade with Iran that hon. Members have highlighted are also important. I agree that trading relationships often lead to better political relations. The opportunity is there, but it is important that the House sends a clear message that we are dealing with a regime that does not have a track record of good will. In any agreement, we need certainty that a compromise is not conceded without due care and attention.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
The House is sometimes criticised for not passing enough legislation and because the Government have allocated days for Backbench Business Committee business. This is a great example of a debate in which hon. Members can discuss a subject that we would not ordinarily discuss.
On 24 November 2013, it emerged that a deal had been reached between Iran and the five members of the UN Security Council—the UK, the US, France, China and Russia—plus Germany. The deal was the outcome of years of negotiations behind the scenes and a decade of public diplomacy following the revelations that there was a wide-scale uranium enrichment programme in Iran. The P5 plus 1 countries and Iran concluded an interim six-month agreement known as the joint plan of action, which was intended to restrain Iran’s nuclear programme in return for limited sanctions.
On 26 February this year, I led a Westminster Hall debate and raised the concerns of many people about the P5 plus 1 tacitly recognising Iran’s right to enrich uranium, which has been rejected by many people over the years. Another concern was relaxing some of the Iran sanctions. As we anticipate the final deal at the end of the month, it is worth highlighting those concerns and the red lines that I believe need to be contained in any such deal.
The first issue is the length of time for which the deal will last, and the second is the basis on which agreement will be struck on Iran’s past nuclear capability. Only by adhering to strict limits on the nuclear programme for an extended period of time can Iran build up confidence that its nuclear activities will not be used for military purposes. The P5 plus 1 must seek an enduring deal that will last a considerable time—at least 20 years and possibly 30—to ensure a substantive change in Iran’s strategic conduct.
Reports already published indicate that Iran is pushing for a so-called “sunset clause”—for a deal to last only five years as an absolute maximum, after which it would expect to be treated as a normal signatory to the non-proliferation treaty. I have some concerns about that. Such a deal would probably cover only President Rouhani’s term of office, and the next President, or the next President’s successor, may have a completely different view of the subject, just as Ahmadinejad did. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister said in July 2014 that if Iran accepts a limit on its nuclear activities
“it will only be for a specific time frame, and temporary”.
Reports that the P5 plus 1 and Iran may settle on a duration as short as five to 10 years will do little to relieve my suspicions over Iran’s long-term nuclear ambitions. It would be little more than a temporary reprieve of one of the world’s greatest security threats.
Iran must earn the right to be treated as a normal non-nuclear weapons state under the NPT through a tangible display of peaceful nuclear intentions for the duration of any long-term agreement. Indeed, the quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear programme, which is due imminently—perhaps even as early as tomorrow—is likely to say that Iran has still not provided the information it was supposed to have provided more than two months ago. Since Rouhani became President, Iran has promised to work with the IAEA, but it has failed to address specific areas of the agency’s inquiry. It has long been clear that the IAEA’s inquiry into the possible military dimensions of Iran’s programme will not be completed before the target date for a deal. I had hoped for more headway by that time. The deal would require a robust system of inspection of Iran’s future and past nuclear activities to verify that it would adhere to the terms of any agreement and not attempt to break out.
The need for strict verification mechanisms is a product of Iran’s nuclear programme having a clandestine history, and it warrants higher levels of accountability than would be acceptable for others. Only the verification of Iran’s nuclear-related activities and the apparatus to enforce it will determine the lasting success of any permanent nuclear agreement. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) said, without complete access to Iran’s full portfolio of declared and undeclared nuclear-related facilities, no amount of monitoring and inspection can provide the international community with true confidence that Iran does not possess a clandestine programme.
The second issue I wish to cover, which my hon. Friend also touched on, is the possible military dimension of a nuclear capability in Iran. One specific locale that is believed to be such a possible military dimension is the military base at Parchin, where the IAEA suspects Iran has attempted to develop a nuclear explosive device. IAEA inspectors have not been permitted to enter the site since 2005, but only a month ago a large explosion at the facility destroyed a number of buildings. The cause of the explosion is still not known. The IAEA has long suspected Iran of conducting tests there relating to the development of nuclear weapons, including on nuclear triggers and high explosives. In 2011, the organisation reported that
“such experiments would be strong indications of possible nuclear weapon development”.
Those suspicions have heightened in recent years, with satellite imagery indicating that Iran has undertaken a large-scale nuclear clean-up operation in the area—possible evidence of the removal of hazardous nuclear materials. Experts cite the removal of soil as recently as 2012 and subsequent asphalting of the specific place that the IAEA wants to inspect, as evidence of Iran’s efforts to hide potentially incriminating evidence of illicit nuclear-related experiments at Parchin.
Tehran rejects calls for access and claims it is a domestic military site that is used for research and development and the production of ammunition, rockets and high explosives. Even the White House acknowledges that Parchin is one of the issues Tehran has to address to achieve a comprehensive agreement. Despite such concern from around the world, Iranian officials have stated that they will only allow minimal and managed access to the site if and when Iran decides to accept the additional protocol.
This causes me two concerns. First, such resistance calls into question Iran’s claim that it is entering into these nuclear talks in good faith, and its overall acceptance of making its nuclear programme more transparent. Secondly, it raises concerns about a deal on Iran’s nuclear capabilities being adhered to and properly implemented. If there is no effective monitoring verification before a deal, how can we know if it is being complied with?
Finally, there are three points relating to the UK’s role in the process that I want to mention to the Minister. First, as a member of the P5 plus 1, the UK Government have played a leading role in the international community’s handling of the Iranian nuclear issue and I commend them for that. Secondly, I congratulate the Government on pressing Iran to respond to international concerns over its nuclear activities, and even unilaterally imposing an unprecedented series of sanctions against Iran for its continued non-compliance. Thirdly, the UK Government now stand to play a decisive part in shaping the terms of a final nuclear agreement with Iran. We must ensure that any such deal is the right deal. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) said, it not just any deal we need, but the right deal.
Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (Ind)
Like the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), I believe that Iran having nuclear weapons would be a very difficult thing for most of western Europe and the United States. Most importantly, most of the middle east would also be horrified by it, and all of us should be wary of that.
I draw Members’ attention to the helpful briefing we have been sent, which makes it clear that a recent report by the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran noted a worsening of the situation regarding attacks against women. Those who have not seen the photographs of women disfigured by acid being thrown at them cannot believe for one minute that the Iranian authorities, in some way or other, were not involved in that treatment of those women. I would also like to congratulate and thank Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the Iranian Resistance, which continues to keep the deplorable human rights record of Iran in the forefront of our minds and the minds of others around the world.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) wrote a very interesting article in The Telegraph. He repeated a number of very important points today and the House listened very carefully. He said—I raised this point in an intervention—that we should be careful what we wish for when it comes to Iran. It is clear that the most active and supportive western-facing President and Foreign Secretary in Iran are not, at the end of the day, the people who will make any final decision. The Supreme Leader is coming to the end of his term of office, if we take the speculation about his health to be true, and will be replaced. Two of his potential replacements are extremely hard line and would make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to take seriously whatever a President of Iran says about whatever deal is to be done, whether on the production of nuclear material for peaceful purposes, or the complete suspension of a nuclear programme. As other Members have said, the country is sitting on so many assets it does not really need nuclear power, but who are we to deny them that? As the right hon. Member for Blackburn said, every country has the right to it. However, we should be extraordinarily wary.
I would like to draw the attention of the House to two of my constituents. One was in Iran as recently as eight months ago. She is a young woman who was a professor at university in Tehran. She was subjected to the most appalling sexual attacks by the regime’s security officers in the university. Why was she subjected to that? She tried to prevent some of her young women students from being put through the sexual harassment and other related activities that the security system within the university was perpetrating against staff. When she spoke out, she was attacked. Luckily, she is now in this country, but there is no guarantee she will be granted the asylum she seeks. Anyone who speaks to somebody who has lived in Iran recently cannot help but be very concerned.
The second constituent was a young man who travelled halfway across Europe in the back of a lorry and came into the UK illegally, pleading for asylum. He was given temporary leave to make his application, but then detained. He was gay and had become a Christian, so he was under enormous pressure in Iran, and his life would have undoubtedly been taken had he been returned there or not left in the first place.
Those two experiences are of young, educated people living in Iran recently; they are not politicians such as those whom Members meet, but ordinary people whose lives have been dramatically and dangerously disrupted because they have chosen to speak out or to be different. It is an inexcusable situation. We are considering making friends with a regime that continues to execute people—the number is unknown because many are not announced by the Government—including children. Are we seriously saying that the UK is prepared to do business with these people and not take seriously their ongoing abuses of their own people? It will be a sad day, if and when the UK goes down that road. If we stand for anything, surely it is for protecting the human rights of people in countries that do not give the protection they deserve.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
First, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate and congratulate the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing it.
To suggest that our relationship with Iran has had a chequered history would be an understatement. Both sides have attempted to demonise each other and used heavy rhetoric, sanctions and so on, and no doubt this has resulted in a lack of progress on a range of issues of mutual interest and benefit. This journey has also been punctuated by a series of missed opportunities and mistakes by both sides. The election of President Rouhani provides a fresh opportunity that we must seize, as several Members have alluded to in this useful and informed debate. The emergence of Islamic State might also provide grounds for co-operation. We must seize the moment to improve relations with Iran. If we do not, we might miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and slip back to where we were only a couple of years ago, when the threat of military intervention was high.
The west, especially in Washington and London, has perhaps not done enough to understand the region in general and Iran in particular. There has been a dilution of skills within the FCO, with the closure, at one stage, of the language school and the prevalence of a management tick-box mentality rather than a desire to train diplomats fundamentally to understand a region and get their hands dirty. Some of those decisions have been reversed, but I would still argue that there has been a massive dilution of skills within the FCO, and that has partly been to blame for our failure to understand the region in general.
That has led directly to a series of errors. No one can now dispute that in 2003 we went to war on a false premise, but it does not stop there. We made a fundamental mistake in allowing the Afghan mission to morph into one of nation building in 2006, which we could not properly resource, while our intervention in Libya has proved a complete and utter disaster: an almighty civil war, massive casualties and the Libyan Parliament taking refuge on a Greek car ferry outside Tobruk. If it was any further east, it would be floating into Egyptian waters. It is farcical. Our position on Syria, over the course of just 15 months, has been totally incoherent. Only last year, we were talking, in effect, about intervening on behalf of the rebels, but now we are taking on elements of that very same rebel force. London and Washington must guard against adding Iran to that long list of sorry errors.
Various Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Blackburn and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, alluded to the missed opportunities on both sides. We tend to forget in this place that after 9/11 Iran extended the hand of friendship to the west and showed sympathy, and it was not just words: in the early phases of the Afghanistan mission, it actually helped to identify enemy sites, and what was its reward? It was lambasted by President Bush for being part of the axis of evil.
In this debate, we have heard that there have been lots of words but very little action, but Iran tried again. In the early phases of Iraq, it tried to be supportive—there was an alignment of interests—but again it was rebuffed. And we should not forget, by the way, on Afghanistan and 9/11, that at least partly because of the west’s robust rebuttal of Iran’s overtures the moderate President Khatami was removed and the hardliners again assumed the ascendency. I could go back further, but time does not allow. I could go back to the 1953 coup and the fact that we supported Iraq despite its having attacked Iran in a vicious civil war that cost a million lives—something that is imprinted on the DNA of Iranians.
With the nuclear talks ongoing and crucial moments approaching, let us please remember that confrontation has not worked in the past. The number of centrifuges has gone through the roof, despite all the sanctions. The Iranians will not be bullied; they are a proud nation. Anyone who has studied their history, or perhaps travelled or lived there briefly, will know them to be a proud nation that will not be bullied into submission. Our decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council in 2006 led directly to its withdrawing from the enhanced inspection regime, which actually it was entitled to do.
The IAEA report in November 2011, despite all the rhetoric from the west, had no smoking gun. The US intelligence services said there was no evidence that Iran had decided to go down the road of a nuclear weapons programme or that it was doing so. The evidence suggested that it wanted to get to the point of capability—of having the option of breaking out—as has been reinforced by well-respected people such as Peter Jenkins, the former UK representative to the IAEA, and Robert Kelly, a director of the governing body of that organisation. These people are not fools; they are people who have been at the centre and said the same thing.
That is why we must choose our words carefully on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Our words have been quoted in this debate. We did not say that Iran had decided to develop nuclear weapons or that it was doing so; we said it wanted to reach the point of having the option, and there is a world of difference in that sort of terminology. One is not being an apologist for Iran; one abhors the human rights issues and various other aspects, though I made the point that some of our regional allies also have similarly poor track records in this area. However, if we look at the map from Tehran, we can understand why the Iranians are nervous: they are surrounded by nuclear powers, whether it is Israel to the west, Pakistan to the east, the Russians to the north or the American fleet to the south. Having that option is logical—we are a country that retains an independent nuclear deterrent for very similar reasons.
I raised this issue two years ago, when things almost came to a head from a military point of view. Many Members here today participated in that debate as well, at a time when we were certainly rattling the sabre. Forces were gathering in the Persian gulf and the rhetoric was getting very heavy indeed. One made the point that we needed to try to go the extra diplomatic mile, rather than succumbing to what seemed at the time to be quite a slide into military intervention. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk was right to say that we lost in that debate—if I remember, the figures were something like 285 to six. To this day, I thank the six who joined me in the Lobby. It was another lonely experience, but at least it was shared across the House when it came to our military interventions.
Let us fast-forward two years. Where are we now? We now have a golden opportunity. We have the joint plan of action, which I hope we go the extra mile to bring to a successful conclusion. We really do need to explore the option of allowing the Iranians to enrich uranium, provided we have an enhanced inspection regime. There seems to be a dragging of feet on the embassy front. Yes, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) is absolutely right: the storming of an embassy is almost unforgivable. That said, of the three stated enemies of Iran—Israel, the US and the UK—only the UK has diplomatic relations with Iran, stretched though they may be, and we have got to make every effort to keep that door of diplomacy open. It goes without saying—it is a cliché, but it is true all the same—that we make peace with our enemies, not with our friends. We have to keep that door of diplomacy open; otherwise, there is no hope of peace.
We must remind ourselves of the costs of failure. Two years ago there was serious consideration of military intervention, at least by countries in the region. Why is all this important? Because when we refer to the lack of understanding of the region and Iran and to a dilution of skills in perhaps the FCO and in London and Washington generally, we have to try to understand that there is a complex structure in Iran, with multiple centres of authority and constant power struggles. We need to try to influence that, rather than just giving credence to the hardliners by simply adopting a hard-line approach.
A military solution to this problem there cannot be, as ever. A recent US estimate suggests that any military intervention might set back the nuclear programme by only a year at most. We all know that knowledge cannot be eradicated and that if Iran is set on acquiring nuclear weapons, she will not be scared away. If she is not, perhaps any sort of military intervention would encourage her to do so. Looking at post-war history, we should also remember that interventions in countries have tended to embed hard-line views. It is no coincidence that communism, for example, survived longest in the countries where we intervened—we might think of China, Vietnam, North Korea or Cuba.
In conclusion, we have got to seize the moment. We have got to seize this opportunity to try to improve relations, because so much depends on a successful outcome. It could be the key to the resolution of so many issues in the region. We have to be realistic in how we approach this. I agree that we must be quite robust in how we negotiate with the Iranians, but there has to be an element of good will in trying to foster better relations.
I finish with this thought. When President Nixon flew to Beijing in 1972, at a time when US influence in the Pacific was on the wane, he did not deny the reality that China was in ascendancy; but despite being heavily criticised at the time, in retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight, it was recognised as a brilliant move. It opened up an era of better relations, at a time when things had been deteriorating fast. He was heavily criticised at the time. I would suggest to the House that we need something similar from our side to try to reach out and break the deadlock. We have a golden opportunity, with a moderate President, newly elected. We now have situations on the ground in the region that beg for mutual co-operation to our joint advantage. Let us seize the moment, because if we do not, I am afraid this will be yet another chapter in the sad history of a very poor relationship, punctuated by missed opportunities, and this time the costs of failure could be very dire indeed. That is what we have to appreciate; that is why we need to try and make it work this time.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I want to start by welcoming the debate and making it clear that I wish to seek a better relationship with Iran. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) not only on securing this debate with my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), but on making an outstanding opening speech. It really was superb. Anyone who read the article that the right hon. Gentleman wrote on 24 September in The Daily Telegraph can see the line of travel that he wishes us to take, and he set out his case extremely well. Similarly, the contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) underlined why we will miss both Gentlemen, from different sides of the House, very strongly when 2015 comes and they are no longer in this place.
I take the view that it is important to visit a country, if one can, before one tries to cast an opinion. I regret that I have not had the opportunity to visit Iran, although I have travelled extensively throughout the region, going to Beirut in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Jordan. However, it is good to speak almost last in the debate—obviously I await the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish)—because I have had a chance to listen. There are clearly differing views across the House. There are those who have grave concerns that we are being too generous to Iran and that we run the risk of making things more dangerous and difficult and appeasing a potentially very dangerous adversary. One cannot deny those risks, and the hon. Gentlemen who set those matters out do so legitimately and, in some cases, with good cause.
At the same time, however, as was set out fairly by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), the failure to act at this stage has its own significant downsides—that is an underestimation—and consequences. In this House and in Government, one often does too much, but often one does too little as well. I feel that this is a case where if we do too little, the opportunity will ebb and flow away, and we will not be in this place again for a very long time.
It is rare that I would want to quibble with comments from my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), who made the point in an earlier intervention—I summarise; this is the note I took of it—that it is tough if Iran does not abide by the rules. Of course one makes that point, and it is a fair point well made, by someone with every historical advantage that most of us do not have. However, at the same time, one must be realistic, in that, first, this is a negotiation, secondly, there is distrust on both sides and, thirdly, we have to work out what ultimate objective we seek to obtain, and it is inevitable that there will be difficulties, hurdles and obstructions along the way. I, for one, would wish our Government to push ahead, while accepting and making the fair point that this is not going to be a perfect ride along the way.
I was struck by how my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South set out that this is very much about two nations in conflict. Parts of Iran are genuinely liberal and generally progressive—he made the fair point that there are more women than men at the university in Tehran—but other parts we all find abhorrent, not least the difficulties in relation to Iran’s human rights record, but also its support for Assad and Hamas, its actions in Gaza, its opposition to Saudi Arabia and, frankly, the interventions it is pursuing in many countries.
We should not ignore the idea that Iran is a country that we can do business with. We have that opportunity now in a way that has not been possible for a considerable period of time. Although we need to look for a deal that is good for both sides, I take the view that the more we can move towards a deal, the more we empower the elected Government of Iran in what is obviously a power struggle over the country’s direction of travel.
Several Members have drawn attention to the interesting and complex political situation. The right hon. Member for Blackburn said that the elected Government do not control the judiciary. When I heard that, I nodded very wisely and thought that the point was particularly important, but our Government do not control the judiciary. It just so happens that the Iranian Government and the judiciary have slightly differing views of where the country should be going. In many cases, the judiciary has raised cases of great concern. We are all aware of constituency examples, to which the BBC and other organisations have rightly drawn attention. However, with a quasi-elected or appointed House of Lords, a coalition Government of parties that often move in different directions, and other interesting concepts—my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk and I had a rather esoteric discussion about what role the Privy Council genuinely took or might play in our country—the Iranians would probably look at us and say, “Well, this is also a slightly interesting political arrangement.”
The reality is that we surely cannot push Iran away. I want to talk about the 24 November deadline. It seems that we are all tremendously focused, and rightly so, on 24 November, but if the deal cannot be done within the period available and we need to extend the deadline, that is what diplomacy is about. It is no different from a contractual negotiation between two businesses. If both sides wish to make a deal, but for whatever reason they cannot reach an agreement, my view is that the deadline should be extended. I have no difficulty with that, and I would totally support the Government and the various parties to the deal if that is what they so wish.
It is absolutely paramount that everybody stays around the table in the long term, and ultimately that a deal is done. That will take—one must be realistic—concessions and a control of rhetoric on all sides. It will clearly not be easy for everybody to accept all parts of the equation. From some of the speeches today, it is clear that several organisations or interest groups are very sensitive about any particular deal. I want to make it clear that I have gone on a Conservative Friends of Israel trip to Israel and that I am a massive supporter of Israel, but that support does not prevent me from wanting progressive and better relationships with Iran.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk increased our linguistic awareness by explaining that “purdah” was originally a Persian word. As we all know, in UK politics, purdah means that the Government effectively cease to exist and cannot make decisions, and that no actions are taken. We are approaching purdah in several ways, not just in this country, but in the US with the changes following the mid-term elections. However, there is still a very large window up to—and potentially beyond—24 November in which to resolve these matters.
I completely endorse the points that several Members have made about the embassy, but the British Government must knock heads together to ensure that the embassy is reopened. I entirely accept that such things are not simple. We in this place, like many others, have often decried our Foreign Office’s failure to train and upgrade people to have sufficient ability to speak the language like a native or to have a genuine grasp of all aspects of the geopolitical situation in the country to which they are sent. However, if ever there was a need for diplomats in Iran, it is now. In my humble opinion, the prize post for diplomats of any shape or form should be a post in Iran in the next year or two. The capacity of such individuals to make a difference there, by working the traditional diplomatic routes, is patently obvious to all of us, but it needs to be grasped by the UK Government. Such diplomats clearly have a genuine and real job to do, and it is vital that they do it.
I support entirely all the comments that Members have made, and I praise the quality of their speeches. I endorse the direction of travel, and I urge the Government to do everything possible to do a deal so that we can take this matter forward.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who made good points about the quality of the debate and the views that have been put forward.
I, too, want to state clearly that I am a huge supporter of Israel. I have concerns about the direction in which Iran will eventually take us. Previous leaders of Iran have stated clearly that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map. If we had a neighbour like that, we would be somewhat concerned. The Israeli people or the Jewish people lost half their population in the 20th century. Do we want the rest of them to be wiped out in the 21st century? I think not. We therefore have to be careful.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) was right to bring this matter forward and is very well informed about it. I will put forward some views that he might not agree with entirely, but which need to be said.
Many right hon. and hon. Members have spoken about Iran’s nuclear programme and the negotiations that are taking place in Vienna with the P5 plus 1. The ultimate aim of the negotiations must be a permanent and verifiable guarantee that Iran cannot escape all the restrictions on its nuclear programme, reach break-out capability and quickly produce a nuclear weapon.
In return, Iran seeks to have all sanctions lifted immediately and permanently once an agreement is reached. Many of the sanctions, once lifted, would be almost impossible to reinstate quickly enough to act as a deterrent against Iran’s transgressing on any agreement. The lifting of sanctions must be a gradual process to ensure that Iran keeps to its side of the agreement. Some argue that that will not be acceptable to Iran and is doomed to fail, and that we must therefore soften our negotiating stance.
The UK Government and their allies must ask the following questions. Can Iran be trusted to abide by international norms and agreements? Is President Rouhani genuine in his commitment to engage positively with the international community on Iran’s nuclear programme and other issues affecting the region? Even if President Rouhani is genuine, to what extent does that matter when it is the Supreme Leader who must ultimately approve any agreement and when the Iranian revolutionary guards, who are personally loyal to the Supreme Leader, run the nuclear programme and its sites?
I believe that a look at the terrible human rights abuses of the Islamic republic of Iran against its own people and at its role as a lead sponsor of terrorism across the world goes some way towards answering those questions. According to Amnesty International, Iran now leads the world in executions per capita—surpassing China. As of April 2014, more than 500 people had been executed under President Hassan Rouhani’s regime—206 in 2014 alone. That includes two Iranian men executed in August this year for the act of “consensual sodomy”. Article 110 of Iran’s Islamic penal code states:
“Punishment for sodomy is killing”.
Iran also continues to persecute religious minorities, including those of the Baha’i faith, whose origins are in Iran. The Baha’i community faces arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, is denied access to education and receives no protection of the law from religiously motivated violence from vigilante groups.
Some will argue that this is the work of the judiciary, who are appointed by the Supreme Leader and that President Rouhani is not to blame. However, it was President Rouhani who appointed Mostafa Pourmohammadi as Justice Minister. During his time as Deputy Intelligence Minister, he was implicated in the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners. Despite his welcome words as a reformer and pragmatist, the President has yet to deliver on his promises—something that does not bode well for any future agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran’s role as a sponsor of terrorism is well documented, from Shi’a death squads in Iraq to its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was responsible for a series of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and diplomats in India, Georgia and Thailand in 2012. In its support for sectarian terrorism, Iran has repeatedly shown itself to act not as a responsible member of the international community, but as a country whose foreign policy aims are ideologically motivated and will continue to propagate Khomeini’s bloody revolution. It is this record of support for terrorism and its treatment of its own people that the UK must have in its mind when considering its policy towards Iran.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and to participate in this debate, having had the opportunity to listen to some speeches that were extremely thoughtful and provocative in the best sense. In that regard, I pay particular tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) for his continuing considered interest in Iran, and to the debate’s other sponsor, the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon).
In its recent report on UK policy towards Iran, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee rightly said that it would be in the UK’s interest to have a mature and constructive relationship with Iran. In that context, the Government were right to take the in-principle decision to reopen the embassy in Tehran, and the Prime Minister was right to meet President Rouhani in September.
Despite these recent important steps, there are many reasons for considerable caution and care in our engagement with Iran, not least because the 24 November deadline for reaching a comprehensive deal that limits Iran’s nuclear programme is approaching fast. Scepticism about Iran’s motives and intentions for these negotiations is hardly surprising, given the country’s links to terrorist organisations, the routine failure of its politicians to recognise Israel’s right to exist, its support for the Assad regime and the widespread concern that it has in the past actively sought a nuclear weapons capability.
This debate, then, is a welcome opportunity to explore the progress that has been made in the nuclear negotiations, and to examine the progress—or the lack of it—on other aspects of our policy towards Iran, including its future role in the region and its attitude to its people and their rights.
Almost a year ago, my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary welcomed the efforts of the Government, and particularly those of Baroness Ashton, as part of the E3 plus 3 to conclude a thorough and detailed interim agreement in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. As others have said, that included a joint plan of action with a series of crucial commitments—commitments that, if implemented properly, would mean that the aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme that were thought to pose the greatest risk could not be developed further during the period of the interim agreement. In addition, some of the most disturbing parts of Iran’s nuclear programme to date would be significantly scaled back, including the eradication of around 200 kg of 20%-enriched uranium. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s assessment of the extent to which the commitments in this joint plan of action have been adhered to and can be built on.
That interim agreement also set out the elements of what a comprehensive agreement could look like: adherence to Iran’s obligations and rights under the non-proliferation treaty and IAEA safeguards; full resolution of concerns around the heavy water research reactor at Arak; agreed transparency and monitoring; and co-operation on Iran’s civilian nuclear programme. In return for confidence that Iran’s programme is solely peaceful, the plan of action suggests a mutually defined, enrichment-based programme, with agreed parameters and limits—but only as part of a comprehensive agreement. Sanctions would begin to be further lifted at that point.
Others close to the negotiations, notably in the US, have suggested that all the components of a plan for a long-term definitive agreement that should be acceptable to both sides are on the table. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary and, indeed, the Foreign Secretary noted, it is the pressure of sanctions, albeit coupled with a readiness to negotiate, that has helped bring Iran to the negotiating table and helped to achieve the progress that has been made.
As the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), who is the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and indeed the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), pointed out, one crucial test of Iran’s willingness to engage with the profound concerns about possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme surrounds the access given to the IAEA to its nuclear sites and staff. There remain concerns that IAEA inspectors still do not have full access to every one of Iran’s nuclear sites—for example, I understand that Iran has agreed only to limited inspections by the IAEA at its main enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz. IAEA inspectors still do not have access to the heavy water second reactor being built at Arak or to the Parchin military base, mentioned by the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord), where the IAEA and others suspect Iran has attempted to develop a nuclear explosive device in the past. Perhaps the Minister will outline how this critical issue of IAEA access for monitoring is being addressed in the negotiations.
I recognise the importance of reaching a deal, both in building a little more trust in Iran towards the west and in keeping the more reactionary forces in Iran at bay, but negotiations cannot be allowed simply to drag on and on. Can the Minister reassure us that the Iranian side is fully engaged in the negotiations and remains committed to the 24 November deadline? Also, what steps would be taken if agreement were not achieved? Would sanctions that were lifted when the interim agreement was concluded last November, for example, be re-imposed?
There has been little public discussion to date about the role Iran is playing or might play in the future in the international effort against ISIL. Some have suggested that the threat ISIL poses in the region should be a reason for more flexibility towards Iran in these nuclear negotiations. I have to say that I do not agree. If there were not a willingness by the Iranians to build the trust of the international community on the nuclear issue, we could be replacing one very difficult threat with the re-emergence of another very significant threat. I hope, instead, that these negotiations will help to build further the scope, if not for trust, at least for better communication on a wider range of issues where our interests are aligned, of which the threat ISIL poses is clearly the most significant at the moment.
There have been reports of Iranian troops on the ground in Iraq, although there has been no formal announcement. Will the Minister set out his assessment of Iran’s role in resisting ISIL both in Iraq and Syria? Iran continues to have a choice as to whether to be a force for stability in the region. Its record to date has been decidedly mixed. It has a history of supporting the Assad regime in Syria and supporting and supplying a series of highly divisive and terrorist groups in the region which pose a continued threat to our allies there, including, but not only, Israel. It would be useful to hear from the Minister about the efforts that he and other Ministers have made in encouraging Iran to take a different approach to regional stability.
Many Members have mentioned the reopening of the embassy, which is, as they have said, a potentially important step in expanding bilateral engagement with the Iranians. An embassy, and diplomatic representation, would help us to develop relationships and gather information, which is essential, over time, to the building of trust and the facilitation of constructive dialogue, and which—again, over time—could perhaps influence attitudes and events for the better. Will the Minister update the House on progress towards the reopening of the embassy? In particular, will he deal with the suggestion by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn that concerns in the Home Office are holding up the issuing of a timetable? Will he also tell us what further action has been taken, or consideration given, to ensure that staff will be safe and secure at the embassy in the future, in the light of the events in 2011 to which the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) alluded?
As a number of Members have pointed out, Iran’s human rights record continues to be of deep concern. At the weekend it was reported that the British-Iranian women’s rights activist Ghoncheh Ghavami had been found guilty of spreading anti-regime propaganda and sentenced to a year in prison after being detained for trying to watch a men’s volleyball match. My hon. Friends the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) expressed the profound concern that I am sure we all feel about her imprisonment and sentencing. Amnesty International has described her as a prisoner of conscience, and has raised concerns that Ghoncheh and her fellow demonstrators were beaten by police officers when they were arrested.
There have been widespread reports of torture and ill treatment in Iranian prisons, including sexual violence, severe beatings, denial of medical treatment, and long periods of solitary confinement. The number of executions is up. Indeed, as we heard from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), Iran has the highest execution rate per capita in the world. Reyhanah Jabbari was executed on 25 October for killing a former intelligence officer after she had alleged that he had attempted to rape her. Amnesty International has said that it believes the court’s impartiality may have been affected by the victim’s connections with the Ministry of Intelligence. In addition, human rights defenders, journalists and bloggers have been arrested and their work censored.
While in theory Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism are recognised alongside Islam, religious minorities continue to face discrimination, with converts particularly affected. That point was made by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock). There have been reports of harassment, desecration of religious sites, restricted access to education and employment, and even arrest and torture. Members of the Baha’i faith, which is not recognised, have been especially discriminated against. The situation for lesbian and gay people is profoundly worrying. Homosexual acts are criminalised, gay people are executed simply for being gay, and many lesbian and gay people have reported that they have been denied access to education or dismissed from employment once their sexuality has become known. Last week, the Iranian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s periodic review of the human rights situation in Iran again appeared dismissive of concerns.
Mr Thomas
The hon. Gentleman is right, but we are focusing on the particular issue of British policy on Iran, and it is right for us to draw attention to the dismal human rights record there.
I appreciate the difficulties that are involved in bringing about an improvement in human rights in Iran. Nevertheless, Ministers must continue to take whatever opportunities do arise. I trust that the Minister will tell us what efforts he and other Ministers have made in that regard.
The date of 24 November marks a critical point in our relationship with Iran. Given the profound international concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its destabilising influence in the wider region and its human rights record, the successful completion of a comprehensive agreement could represent the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between our two countries. Labour has supported the Government’s work in building on the approach to the nuclear negotiations that was taken by the last Government, and continues to do so. I hope that Iran will take the opportunity presented by the negotiations to ease international concerns about its nuclear ambitions. It needs to.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
I agree with the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) that this has been a genuinely thoughtful and provocative debate. The hon. Gentleman also reminded us of what the Labour Government have done in the past. I pay tribute to them for that work, and pay particular tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who has lived and breathed this subject for many years. I know that he is departing the House at the next general election. He will be sorely missed, given the knowledge that he brings to debates on this issue.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing the debate. I welcome the contributions made by Members in all parts of the House, and will do my best to cover the main themes that arose. Both the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend observed that Iran is a land of which many of us know too little; I hope that the debate has partly rectified that.
The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), spoke of the duality of the country. There is youth and an educated nation there, but there is also the darker, proxy influence that Iran has on the region. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) raised a number of important issues, including the storming of the embassy, the importance of trade, and the problems encountered by Standard Chartered. I should explain that any bank that chooses to trade or work with Iran and trades in dollars will be subject to United States law, which is why Standard Chartered encountered those problems.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) referred to an important consular case which was mentioned by a number of other Members: that of Ms Ghoncheh Ghavami. I have discussed it with the hon. Gentleman. The Foreign Office is very much involved, and I should welcome the opportunity to meet him later in the week to talk about that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) mentioned Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities. We must consider its ability to create not just a nuclear weapon but the delivery platform for it. That must not be forgotten when the negotiations recommence.
The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) spoke of the importance of reopening our embassy. I recall that, during Foreign Office questions in July, I expressed a hope to go to Tehran and do that very thing. I remember the date that had been earmarked—12 August—because it was my birthday. Sadly, for reasons that I shall go into later, that did not happen, but we will persevere.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) drew attention to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report, which is greatly welcomed, and to the breach of serious United Nations resolutions. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) spoke of the importance of access for the IAEA at Parchin and various other sites, and the importance of striking the right deal. He emphasised that we must downsize or reach an accommodation, but must ensure that the deal is appropriate for the international community. The hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) spoke about Iran’s human rights record, which was mentioned by a number of other Members, and about the power of the Supreme Leader in the country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) placed the challenges faced in respect of Iran in the context of other recent international engagements, which he has mentioned once or twice in the Chamber before—he is certainly consistent in that—and my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) talked about empowering the elected Government and the complications of comparing them with our own Government here, and also the complexities of the power bases in Iran. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) posed the fundamental question: can Iran be trusted? That is what this debate is all about: what role does Iran wish to play within its own borders, in the region and, indeed, in the world?
I am sure my hon. Friends will agree that we face many daunting challenges in the middle east. There are those who say those challenges are shared by Iran, and that it is high time the international community put aside our differences and found ways to work with Iran to resolve them. There is, of course, much truth in this: it is not in Iran’s interests for sectarian tensions in the region to worsen, and we all face common threats from ISIL.
We should also not forget Iran’s history. It is a significant regional power with a proud and ancient culture, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn highlighted. Iran has been a significant regional power for over 3,000 years and has a deep, rich and diverse history going back to the birth of civilisation. The magnificence of Persepolis, the beauty of Isfahan, the Cyrus cylinder and the lyricism of its poetry are just a few of the many examples of Iran’s contribution to world heritage over the centuries, and Persian culture and thought have rightly had an enduring influence on the west, and we are very much the richer for it.
However, we would like to see Iran playing a more constructive role in the region, aligning its activities with the international community’s efforts to tackle ISIL and achieve a peaceful solution in Syria. We must also recognise that there remains great distrust in the region over Iran’s intentions, however, and that real progress will require a change in Iran’s behaviour. Genuine progress will require a transformation in the nature of Iran’s relationship with its neighbours and the world, and the key to that is a resolution to the nuclear issue.
The current Iranian Government recognise that it is in Iran’s interests to reach a nuclear agreement. It is for that reason that we have pursued nuclear negotiations over the past year with professionalism and in good faith, despite the many challenges. I very much hope that we will soon be able to say that nuclear negotiations have succeeded. We remain committed to reaching a comprehensive nuclear agreement. It is right that we should leave no stone unturned in the quest to do so, but we must not, and will not, do a bad deal. The stakes are too high.
I pay tribute to the commitment and expertise of the nuclear negotiators, both on the Iranian side and in the E3 plus 3. Without them, we would not have made the unprecedented progress that we have to date, but there is a long way still to go. Iran needs to recognise that it must take meaningful steps to roll back its nuclear programme, including reducing its enrichment capacity, in order to gain substantial sanctions relief. That is the trade-off at the core of the negotiations—negotiations which, I can tell the House, will begin in Oman next week.
A number of Members have mentioned the issue of the opening of the embassy. We announced in June our intention to reopen the British embassy in Tehran and have been engaging intensively with the Iranian authorities since then on the practicalities. We want to see the UK and Iran have functioning embassies in each other’s capitals. This does not mean that we suddenly agree on everything—there will continue to be areas where we sharply disagree—but reopened embassies will better equip us to address these challenges as well as the range of areas where our interests coincide, a point eloquently made by the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Embassies are also vital in enabling greater links between the people of our two countries.
However, there are currently two outstanding issues that must be resolved before we can reopen our embassy: first, repairing the damage caused by the mob invasion of our embassy in November 2011; and, secondly, the issue of visa services.
Mr Bellingham
Will the Minister also note that a great deal of damage was done to works of art? The fire did a huge amount of damage, and this is not just a question of repair; it is also a question of paying for all those works of art and other bits and pieces that were destroyed or damaged.
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend is right to raise these matters. The mob that came through was essentially let through by the security guards who were supposed to protect the embassy. We must pursue both the security and the repayment issues before reopening the embassy.
The second issue is about visa services. We and the Iranian Government agree on the importance of visa services resuming in capitals as soon as possible after embassies reopen. Visas are an important issue for the large number of Iranian citizens who wish to visit the UK but who currently must travel to Abu Dhabi or Istanbul to obtain them. Restoring a visa service in Tehran is important both as a key component of normal embassy business and for the broader UK-Iran bilateral relationship. A future UK visa service in Tehran must be able to operate effectively and within the framework of Iranian law, while also meeting broader UK immigration objectives. In particular, we need to address the problem of individuals with no legal right to remain in the UK.
Both these issues are essential to the British embassy’s ability to function effectively in Tehran, and we hope we can reach agreement with the Iranian authorities soon, so that our plans for the embassy can progress.
Mr Straw
As the Minister knows, I am absolutely with him and the Foreign Secretary on the issue of our being able to re-equip the embassy. On the visa service issue, however, does he understand the high suspicion that exists that our foreign policy is, to a degree, being blocked by the Home Office, and that what the Home Office is demanding is evidence of a greater willingness to allow returns than was the practice when we did have an embassy, and than is the practice in respect of other countries that are more difficult than Iran over the question of returns, including of foreign national prisoners?
Mr Ellwood
I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman says. The fact that there are other challenges with other countries in respect of these issues should not prevent us from trying to strike the appropriate deal when opening these embassies, but I take on board his point.
Both the issues I referred to earlier are essential to the British embassy’s ability to function effectively in Tehran, and we hope we can reach agreement with the Iranian authorities as soon as possible.
Guy Opperman
On the two points that have just been made, I would slightly question the line put forward that one cannot open an embassy until one has resolved on the one hand the visa arrangements, which surely are a matter of negotiation over a period of time, and on the other hand payment of reparations and past difficulties. I suggest that what is important is that the embassy reopens, while at the same time negotiations take place to resolve the two outstanding problems. The proposal at present is that those two problems would stop the matter proceeding, and without the embassy reopening, there will be problems.
Mr Ellwood
If the visa situation were to be resolved, the embassy would still not open straight away. There are certain Vienna convention conditions that still need to be met. I cannot say more than that, but until that happens we will not be able to reopen our embassy.
On trade and sanctions, it is important to remember that economic pressure has been the key to bringing Iran back to the negotiating table, enabling us to pursue a peaceful solution to one of the most thorny national security challenges of our time. That pressure has been achieved through sanctions as well as through broader reductions in trade, driven by assessments made by companies and banks that trading with Iran carries risks. Weakening that economic pressure risks undermining prospects for a nuclear agreement, and that is why we do not currently encourage trade with Iran.
That is also why we support US sanctions, which are closely aligned with EU sanctions and form a core part of the international sanctions regime. US secondary sanctions, which influence companies’ commercial decisions over whether to trade with Iran, have had some of the highest impacts of all economic sanctions, particularly in reducing Iranian oil exports. I do not agree that such sanctions are designed to bolster US trade with Iran at the expense of UK and EU trade. In response to the right hon. Member for Blackburn’s point, EU trade with Iran at the moment is higher than that of the US—
Mr Ellwood
I knew the right hon. Gentleman would want to come back on that. In certain areas, such as agriculture, there has been an increase, but the amount of EU trade with Iran is 40 times higher than that between the US and Iran.
Mr Straw
The truth is that EU trade with Iran has more than halved overall, and ours has absolutely plummeted. Meanwhile, from a base of close to zero 10 years ago, the United States has been pushing up its trade in a straightforward, ruthless and mercantilist way. It has not allowed diplomatic niceties to get in the way when its trade is legal, but it has discouraged legal trade by UK entities.
Mr Ellwood
The right hon. Gentleman’s point is well made. I note that a Europe-Iran trade forum took place here in London in October. Representatives of the Foreign Office attended it, but we did not endorse it as such. However, that shows that trade is taking place. As I mentioned in response to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk, we are trying to affect behaviour. If we continue to encourage trade before we have reached a nuclear deal, we will undermine our influence in that regard.
Mr Ellwood
At the moment, our focus is on recommencing the nuclear negotiations. When we know their outcome, we will be in a better position to decide whether more sanctions should be introduced or whether they should be changed in response to what Iran does.
I shall turn now to Iranian regional activities and ISIL. Iran is an important actor in the middle east. We all, including Iran, face challenges from extremist forces across the region, including ISIL. Those forces are a direct threat to regional stability and to the UK. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, we hope that Iran will choose this moment to engage constructively with the international community in the face of shared threats. We welcome the support that the Iranian Government have given to the new Government of Iraq and to their efforts to promote more inclusive governance for all Iraqis. A similar approach is needed in Syria, to promote a transition to a new Government capable of representing all Syrians. Nevertheless, there continue to be many areas of Iranian foreign policy on which we sharply disagree, particularly Iran’s ongoing support for the Assad regime and its ongoing support to militant groups in the region.
Human rights is a subject that many hon. Members have mentioned today. Iran’s human rights record remains a cause of great concern. The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and we are deeply concerned by the sharp increase in executions in Iran over the past year. There continues to be widespread discrimination against minority religious groups, as well as ongoing reports of the harassment, interrogation and detention of journalists and human rights defenders. Access to the internet and freedom of expression continue to be significantly restricted.
President Rouhani has said that he would like to implement a range of social reforms and to improve the rights of all Iranian citizens. We welcome that. We also welcome positive steps such as the release of 18 human rights defenders in September 2013. However, we are clear that much more needs to be done to ensure that all Iranians enjoy the rights and freedoms they are entitled to. We will continue to urge the Iranian Government to make the urgent reforms needed to meet their international human rights obligations.
I agree with the sentiments expressed in the House that we are at a moment of historic opportunity to resolve the Iranian nuclear question and for Iran to forge a more productive relationship with the international community. Iran is an important regional power with a proud history. It is a significant player in the middle east, which is a crucial region for UK interests. It is important that we have a relationship with Iran that allows us to discuss areas where our interests might overlap, as well as the numerous areas where we continue to disagree, including Iran’s ongoing support for the Assad regime in Syria, and human rights, about which we have serious concerns. Reopened embassies will be an important step on that road.
The importance of the nuclear issue means that it must stand on its own, distinct from other considerations, whether regionally or in our bilateral relationship. The UK is committed to exploring every opportunity to reach an agreement that meets our proliferation concerns. But success in the nuclear negotiations could open up the possibility of a transformed relationship between Iran and the rest of the world, which would have enormous benefits for security and prosperity in the middle east. Progress on all these fronts is therefore essential. The Government will continue to work creatively to find solutions, but we must do so with a clear eye on the UK national interest.
Mr Straw
I wish to reinforce the thanks of all of us to the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to this debate, and I thank all 15 Members who have spoken in this thoughtful and valuable debate.
There is common ground on the importance of Iran and on Israel’s entirely legitimate concerns, as a small and potentially vulnerable country in the region, to protect its own security—the difference lies in the approach we should adopt towards Iran. When I said we need to be careful what we wish for, I was drawing the attention of those who may take a different view from many of us in this House to the consequences of an antagonistic approach towards Iran. I simply ask those who do adopt that view not to look into the crystal ball but to examine the record of the past 50 years and, indeed, the past 10 years.
The hon. Members for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) referred to the offer of a grand bargain with the United States and the co-operation that was actively delivered to us—it was not just offered—by the Khatami Government in the wake of the 9/11 atrocities. It was actions and inactions by the west, particularly the United States, fanned by the right wing in Israel, that led to those offers by the reformists in Iran being rebuffed. The consequence was not that Iran disappeared or that the possibility of Iran building up a nuclear weapons capability disappeared, but that Iran became more difficult to deal with, more belligerent and disruptive in the region, and its 200 centrifuges increased to 18,800. So please let nobody here believe that if there is no deal because of pressure from parts of US and parts of the Israeli governmental elite, that would lead to a status quo or, madly, to attacks on Iran. What it will lead to, in the judgment of many of us here, is an increase in enrichment capabilities and an empowering of precisely those elements inside the governmental system of Iran whom we do not wish to see empowered. There will also be more difficulties on human rights.
I understand, of course, that there are risks on both sides, but I hope that the Minister, whom I thank for his thoughtful contribution, will take away from this debate the point that many of us who took part in it—both Government and Opposition Members—believe that there are risks worth taking in these negotiations, because the benefits of a respectful deal on this nuclear dossier will extend far beyond nuclear and will far outweigh the risks.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered UK foreign policy towards Iran.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise for interrupting the business of the House, but a story that amounts to a national scandal broke this morning in a public hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. It has long been taken as a standard in this country that the relationship between a lawyer and a client is protected by privilege, and that communications between them are protected from intervention by the state. What has become clear this morning is not only that that is not case at the moment, but that each of the three agencies has policies for handling legally protected material, and in one case for deliberately withholding that material, even from secret courts and security-cleared special advocates. My question to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, is how do we deal with that? Have the Government approached you requesting to come to this House to explain precisely how this came about?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
The right hon. Gentleman has made his point eloquently and decisively as ever. The House will be aware that it is not a matter for immediate action by the Chair, so I cannot give him advice except to say that I have had no notice of anyone wishing to come to the House to explain the matter further. The matter of privilege is one of very great importance to this House and to this Parliament, and I am sure that what the right hon. Gentleman has said will be noted by those who ought to note it.
Before we come to the next business, I reassure the House that the strange and unusual noises that interrupted some of the previous debate were due to some kind of building works, and that those who look after facilities in the House have now stopped the noises. I have made the House’s displeasure known to those who look after facilities. [Interruption.] I am grateful to the House for support in that matter.
Living Wage
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered promotion of the living wage.
I am sure that the House is grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your clarification with regard to the noises outside the Chamber.
The second debate this afternoon is on a very important, but more domestic topic, on which I am pleased to say that there is a great deal of cross-party support and consensus. Despite the fact that not as many Members are in the Chamber as I would have wished, I am sure that they are working hard in their constituencies, or particularly hard in one constituency.
We can all agree on the importance of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, and there is a sincere commitment on both sides of the House to ensure that hard-working people are rewarded for their efforts. I look forward to contributions to the debate from both sides of the House.
Today’s debate is also timely, taking place as it does during living wage week. As Members are no doubt aware, earlier this week the UK living wage was raised to £7.85, and the London living wage to £9.15. The new figures represent an increase of 2.6% on the 2013 rate and will improve the take-home pay of some 35,000 people, who are among the lowest paid workers in the country.
Since 2013, more than 60,000 people have been given a pay rise through the living wage. This year, the number of FTSE 100 companies that have signed up to the living wage has increased significantly from four to 18. I lay down the challenge as to which will be the next.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend most wholeheartedly on securing such an important debate in living wage week and welcome the work that he is doing, especially on behalf of the all-party group on poverty. Does he agree that those companies that adopt the living wage are bound to see not only a dramatic improvement in their staff retention and a reduction in their turnover but an increase in the productivity of their staff? That has been demonstrated by Costco in America, and Barclays, and KPMG in this country?
Chris White
I agree wholeheartedly with some of my hon. Friend’s points, and I thank him for being such a strong advocate of the living wage.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has brought forward this debate today, along with other colleagues. But we must get real. It is also a fact that under the Government whom he supports, the number of people below the living wage has risen from 3.4 million to 4.9 million in this country, so we need to think how to move forward. Does he agree that we need to get to a situation where every worker employed by Government or local government, or contracted to Government or local government, should be paid at the very least the living wage?
Chris White
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments and I certainly will deal with how we can encourage other Government Departments to lead the way on this.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead the debate. The all-party parliamentary group on poverty is most ably chaired by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), and I as the vice chair and other members have been strong advocates of increasing and supporting the living wage. I take this opportunity to thank the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) and the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling the debate today.
The all-party group has done a great deal of work, alongside the Living Wage Foundation, to promote the living wage and the benefits that it has for business, employees and society in general. According to a recent report by KPMG, an estimated 5.24 million people in the UK earn below the living wage.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman should be congratulated on bringing forward this debate. As large numbers of people are paid below the living wage, surely we should review the benefits system that seems to subsidise employers who pay very low wages. Should that not be looked at?
Chris White
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. How we improve the take-up of the living wage will address some of his concerns. I hope that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends will show how this can be a benefit not just to employees but to society in general.
Despite the comments made so far, there is a positive trend in the number of employees receiving the living wage. Research from Queen Mary university of London has shown that the total number has grown significantly during the last decade. The benefits of paying staff the living wage have been widely documented. Research shows that those working in organisations that are signed up to the living wage have better psychological well-being than those working for non-living wage employers. This research also found that two thirds of employees on the living wage reported improvements in their work, family life or finances.
Businesses have reported positive effects. London Economics found that 80% of employers noticed an increase in productivity. Further research revealed that employers reported improvements in staff retention and well-being. The Living Wage Foundation research found that 75% of employees reported increases in their work quality as a result of taking up the living wage. Also, half of employees felt that the living wage had made them more willing to implement changes in their working practices.
As many in the House will be aware, the Living Wage campaign began 15 years ago as Citizens UK. It felt there was a need to respond to the levels of deprivation being experienced by people despite the fact that they were in full-time work. Although record numbers of people are in work, the Low Pay Commission found that the majority of those in poverty had a job.
In 2010-11, the Living Wage Foundation was established to develop a system through which to recognise those employers who were paying their staff a living wage.
Accreditation is awarded to companies that pay the living wage to all directly employed staff and those regularly working on their premises.
In the private sector, provision of the living wage has become a key part of many organisations’ corporate social responsibility agendas and—dare I say it?—the social value agenda. I refer hon. Members to my private Member’s Bill—now the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012—which Members across the House supported, and I pay tribute to the work it has achieved. In Monday’s edition of The Guardian—that shows how consensual I am being—an article by Matthew Jackson specifically referred to the potential use of that Act in encouraging the uptake of the living wage:
“The living wage should be embedded into the way councils commission and procure goods and services. Councils can link procurement to strategic priorities to address low pay. They can have contracts that state potential suppliers must pay the living wage and they can use the Social Value Act…to encourage and cajole suppliers.”
That is an idea well worth pursuing.
This week it was announced that more than 1,000 companies now pay their staff the living wage—another milestone—which is more than double the number at the same time last year. It is an impressive result, and one that I hope marks a tipping point and the beginning of a cultural change.
I am pleased to note that the living wage campaign has consistently enjoyed cross-party support. This Government believe that work is the surest way out of poverty, and I share that view, as does the Living Wage Foundation. Government Departments have signed up to pay the living wage and Whitehall is now leading the way. The Department for Work and Pensions and HM Treasury are two of the Departments doing that. However, there is still some discrepancy between the pay received by contract staff, particularly cleaners, within Government Departments. I would like to take this opportunity to call on all Departments to follow the example of those that pay their contract staff the London living wage.
Guy Opperman
At the meeting of the all-party group on poverty this morning, along with the Living Wage Foundation and Citizens UK, I was lucky enough to meet a young man called Nana-Ben, one of the cleaners at the Department for Transport. He is not paid the living wage, and he spoke very eloquently of the problems he suffers as a result. The fair point to be made, however, is that he is one of 45 cleaners employed by Amy Cleaning, a large corporation that provides services to the Government. Do not those companies, as well as Government Departments, need to look at what they are doing so that we can get the change we all wish to see?
Chris White
I think that both parties have to work very closely on that. I believe that when contracts are being tendered there is certainly an opportunity that we should not miss. It is not right for either party to look for the lowest cost contract by excluding the living wage from the discussion.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He is making an important point about Government Departments paying the living wage through agencies. It is also the case—I am finding this with private companies as well as the public sector—that those agencies can be paid an equivalent of more than the living wage, when their costs are combined. Is that not something that the Government and other commissioners should look at, because the companies are not getting a great deal, and neither are their employees?
Chris White
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that thoughtful intervention. If payment is made with the intention of paying staff the living wage, that increase should feed through directly to the employees. One reason for promoting this discussion today is to see how such employers can be embarrassed into making the right decisions for the people who work so hard doing these jobs, which sometimes we do not notice, but we would if they were not done. I pay tribute to all the people who work under these circumstances. Their tremendous work should be recognised.
Here in the House, the living wage is paid to staff. That is a leading example of doing the right thing, not least in my office, where an intern worked for me. He was paid the London living wage until I took him on on a full-time contract. He is probably watching this speech, and I congratulate him on his excellent work.
The living wage logo, which some of us, probably inappropriately, are wearing in the Chamber this afternoon, is a badge of honour for many employers. I am pleased to note that when, like me, they finally get the badge, a number of MPs have stated that they would be happy to support and promote it.
The best way to illustrate some of the positive impacts of the living wage is to highlight examples of employers and staff who have directly benefited from it. The Living Wage Foundation has compiled a list of employees and employers who have spoken of the benefits and the effective results that they have experienced through paying, and being paid, the living wage. Most employees speak of a reduction in stress and anxiety about financial pressures. Employers point out that paying a higher wage may attract better staff whom it rewards for their hard work. There is obviously ultimate value for their businesses as a whole.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does any of the evidence collected relate to very small businesses? In my constituency, a lot of small businesses would be keen to pay the living wage, but they are concerned about the impact on their very small profit margins. Does any of the research undertaken indicate a benefit for those smaller businesses in communities such as mine?
Chris White
I will come to some of the data that have been provided by the Federation of Small Businesses, which paint a picture that is perhaps rosier than my hon. Friend might think.
I should like to recognise the organisations in my constituency that have been accredited as living wage employers: Alsters Kelly solicitors, St Margaret’s church in Whitnash, and Warwick Gates community church. I pay particular tribute to WAYC—the Warwickshire Association of Youth Clubs—of which I am a trustee.
I call on local authorities that are not accredited living wage employers to follow the example of many across the country that are. Too few local authorities have committed to paying their staff the living wage. This might seem a naive question to the Minister, but I wonder why some do and some do not. Local authorities that do not pay their staff a living wage should speak to those that do, and see at first hand the benefits that it can provide.
Take-up of the living wage has grown exponentially, but we need to think about how it can go further. We can achieve that by encouraging employers, sharing case studies and best practice, and generally promoting the benefits that I have stated. The voluntary nature of the living wage scheme is currently working well. At this stage, as we see the numbers increase, encouragement is perhaps a better start than compulsion. The Government are committed to raising the minimum wage and, through a provision in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill, cracking down on employers who are evading their statutory responsibilities by significantly increasing—from £5,000 to £20,000—fines for underpaying staff. I note that the Living Wage Foundation does not recommend the introduction of a statutory living wage on the basis that a strong minimum wage protects workers from exploitation. Instead, it seeks a position for the living wage as a voluntary, stretching target that employers can aspire to and on which they should be challenged, encouraged, and supported to achieve at a level beyond their statutory obligations.
I appreciate that it is not possible for all employers to pay a living wage. Its provision depends on many factors, including the size of the company. Some companies are in a position to take on the required increase in staff costs. Employers should not be unfairly criticised if they cannot afford to pay their staff the living wage. As the Institute of Directors has pointed out, we must be wary of stigmatising such companies. Nevertheless, as a general principle everyone should be able to share in economic growth. Employers who can afford to pay the living wage should be encouraged to do so. Perhaps the Minister can help with that.
Since the last election, businesses have created more than 2.1 million new jobs. Those businesses deserve our support and encouragement for their hard work and dedication in boosting our economy. Research by the FSB found that 77% of small firms pay all staff above the minimum wage and 53% pay them above the living wage. Another key statistic revealed by that research was that seven in 10 small firms expected to increase staff pay in 2014.
That brings me back to the purpose of this debate: the promotion of the living wage, which is good for employees, good for business and good for society. Businesses need to be encouraged, supported and shown the benefits. Let us have an ambitious target for the living wage next year. My final question to the Minister is: how can we encourage more employers to adopt the living wage so that many more can share in the proceeds of growth?
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
May I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) and the Backbench Business Committee on bringing this vital issue before the House in living wage week? It is right that this week we welcome the forward-looking approach of many employers across the United Kingdom who now pay the living wage and have more productive and happier work forces as a result. We should also pay tribute to the tireless work of living wage campaigners in the trade unions, the Churches, the growing number of food banks and in broader civic society in Scotland, in common with civic society right across the United Kingdom. They have never settled for second best and envisage a country where a decent day’s work is rewarded with a wage that can give people dignity and the chance of a better life.
It is not just in this country that the living wage movement is thriving. Although, sadly, the Democratic party suffered badly in the US mid-term elections this week, propositions for a big rise in the minimum wage were carried by voters in four traditionally Republican-voting states, meaning that a total of 14 states have this year adopted large rises in the minimum wage.
The low pay crisis, which this debate will shed new light on, means that the gap between the wealthiest and the working poor in our society is getting larger. That gap becomes a chasm when we consider what it means for child poverty. In my constituency, some 38% of children grow up in households that fall below the minimum acceptable income standards. I think of the mums who have to budget harder than any Chief Secretary to the Treasury ever will to buy new shoes for their children to wear to school. I think of the workers on completely unregulated zero-hours contracts, worrying about when they will be able to pay that heating bill which is still outstanding. I think of the mothers not able to get the child care that would mean taking a job that would leave them genuinely better off.
That picture of what poverty means for 5.3 million people in this country who are paid less than a living wage—the figure has risen by 150,000 in the past year alone—should spur all of us in this House to act. British workers are twice as likely as those in Switzerland and Belgium to earn below the low pay threshold. Wealth inequality in Britain has risen four times faster in the seven years after the financial crash compared with the seven years before it.
Low pay is not just crippling for social mobility or living standards; it is also terrible for our public finances. Some £21 billion was spent on tax credits to help 3 million working families with children in 2012-13, and the cost of in-work housing benefit claims doubled in real terms in the four years to this April. A low-pay economy is a symptom of a low-productivity, low-skilled economy. It is the young, female workers, those in lower skilled jobs, and part-time and hospitality workers who suffer most with that kind of economy, and that must change.
Across the country there are record levels of anxiety over poverty pay. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, one in three people this year has said that low pay is the biggest issue affecting the country. Fewer than one in five voters expect to benefit from any increase in economic growth this year. As we know, the link between productivity and wage growth was broken some time ago and needs to be restored if we are to have a sustained rise in living standards over the next decade.
Sadly, it is no longer the case that the main route out of poverty is a job. Many people across the country juggle several part-time jobs but are still poor. Two-thirds of children in poverty are in households where someone is in work. Hourly pay is now a bigger predictor of the chance of being poor than hours worked. The Government must focus on taking a stronger approach to improving social mobility through our education and skills systems across these islands, taking action on the quality and security of the jobs created in the economy, but also being far more proactive in boosting pay rates through forward guidance on the minimum wage—as adopted by the Low Pay Commission—and expanding the coverage of the living wage to as many people as we can. We also need a combination of action through policies to boost pay, but with the support of the tax and social security system. Although rising pay cuts reliance on state top-ups of income and brings in more tax revenue, the right approach for working families on low incomes is rising pay supported by a strong tax credit system.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I am listening intently to the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that no one on either Front Bench has been confident or assertive enough in spelling out what policies they can adopt to improve wages for low earners? Would he like more clarity from those on the Front Benches about what they will do with tax credits if people’s incomes rise?
Mr Bain
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting and important point. Before his intervention I was saying that we should consider the impact of such measures on a lone parent in work. If she were to take a low-paid job—perhaps just above the minimum wage—the tax credit system effectively gives her an average hourly rate of £13 to £14. If wages paid not just by public sector employers but by the private sector increase, the tax credit system will still have an important role in topping up people’s income, but reliance on the state will be somewhat less. That will relieve pressure on the taxpayer and lead to a more affordable social security system in the decades to come.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend accept that most people in this country do not pay taxes just to subsidise some fast food merchant or security company, and it is about time that we were better at getting that message across? When the centre right spoke a few years ago about “Broken Britain”—incidentally, I think the response from the centre left on that was inadequate—we forgot how such matters were dealt with on a corporate level, and we have to deal with that issue as well.
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is entirely correct. The proportion of company profits paid in wages has declined in the past 15 to 20 years, but it has declined particularly in the period since the financial crisis and in the four and a half years of this Government. Companies must be forward looking if they want to retain staff and if they want staff to develop. Employees want a job that becomes a career—they want progression in that firm or that profession. Paying higher wages benefits not just the employee, but the employer. Many countries are demonstrating that.
How can we act to end the low pay crisis? First, every level of government, whether a council, a devolved Government, a regional government in England through local enterprise partnerships, or central Government, should commit to using whatever policy levers they have to advance the living wage, to show an example to the private sector and the rest of society. It was therefore disappointing that the Scottish Government yesterday rejected the Labour party’s offer in the Scottish Parliament to extend further the use of the living wage through procurement policies. I hope they will reconsider. With 264,000 women in Scotland earning less than the living wage, it was wrong for the Scottish Government to reject that practical and helpful suggestion yesterday. The living wage is too big a prize for us to be deflected by partisan considerations. People expect all politicians to use every tool at our disposal to extend it to the widest possible number of people. I hope that devolved Governments, central Government and councils use those powers and achieve precisely that aim.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
We know that Labour’s tribal hatred of the Scottish National party is part of Labour’s problem in Scotland, but does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the Scottish Government pay the living wage to all public sector employees? They also have no compulsory redundancies. That is the SNP’s record. In government, the Labour party could not even match the minimum wage with inflation. That is Labour’s record.
Mr Bain
The hon. Gentleman knows that the hand of friendship is always extended between Labour and Scottish National party Members. I have reiterated that to him on many an occasion. It is wonderful to see him in his place, but I gently point out that Labour Members strived and sat up night after night in order to introduce the minimum wage in the first place. All my Labour party colleagues in the Scottish Parliament were asking in their proposal yesterday was for the Scottish Government to do what the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change does. I would have thought that that was a commendable approach, and I hope the Scottish Government will decide to adopt it.
Secondly, the remit of the Low Pay Commission needs to be shifted from simply setting a floor for wages to examining scope for raising low pay across the board. Different models have been suggested. We could change the commission’s remit so that it offers forward guidance on the scale of future rises in the minimum wage, or, as Labour Members have suggested, we could peg the minimum wage to around 58% of median wages by 2020.
The third tool that I ask the Government and the House to consider is incentivising employers to move to the living wage using the tax system in those sectors of the economy in which that can be afforded. The evidence is that, when employers pay a living wage, they experience long-lasting benefits in productivity and reduced staff turnover. We should use all the levers of fiscal policy. We should see what tax concessions can be given to businesses if they start paying the living wage. We should pump prime the system. I believe that employers and employees will benefit.
The fourth way to solve the low pay crisis is by making the right investments in skills to ensure that people do not remain stuck in low-paid jobs for ever. Important research from the Resolution Foundation establishes that 80% of low-paid workers never escape from low-paid work. There is therefore a premium on government at all levels, whether the UK Government, the Scottish Government or local councils, using the whole range of their powers to have the skills revolution that is needed in the UK.
Never let anyone say that voting does not matter when there are families who can be helped by the Government, the Low Pay Commission and employers acting together to secure a decent pay rise for millions of people. Never let anyone say democracy does not count when by our actions the UK could become a living wage country by 2025, as the child poverty and social mobility commission recommended last month. Never let anyone say that the right to vote means nothing when it can help to deliver the right to more decent work that genuinely pays a living wage.
We know what has to be done to end the scourge of poverty pay in this country. The question is whether we have the determination to do it. In supporting the motion before the House today, I hope we can say we must and we will.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I wholeheartedly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing the debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee. Some would say that Parliament does not often have important debates, but with the debate on Iran and now this debate on the living wage, I cannot think of a more important day to be in Parliament. I am delighted to be here to support my hon. Friend.
I was delighted, too, to have been part of a briefing that took place with the all-party group on poverty this morning with the good people from the Living Wage Foundation and Citizens UK, who came to the House of Commons and met several hon. Members, from many different political parties, to brief them on the living wage and to hear some of their experiences. I thank Emma Kosmin and Stefan Baskerville for coming in, along with the Rev. Angus Ritchie, Mike Kelly and Nana-Ben, who is the cleaner I mentioned earlier from the Department for Transport.
This is not just a debate about the living wage but a debate about tax thresholds and tax credits, but one must start with the wonderful news that the living wage has risen again this week. I was pleased to see the Mayor of London going to Kaffeine, a coffee shop in Great Titchfield street, to celebrate and support it. The Evening Standard pictured him with a large cake, which I am not sure is quite the message we are trying to get across, but the point is that he has been an enthusiastic and vocal supporter of the living wage, and quite right too.
I am sure the Minister will make the point that it is fantastic that it is this Government—acting as a coalition, to be perfectly fair—who have raised the tax threshold, which makes a massive difference to the pennies and pounds in the pockets of people earning a living wage or a minimum wage. That is the first direct impact. Clearly, there is a legitimate and correct debate about tax credits and how one takes them forward. I will leave others to discuss that in more detail, although I did set out my views on that in fairly lengthy detail in an article for the New Statesman in July 2013.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I enjoyed reading that article, in which I think the hon. Gentleman described himself as an old-fashioned left winger. I think he would acknowledge that the advantages of an increase in the tax thresholds he describes are significantly undermined for people on the lowest incomes by the fact that tax credits are withdrawn to such a large extent.
Guy Opperman
I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman, who sits on the Opposition Front Bench, is taking advice and instruction from me, a humble Back Bencher in this House since only 2010, but I take his point. The Government clearly need to address how taxing the individual is dealt with to avoid the problems he identifies so eloquently. I do not think it is quite as simple as he sets out. I accept and endorse the approach of the Chancellor: I think the fundamental is the tax threshold and then how we deal with tax credits. The harsh reality, as the right hon. Gentleman will know from the article he read, is that we have the bizarre situation where the Government step in and provide tax credits to the tune of approximately £4 billion for a variety of individuals when they should be encouraging an increase in wages and taking away tax. I will, however, leave that debate for another day.
We can provide local leadership. I am proud to wear the badge of the Living Wage Foundation, and I am a living wage employer in the House of Commons. I would like the foundation to accredit MPs who pay the living wage in order to incentivise us not only to talk the talk but to walk the walk. In addition, particularly in living wage week, I would urge all Members, if they have not done so already, to visit the living wage employers in their constituencies. I have met several of mine.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) asked about small employers, particularly in rural locations, but, as is well known, the Federation of Small Businesses supports payment of the living wage on a voluntary basis. I can give some local examples. Aquila Housing, in Gateshead, and several churches in my constituency have shown the benefits, and Mike Joslin, an employer in the north-east and across the country, would eloquently set out the benefit it has brought to his relatively small business. However, my best example is the fine coffee shop Tea and Tipple, in Corbridge, which has barely three or four members of staff. When the snows fell—they fall through to May in Northumberland—his staff fought through the snow to get to work and open the coffee shop. There was clearly a sense of camaraderie, loyalty and commitment to the business that he might not have seen had he not been a living wage employer. He went the extra mile for his staff, and they went the extra mile for him.
Of course, we should be pushing the large employers too. Today, I met Mike Kelly of KPMG, and the human resources directors of companies such as Barclays. We need to ask the large employers in our cities and regions why they are not living wage employers. When KPMG did the transfer in 2005-06, it found that approximately 700 members of staff were not being paid the living wage, but when it compared the turnover of non-living wage staff with that of living wage staff, it found that the turnover dropped from 47% to 24% in one year.
In my New Statesman article, I cited the example of Costco. Craig Jelinek, its chief executive, who pays the living wage in America, said:
“We know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimise employee turnover and maximise employee productivity, commitment and loyalty.”
I think he is right. Last year, when I spoke to Dominic Johnson, Barclays’ HR director, he was clear that it made sense for business.
When I go to my local Barclays in Hexham or any other branch, I am told that when cleaning staff are paid the living wage—traditionally it is the cleaning staff who slip through the net—capitalism takes over and, market forces being what they are, everyone wants to be a cleaner for Barclays, staff turnover drops through the floor, everyone feels much more valued and the offices are cleaned faster. Bizarrely, therefore, paying people more ends up costing the business less, and the quality of the product—the cleanliness of the offices—is improved.
There are, then, examples from big businesses and small businesses, and I am pleased that the public sector and the various Government Departments are leading the way. Some are quick to criticise Departments for not moving quickly enough, but it is extraordinarily difficult for some—the NHS, for example, has a vast array of subcontractors and private finance initiative contracts—to change.
But if I can move on, in the limited time we have, to allow others to speak—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Perhaps I can give the hon. Gentleman some guidance about how limited the time is. We have to conclude the debate so that we can hear the wind-ups within 50 minutes. I currently have seven other speakers, so I am going to ask people to be disciplined, so that nobody is squeezed out. The hon. Gentleman might bear that in mind, given that he has already been speaking for 10 minutes.
Guy Opperman
I will take barely a minute more, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The living wage is a campaign that unites all faiths. It unites Christians, Muslims, Jews and those of other faiths, and quite rightly so. When this was first looked at, it was decided that it was an idea whose time had come. I cannot endorse that more strongly.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). I suggest to hon. Members that if each speaker takes approximately seven minutes, nobody will be squeezed out before the end of the debate. I am not going to impose a time limit; I am going to ask each Member to watch the clock—telling the time is not that difficult, really.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will be quick.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), and I agree with a great deal of what he said. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing this debate. It is right that we should be debating this matter in living wage week. I launched my party’s policy on raising the minimum wage in line with the living wage in September, and Plaid Cymru was recently awarded living wage employer status.
The scale of the problem of low wages is, of course, enormous. The number of people on incomes below the living wage in Wales is 261,000, which is 24% of the population, as compared with 22% for the UK in general. Wales is just a little behind Northern Ireland, at 27%, the north-east of England, at 25%, and Yorkshire and the Humber, at 25%, and we are equal to the east midlands, at 24%. By contrast, 17% of the population in London live below the living wage, while in the south-east the figure is 18%. That means that the percentage in Wales is a third higher than in the most prosperous part of the UK. Among local authorities in Wales—I am sure the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) will be interested in this—32% of the population of Conwy and Powys live below the living wage, which is nearly a third of the population, while the figure is 30% in Monmouthshire and 29% for Gwynedd, my local authority. That contrasts with Cardiff, where it is 18%, which is equal to the proportion in London and the south-east.
Around a quarter of people in Wales, and more in my constituency, are in low-paid work. Establishing the living wage would be a great benefit to them. [Interruption.] Pardon me for coughing. The UK rate of low pay, at 22%, is a scandal in one of the world’s wealthiest countries and points to the inequality of distribution of income across the UK. [Interruption.] Pardon me. The UK is one of the most unequal countries in the world, and certainly in the European Union. Gross value added per head in inner-London west is 12 times what it is in west Wales and the valleys. That is the scale of the contrast, but that unenviable pattern is also repeated within Wales. Rates of low pay in Cardiff are less than two thirds what they are in adjacent areas. There are areas close to Cardiff to which one can easily travel within less than an hour where a large proportion of people are on low pay.
Albert Owen
I am being helpful by intervening on the hon. Gentleman, who may want a drink of water. He is quite right about periphery areas in the United Kingdom suffering from this problem. Does he agree that there should be a concentration of effort on the low-paid areas? One way for the Government to do that—I make an appeal that I have made regularly—is to move quality Government jobs to periphery areas to help to boost those economies.
Hywel Williams
I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but we also need to support small businesses, particularly in rural Wales, which are after all the engine of economic prosperity in such areas.
Some calculations—they are not mine, but those of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission—have shown that the current proposals will not have a huge effect on the percentage of people on very low pay. I note that the Labour party has said that the minimum wage should be £8 by 2020, which is unambitious to say the least.
Raising the minimum wage so that it is in line with the living wage makes economic sense. The Treasury currently subsidises businesses for paying poverty wages by topping up wages with tax credits. The model of having very low wages topped up the Government is unsustainable in the long term, and we should try to move away from it. After all, if the minimum wage was raised to the level of the living wage, the Treasury would be better off by not having to pay tax credits. Landman Economics calculates that that amount would be £1.5 billion per annum. That money should be reinvested in support for further employment. On the basis of some of the figures I have seen, reinvesting that amount would—using a multiplier of 0.9—provide 2,475 new jobs in Wales. Paying the living wage would therefore save the Government money, and investing that money would create more jobs and higher tax receipts.
I said earlier that businesses, particularly small businesses, have concerns about the living wage, as they did before the introduction of the minimum wage. They are concerned that business costs will go up, and that employment will go down. In the worst-case scenarios in analyses that I have seen, 160,000 jobs might be lost across the UK, including 8,000 in Wales. However, we must see that in the context of the growth in private sector jobs during the past three and a half years of fairly sluggish growth. In Wales, we have had 100,000 extra jobs. We might lose 8,000 jobs, but that has to be seen in the context of the large growth in private sector jobs.
There are other answers, of which the most obvious is economic growth. The UK Government say that the UK economy is growing—in difficult circumstances, I concede—and I think that it is fair, in times of growth, for the working poor to be among the first to benefit. I strongly believe that the concerns of businesses need to be addressed. My party’s policy includes support for small businesses, including through business rate relief, and an increase in local public procurement. We reckon it would create about 50,000 jobs if local authorities bought more cleverly and more locally. We also want a business bank for Wales to ensure that lending is more effective, and a private sector-led industrial development authority.
I want to refer in passing to a policy that has been available for a long time. In 2008, ECOFIN decided it was permissible to reduce VAT in certain labour-intensive sectors. Small businesses such as tourism and the building industry in my constituency would certainly benefit from a reduction in VAT to the 5% level that is allowed. I will not pursue that point now, but it is clearly one answer to the problems that small businesses face.
Lastly, increasing the purchasing power of lower-paid workers would be very good for local businesses. If people have an increase in their wages, they tend to spend the money locally, and there is a multiplier effect when such money circulates and multiplies. Plaid’s focus is on a Welsh economic recovery driven by investment and the creation of jobs that pay enough for people to live on. We will certainly be fighting for that between now and May.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
This is a great opportunity for me to support the Living Wage Foundation. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) for securing the debate, in which I want to make a few brief observations. I support the living wage, and I am thankful that one of my councils, Newark and Sherwood district council, has just become a living wage employer, which is a very good and progressive step.
I want to talk briefly about wages more generally and to make a few observations about conversations I have had with employers in my constituency since becoming an MP, drawing on my previous experience as a business man, growing up in a small business family. I have believed in the minimum wage for a long time—indeed, I believed in it before my party adopted it. In recent years, I have come to believe that the minimum wage is too low and that there is room in many sectors and many regions for it to grow to somewhere between the current minimum wage and the current living wage. Sadly, I do not believe that the living wage of £7.85 is doable for many businesses, particularly those in the midlands and the north—in areas such as the Nottinghamshire constituency that I represent—but there is room to bridge the gap. I hope that our Government and future Governments will work on that and become more ambitious than they have been before.
Secondly, it may not be a matter entirely for today, but I think this country has not only a low-wage issue; the primary issue is one of tax poverty. We have taxed the working poor too heavily for far too long, and reducing the taxation on current wage levels will provide a better standard of living. It may not be a standard of living to which many will aspire, but it is certainly a priority. This is not lost on the present Government, and I do not believe it is lost on the Opposition either. We have further to go along that route. If we can increase the tax allowances and improve the thresholds, we might be able to get all workers close to, if not quite at, the living wage. That should be a priority, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman).
There is clearly a problem—I am not immune to it in my own constituency, although much of Newark is relatively affluent—with wages. Wages have been very slack for a long time, particularly in certain sectors and in the midlands and the north. Only yesterday, I met a group of manufacturers in the heating industry in my constituency, and they reported that there has been very little pressure on wages in recent years. Many businesses were offering a small rise in wages purely to keep their work force happy and motivated—not because of significant market forces.
It has to be said that the No. 1 reason mentioned by the employers I have met to explain why wages have been kept low is immigration, mostly from continental Europe. With that, of course, come benefits such as keeping our economy competitive and keeping businesses going during the recession, but it is the primary explanation of why wages are unacceptably low for so many in this country. It is a problem, and I am concerned about the long-term prospects of low-skilled or lower-skilled workers. It is difficult to come up with easy answers to how to increase the wages of the sort of workers I meet at some of the larger manufacturing businesses in my constituency.
That said, there is scope for many businesses, even in the midlands and the north, to increase wages. I have met manufacturing businesses and SMEs that want to offer the living wage, but find it slightly too high. However, they could accommodate, as I suggested, somewhere between the national minimum wage and the living wage.
I am delighted that Newark and Sherwood district council is supporting the introduction of the living wage for its employees. There is clearly a role for public sector contracts, and I met a number of businesses that want to see local authorities making decisions—where there is some discretion on price—to promote employers who pay better wages, be it the living wage or somewhere slightly below it. They want businesses that pay more than the national minimum wage to be respected. I have encountered a number of examples of companies in direct competition with each other, with one paying just the minimum wage without trying to go any further, and the other at least trying to go further, along the lines I suggested.
Finally, I want to make a broader cultural point. On the basis of my experience in a small manufacturing business, I certainly found that one of the biggest impediments to raising wages was the cultural difference between the shop floor and the office. I have met a number of employers in whose businesses it is accepted that manual labour or shop-floor work, even if it is skilled or semi-skilled, is somehow inferior to jobs in the office next door. For many companies, that is the biggest impediment to their raising the wages of their lowest-paid workers just a little bit, to the living wage or something close to it.
We all overstate the difference between office workers and managers and those on the shop floor. I suspect that that has become worse over the last 20 years as more of us who become managers in businesses have been to a university and have no experience of life on the shop floor. Many see it as being slightly inferior. We underestimate the value of the skills involved in manual and shop-floor work. As time goes by, those workers build up very valuable skills. There is room for many ambitious companies with some imagination to raise the pay of their workers who receive the lowest wages, without necessitating increases for everyone else in the business. The biggest fear of many employers is that raising the lowest wages will mean that everyone else’s wages will have to rise proportionately. Good, imaginative managers will be capable of carrying the work force with them, and convincing office-based and higher-income workers that it is right to recognise the skills and commitment of their lower-paid colleagues. Unions will have a role in promoting that, working closely with employers.
All of us, in politics and in wider society, should try to change the attitude that has grown up and end the division between people who are on the shop floor, doing important manual labour, and people in offices. That is a message we should all convey to businesses in our constituencies.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful contribution from the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick).
I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing the debate. Like other Members, I am pleased that we are able to engage in it during national living wage week. I also welcome research findings that were published earlier this week by KPMG, documenting the extent and scale of poverty pay across the United Kingdom. In-work poverty is one of the biggest challenges that we face, and the knock-on impacts of low pay are a major factor in rising levels of child poverty and growing inequality. A large number of people in my constituency work in low-paid jobs, so I read KPMG’s report with great interest. It states that about 414,000 workers in Scotland are currently paid less than the living wage—about 19% of the work force.
Just under two thirds of those people are women—an issue that needs to be much further to the fore in this debate. We cannot tackle the problem of low pay without understanding the reasons why women are significantly more likely than men to be earning less than the living wage. The report contains a paragraph that notes the gender differentials in relation to low pay, but it does not offer any detailed analysis. We know that there is still a substantial pay gap between women and men throughout the labour market, not just in low-paid occupations. Arguably, however, the consequences are more acute at the low-paid end of the income spectrum, and have more detrimental knock-on social impacts.
In my view, the disproportionate number of women who earn less than a living wage is only partly attributable to the greater number of women who work part time. It is also due to persistent tendencies towards occupational segregation in certain job sectors. Lower-paid jobs in, for instance, catering, cleaning and cashiering are disproportionately taken by women. Some of those jobs are also in sectors in which there has been a huge drift towards zero-hours contracts in recent years. It tends to be women who take on responsibility as primary carers for dependants, which can also limit their availability, mobility and flexibility at work. All that is before we even think about the under-employment of women in the work place. Obviously, the issue of gender inequality is much wider than the scope of today's debate, but it is clearly both a driver and a consequence of low pay, and we need to take it much more seriously.
Many low-paid workers are in the service sector, and the vast majority are in private sector jobs. Left to its own devices, the market tends not to ensure that those workers receive adequate wages. If the Government are really serious about ending poverty pay, they need to consider how they can move the minimum wage towards a living wage. Legislating for a minimum wage that actually reflects the cost of living, and actually makes work pay, is the single most important thing they could do to tackle the problems associated with low pay.
The truth is that the minimum wage has not risen in real terms in nearly a decade, and every year since 2008 it has failed to keep pace with the cost of living. Had it done so, those in minimum wage jobs would have been more than £600 a year better off. If the living wage rises in line with projected rises in the consumer prices index, it will reach £8.57 an hour by 2019. We need to be realistic about that and more ambitious in ensuring that the minimum wage genuinely makes work pay for people. Let us make no mistake: we have heard proposals in recent weeks from the Labour party about raising the minimum wage to £8 an hour by 2020, but that is a pretty feeble increase, which will leave millions of people in poverty pay, below the living wage.
I would like to see responsibility for employment policy, including the minimum wage, devolved to the Scottish Parliament as part of the Smith commission process. I therefore ask the Minister to outline the Government’s view on that in his response to the debate. The Scottish Government are the only Government in the UK who have made a living wage an integral part of their public sector pay policy. They have ensured a living wage of £7.65 an hour for all direct employees across all Departments, and during the recent years of pay restraint they have ensured a minimum pay rise of £300 for those earning less than £21,000 per annum. I welcome the news that this will rise to £7.85 an hour in next year’s pay awards, in line with this week’s announcement.
There was some discussion earlier about challenges in respect of contracts that Governments issue to other suppliers, and there are constraints from existing legislation in other areas, including EU law.
Mark Lazarowicz
I respect what the hon. Lady’s party has done on this issue. In my local council, the Labour-Scottish National party administration together have adopted a living wage in Edinburgh. There are obviously legal arguments about what can be done, but the Scottish Government should do more on the issue of workers employed on contracts for which they are responsible. We have done something, but so far only 50 have actually improved. We must try to get agreement across the parties. A lot more needs to be done for these people, many of whom are among the lowest paid in the country.
Dr Whiteford
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Steps have been taken, and the launch of a fair work convention in Scotland in the last few weeks shows one way forward. On contracts, the Scottish Government have also at an early stage been encouraging procurement to take account not just of pay, but of other conditions. Councils that have faced the same legal constraints have been working to try to ensure this is built into contracts, and I believe some UK Government Departments, including the Department of Energy and Climate Change, have taken a similar approach in the absence of a mandatory process, trying to encourage suppliers to meet living wages for those workers.
Given that 93% of low paid workers are working for private sector employers, it is heartening to see increased numbers of employers signing up to the living wage accreditation scheme. In Scotland, the Poverty Alliance has been promoting take-up of the scheme and has succeeded in trebling the number of accredited employers over the last six months. However, there is scope for a lot more action on that front.
As has been said, there is a strong business case for private sector employers paying a living wage. As the authors of the KPMG report point out, the improvement in staff retention and morale associated with decent wages can easily outweigh any increase in the wage bill, and consequently can have a positive impact on productivity and help reduce business costs.
There is a fundamental dignity in having the living wage—a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Conversely, something has gone very wrong in our economy when people who are working long hours in sometimes physically demanding jobs are simply not earning enough to support themselves or their children. The Government must explore how they can bring the minimum wage up to a more realistic level—towards a living wage—and we also need to tackle the underlying inequalities that perpetuate poverty pay.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), and may I join other Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing this debate? Earlier today I was at a meeting of social enterprises in Birmingham, where people were also singing his praises, so he is having a very good day indeed.
This is an important—the living wage is important to my constituents in Bedford and Kempston—and timely debate because the wages of unskilled people in this country have been affected by the globalisation of our economy and have failed to keep pace with average earnings and, in many instances, with prices. The living wage is one of the useful tools that is now available to provide Governments and policy makers with insights into tackling that long-term trend.
Working tax credits and other elements of the general taxation system were introduced with the best of intentions to tackle the disparity in wages, but they have created unintended consequences of their own that need to be addressed. We now have a massive form of corporate welfare that provides disincentives to employers to increase wages. In some circumstances, it also creates disincentives for people to progress in their careers because what they gain in income can be lost through a reduction in benefits. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan mentioned the complete lack of ambition on both sides of the House to tackle this pervasive issue. We are struggling to gee ourselves up to find policies that will attract people’s attention as well as being economically sound.
I fear that we shall hear the usual waffle from those on the two Front Benches today. I usually prefer the waffle from my own Front Bench, and the Minister for Skills and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) is not known to be the most waffly of Ministers when it comes to speaking the truth. However, there is a tendency for policy makers to talk about the good stuff and not to look at the hard consequences of their actions. So I shall put some questions to my hon. Friend and to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) in the hope that they will address them when they sum up. I hope that they can be honest about their policies in this area in the run-up to the election.
If we increase wages, it is highly likely that unemployment will increase as a result. If that were to happen, what amount of unemployment would those on the Front Benches be prepared to accept as they pursued a policy of increasing the wages of unskilled workers? The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) talked earlier about how people look at the amount of money they have in their pocket at the end of each month. That comprises income, minus the bit that is taken out in taxes, plus the bit that is added on for tax credits. I have heard a number of hon. Members today trying to spend the same pound twice. They have claimed that the living wage would give people an increase in real wages while also helping to reduce the deficit because of the decrease in tax credits that would be required. Will my hon. Friend the Minister and the right hon. Member for East Ham make it clear what their mathematics are in this regard? How much would they be prepared to give in the form of an increased push on pay, and how much would they expect to recoup from that in the form of reduced benefits?
One of the most powerful ways of enhancing the living wage is to get local authorities to procure on the basis of contractors paying it. They need to be honest in their procurement to ensure that the employees providing the services they are contracting for can be paid the living wage. In this period of limited public expenditure, however, increasing the cost of providing such services while having the same budget will result in fewer services being provided. I again ask those on the two Front Benches what their honest policy would be on pushing local authorities to pay the living wage for the procurement of services. Would they be prepared to accept either an increase in expenditure or a cutting back of services?
We all want to provide employers with incentives to pay the living wage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington said, this wonderful campaign was started by Citizens UK, a fantastic organisation. The greatest difficulty is that, although we can roll out this policy in the public sector, it will need to bite in the private sector as well, and we have to be honest and admit that the fiscal tools that we have to incentivise private companies are quite limited. Labour party policy seems to involve a one-year hit that would bring forward reductions in employers’ national insurance contributions enabling them to pay the living wage in that year. Perhaps that would work, and perhaps not, but we do not have many tools. Again, I would be grateful if those on the two Front Benches could tell me what tools they are considering as they try to move more people on to the living wage. How will they persuade employers that that is a good thing to do?
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
On Monday, at the launch of living wage week in Birmingham, a young apprentice, Ben Jordan, walked up to the platform with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face, and told the story of what life was like on the minimum wage in his previous job and what life was now like on the living wage, working as an apprentice for Unity Trust bank. He said, “Before, I had to work seven days a week. I never had a weekend off. I struggled to see my friends or to go to see my football team. Now, I have a better standard of living and I’ve got time off at the weekend. I cannot tell you what that has meant for me.”
The event in Birmingham was remarkable and Citizens UK is a remarkable organisation; we had all the faiths and those of no faith. We had imams quoting from the Koran and Catholics quoting from the Bible, but everyone was making the moral case for the living wage. We had several of the 100 employers who have now signed up to the living wage; these are accredited employers in Birmingham, including the Witton Lodge Community Association, in my constituency. Crucially, the council is involved, including its deputy leader, Ian Ward. I am proud to say that the first thing the new council did in 2012 upon being elected to office was to introduce the living wage for all its directly employed employees. Subsequently, it introduced it for those working for schools and now ours is the first council in the country to insist that in future all contracts for care will be let on the living wage. As he has said, “Why is it that, historically, we have paid the least to those who care for those we value the most?” On Monday, we also saw an ambitious objective being set: 100 employers now is to become 1,000 employers this time next year. But we are an ambitious city and that is what we will achieve, not least because more and more employers are speaking out and saying, “This is right and it makes good business sense.”
In a previous debate on low pay, I referred to the fact that I am proud to have been a founder member of the drive for the living wage in London, working with what was then called TELCO—the East London Communities Organisation—and subsequently called London Citizens. I ran the union’s organising department. At first, we had 10 organisers—ultimately we had 12—who were cleaners themselves, and they were organising 4,000 cleaners in Canary Wharf and the City of London who were cleaning the boardrooms and toilets of those earning millions when they themselves were on the minimum wage. We also organised the cleaners of the House of Commons, and that led to the first strike in the history of the House of Commons, in order to win the living wage. I am delighted that now, under your leadership, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that of the Speaker, the House of Commons is an accredited living wage employer, so setting an example to the rest of the country.
Through that experience I saw at first hand just what life was like on the breadline. I met the cleaner who said, “I have to do three or four jobs from Canary Wharf. I sleep on the bus from one job to the next. I never see my kids.” I met the cleaner here in the House of Commons who, when we were going outside during the campaign to win the living wage, said, “I’d prefer not to, Jack.” When I asked why, he said, “I don’t want my community—my people—to know that I am but a minimum wage cleaner.” More recently, I sat down with three women in the Erdington food bank, two of whom were on the minimum wage. One said, “I am trying to bring my kids up. I work hard, day in, day out, but it is so tough for me because I am on the minimum wage. Jack, for me, it is not a life. I simply exist.”
The case for the living wage is overwhelming. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) for initiating this debate, in which we have heard some thoughtful contributions from across the House, including those from the hon. Members for Newark (Robert Jenrick) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller). We need to make the argument with force. First, the living wage is right for the worker, as it is about dignity at work. Secondly, it is right for the worker’s family, because it is about giving the worker more time to spend with their family. Thirdly, it is right for the taxpayer. We have nearly 120,000 working poor in Birmingham who have to claim housing benefit to pay their rent, because they are on low wages. Fourthly, it is right for the local economy. Low-paid workers who earn more spend their money locally, and that helps to boost local economies. Fifthly, it is right for the employer. All my experience in the trade union movement tells me that the living wage reduces turnover, induces greater co-operation, facilitates greater productivity and reduces absenteeism. Some employers I have met have been initially reluctant to take on board the concept of a living wage, but when they have seen it work in practice, they have said, “The living wage is good for business.”
Action is necessary, not least in the city that I am proud to represent. One in three women in Erdington earns less than the living wage—in the midlands, the figure is one in four. But progress is now being made. It is how we drive it forward to the next stage. I welcome the Labour Front-Bench team’s proposals, which include not only incentivising employers to introduce the living wage but using public procurement power. It is crucial that we give a clear lead on the matter, because this is also about the kind of country that we wish to live in. Do we really want to live in a country where workers sleep on the bus between jobs and where workers never see their families? Those workers pay a very heavy price for existing on poverty pay.
In conclusion, let me pay tribute to those pioneers of the living wage—the remarkable people of TELCO, London Citizens and now Citizens UK—because they have served this nation well. Crucially, we want a great national will that says that we do not want to live in a country characterised by poverty pay. Our country best succeeds on the basis not of a low wage, low productivity economy but of a high wage, high productivity economy.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). I have known and worked with him for many years and know how hard he has fought for those on low wages throughout the country. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on the thoughtful way he opened this debate, and the Living Wage campaign on its work. This is the living wage week, which brings together a cross-section of employers, employees, campaigners and communities under the umbrella of Citizens UK.
Unfortunately, low pay and in-work poverty are rising. We all see it in our constituencies. There has been a squeeze on wages. With wages being held down and energy and fuel costs rising, many families are really struggling. As has been said, the next Labour Government will introduce incentive measures to help businesses introduce the living wage through make-work-pay contracts, which is a positive way forward. We need to go back to the pioneering days of 1997 when we as a Government introduced the minimum wage legislation. I raise this as someone who has been involved in low pay issues. Before I was elected to this House, I was a manager of a centre for the unemployed in an area of high unemployment. I saw at first hand how dignity was taken away from people and their families.
When the national minimum wage was first introduced in my area, more than 2,000 families saw their wages doubled. That liberated those people. They went from £1.80 an hour to £3.60 an hour—a huge increase.
I have many friends in small businesses, particularly in the catering industry. They were worried about the impact that this would have on their businesses. But they told me a short period afterwards that their staff who had received this increase in pay were spending more in their premises. There was already a big impact on the economy and unemployment did not go up. I am sorry to have to make some party political points about this, but as an activist I remember the debates in this House when it was said, as the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) did, that there would be a huge rise in unemployment. The Leader of the House warned that the minimum wage would increase unemployment by a million. The opposite happened. Employment grew by 1 million, because the economy was stimulated. That economic stimulus has been lacking in the last few years.
Conservative Members have made thoughtful contributions, and I agreed with much of what they said. They talk about raising income tax thresholds, but at the same time they have increased VAT, which is a regressive tax. That disincentivised people from spending in the economy. Let us be honest, if we ask people on that threshold whether they want an adequate living wage so that they can pay income tax to contribute to the welfare state and to services for their families and communities, or to be held down, not paying tax, we know that the answer will be that they want to contribute and pay income tax into a better community and a better society.
We have heard jibes—the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) is not here—about Labour lacking ambition. Again, I have to say that when the minimum wage legislation was going through the House, it was not the nationalists who did the heavy lifting. They were absent. I was a candidate at that time and an activist, and in my constituency, Plaid Cymru was saying one thing to the small businesses and another to the trade unions. We have to be brave and bold to lift people out of poverty. The incoming Labour Government set that direction. They raised the minimum wage as part of a suite of measures to encourage businesses and local authorities to do likewise and to pay the living wage throughout the country.
Authorities have to take the lead, and Labour authorities are beginning to do so. For example, Islington and York, which I visit, have living wage zones. This is real action, and the local authorities encourage that. Shop windows in those zones are proud to display the badge worn by many hon. Members today. I do not see many badges in the window saying, “I don’t pay the living wage.” The living wage instils competition and good will, and other businesses follow suit.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am pleased that my hon. Friend mentioned Islington. My borough council has been assertive in ensuring that all suppliers and contractors pay the living wage, and that has now been achieved in the domiciliary care services and it has a knock-on effect in the wider community. It is a great achievement and I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning it.
Albert Owen
I was going to mention only York, but I saw my hon. Friend so I added Islington to the list, having done my research beforehand. He is absolutely right. We all want to incentivise companies to do this. Small businesses do have fears, but we must allay those and give them help.
The tax credit system worked. It became cumbersome and technical and there were problems with it, but it was there to help people into work. At the end of the day, if we want to restore dignity to people throughout the UK, we need a higher living wage for people. In areas, such as my own, on the periphery, the Government have a role. As part of real devolution they can move jobs out. We talk about academic devolution, but real devolution is the Government, where they have a role, moving jobs and paying high wages so that others will follow suit. We will then have less in-work poverty, greater decency and a better society. A living wage improves the country that we are proud to live in.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing this very good debate. There will be Members of the House who, like me, grew up in a home in low pay, by which I mean that there were moments when we did not have 50p for the meter—utilities in homes like ours were metered back in the ’70s and ’80s—so the electricity went off and we lit a candle. It was not always clear that the fridge would be full. I remember at age 12, when my father left our home, focusing on my mother’s salary, which was just above £12,000 at the time, and realising that it would be a struggle to survive on that amount. That was in the mid-1980s, and here we are in 2014.
We are talking about the prospect of a good life, not being wealthy or having lots of money, and about people doing typical jobs, so not just cleaners and security guards, but secretaries and people working in shops. Those are the kinds of jobs for which the call for a living wage has become hugely important and desperately needed in our country. I remember when the cleaners who worked in my local college came to see me. They were women who looked like my mother, and they were pleading with me to help them retain their jobs because the college had said that in order to increase their pay to the living wage, which was their demand, it would have to cut their hours to such an extent that they would be working only 32 weeks a year. Those women did not know how they would survive. Because of the fight along with the GMB union, we got them the living wage.
I also think of the paradox in my constituency of a premiership football club that spent £103 million on new players after Gareth Bale left last summer but still cannot manage to pay its bar staff, caterers, security guards and cleaners the living wage. I do not want to single out my local club, because that is true of the entire premiership, in which we see millions of pounds spent week after week, and in which some players can earn as much in two hours as someone on the living wage earns in a whole year. That is the country in which we are living in 2014. Frankly, it shames our nation that we are having this debate so long after the birth of the welfare state.
In these times we must recognise—Opposition Members, too, must recognise this—that it cannot be right that in our last year in office we were spending £21.5 billion on housing benefit. Why should British taxpayers top up the incomes of people living in homes when surely it is British employers who should be paying that sum? This is a profound debate that has begun in relation to a living wage, but it also cuts to much bigger questions about the kind of society we live in, and the kind of society that we must surely become, in this first part of the 21st century.
Linked to that is the reason why there are people in Britain who increasingly want to travel off to fringe political interests, because when politicians use phrases such as “affordable housing”, they do not see housing that is in any sense affordable. In Kingston and Richmond, here in London, rents have gone up 40% in two years. In my borough of Haringey they have gone up by 20% in two years. The idea that £1,400 a month is affordable is a joke to most families in this city. It takes the lion’s share of the little money that they have. Of course, it is spent in another way, because these parents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) highlighted, are unable to spend time with their children. As a consequence, many children are raising themselves in their homes, with all the disastrous outcomes that can meet them along the way. Paying the living wage is therefore essential.
This also speaks to the nature of our economy. Here in London, 88% of the economy is in the service sector. The phrase, “the service sector”, sounds kind of nice when we say it, but when we peel it back we see that a smaller and smaller proportion is in the public sector. It is shrinking because of cuts to local government and the health service—the public services that we all recognise. The lion’s share of the service sector is retail. Lots of folk are trapped in jobs that not only do not pay well but do not allow them to be clear about their journey to a job that can pay well. I grew up in a house where my mother made that journey—her salary went from up £12,000 to the £20,000s over a 15-year period. I am very grateful to Unison for helping her with the early Unionlearn schemes and to the shop stewards who pushed her by saying “Rose, you can do better by these kids—you can move on.” I remember the City and Guilds certificate on our wall. Indeed, I have still got it somewhere in the loft; I will have to dig it out after this debate.
Skills are essential. Yet when we look across the country at further education and listen to debates on it in this House, it is predominantly about young people. Where are the night schools? Where are the FE colleges that are open at 10, 11 or 12 o’clock at night when ordinary working people can skill up in that way? Is it simply that these jobs have left our economy because that is the nature of the hourglass economy? Yes, we call for a living wage because it is essential, but we must also ask profound questions about why our economy seems to be leaving so many people in work but in poverty.
London has the biggest inequality of all the regions of the country. This city has 640,000 families on low pay. That is a major challenge to its future prospects that we will surely need to do something about over the coming years, and we can do it only if we ask challenging questions about the economy. Over the coming months and years, we must push employers hard and firmly to meet their obligations on a living wage. We must see many, many more join this fight.
I applaud Citizens UK for all its work. I applaud the unions, the Churches and the faith communities for pushing and pressing for more. However, we in this House will have to heed what the public are telling us if we do not want to see fringe parties occupying this debate with a very simple message: “Blame it on the immigrants; we’ll solve the problem by pulling out of Europe.” I wish it really were that simple. The problems are deep and profound, and we must meet this need as quickly as possible.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
We have had a very good debate. Like others, I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing it and thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling it to take place during this living wage week.
In 1996, together with 1,300 other people, I was at the launch in York hall, Bethnal Green of the East London Communities Organisation—TELCO—which has rightly been mentioned a number of times. That was, and is, a coalition of the kinds of groups listed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy)—faith groups, schools, trade union branches, and community groups. Five years after it was established, it took the view—we should point out that it drew on 100 years of Catholic social teaching—that a living wage was the answer to big social problems facing our community in east London. It recalled the decisive intervention of Cardinal Manning in the London dock strike in 1889. In 2001, TELCO, together with Unison, which has also been mentioned in this debate, established the family budget unit at York university, which calculated the initial level needed for the living wage to support an east London family with an acceptable standard of living—it was £6.30 at the time. In 2004, Ken Livingstone established the living wage unit at City hall and its work has been maintained, I am pleased to say, by the current Mayor.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) gave some telling examples of the impact on individuals of the adoption of the living wage. In the Living Wage Commission’s final report in June, the commission chair and Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, wrote of one young man the commissioners had met that he
“and his children could be a family again.”
I think it was that potential to support and enable family life that first attracted TELCO members in my constituency and elsewhere in east London to the idea.
As we have been reminded by the hon. Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and for Newark (Robert Jenrick), employers have found that paying the living wage can make good business sense, generating savings by boosting productivity and improving morale. Adam Marshall of the British Chambers of Commerce and Guy Stallard of KPMG, which has been mentioned a number of times in this debate, have served with the Archbishop of York and the TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady on the Living Wage Commission.
The problem of low pay has worsened sharply over the past few years. The value of the national minimum wage has fallen in real terms—the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) was right to remind us of that—and average annual wages have fallen by more than £1,600 in four years. The number of people paid less than the living wage has gone up, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) reminded the House, and low-paid workers, their families and communities are struggling as a result. As we have also been reminded, that also piles up costs for the Exchequer, as more people in work have to rely on the social security system to make ends meet.
Last month, the Resolution Foundation published its report “Low Pay Britain 2014”, which presents a great deal of information. It points out that
“Britain continues to stand out as having one of the highest incidences of low paid work in the OECD”.
We define low pay as less than two thirds of the median. Some 21% of full-time employees in the UK are in low-paid work, the highest proportion, jointly with Ireland, in the European Union. The figure is 18% in Germany, 10% in Italy, 9% in Switzerland and 5% in Belgium. This is a big problem and it is getting worse. We need a major change in direction and a concerted national effort to address the challenge of low pay. That is what Labour wants to deliver.
Alan Buckle, the former global deputy chair of KPMG, produced his independent report “Low Pay: The nation’s challenge” for the Labour party this May. He called for
“a national mission to tackle low pay and build an economy with fewer low skill, low paid jobs and more high skill, high paid jobs.”
He set out 10 recommendations for that national mission, including a five-year target to raise the minimum wage to a higher proportion of median earnings and looking at a higher rate for sectors that could afford it.
Since then, as we have been reminded, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has proposed that the Low Pay Commission be given the forward guidance advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) to set a target to increase the national minimum wage from 54% to 58% of median earnings by 2020. That is forecast to increase it to £8 an hour by October 2019, which will be a very important step towards the national goal of halving in-work poverty by 2025 and building an economy that works for all. Such a clear, long-term target will give businesses time to plan and adjust.
I did not agree with the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), although, like other Members, he made a thoughtful speech. He said it would be a good idea to raise the national minimum wage to the level of the living wage, but I think we would lose a large number of jobs if we did that. However, Alan Buckle does argue for the Government to support and promote the living wage, recognising not least that the Exchequer gains when pay rises. He supports Labour proposals for the “make work pay” contracts referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), under which companies that sign up to become living wage employers would gain a first-year tax rebate of up to £1,000 for every low-paid worker who gets a rise, effectively repaying to the employer the first-year Exchequer gain in tax take from the increase as an incentive.
Buckle also suggests that all central Government Departments should become accredited living wage employers as a first step towards a requirement to paying the living wage to all staff working on Government contracts, and he tentatively suggests that firms bidding for contracts above a certain size might also be required to pay the living wage. He proposes that the Low Pay Commission be given a broader remit, for example to look at the causes and impacts of low pay, and make recommendations to the Government on how to tackle it. He advocates improving enforcement of the national minimum wage, and estimates that a quarter of a million people are still paid less than that, despite the law. He calls for the Low Pay Commission to assess annually the effectiveness of enforcement, and rightly calls for local authorities to have enforcement powers for the national minimum wage, alongside HMRC. My local authority—Newham—is among those arguing that pay below the statutory minimum is closely linked to other nuisance activity by non-compliant businesses, and that national minimum wage enforcement powers would sit well alongside other local authority powers.
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington rightly pointed out the variety of positions taken by local authorities on this matter. Labour councils have been leading the way in supporting and promoting the living wage—28 Labour-led councils have become accredited living wage employers, paying their in-house and subcontracted staff a living wage. As we have heard, dozens more authorities are paying the living wage to their employees, or have committed to move towards doing so.
We have heard about local authorities in York and Islington organising living wage zones, where people come together to plan strategies to support local private sector employers in the area to move towards a living wage. This week, in a particularly noteworthy move, Brent council became the first council to offer discounts on business rates to firms that commit to paying their employees the living wage.
From its roots in east London, the living wage campaign has won impressive support among employees, trade unions, community groups and employers. The Living Wage Foundation—the initiative established by Citizens UK—now accredits more than 1,000 living wage employers. The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington pointed out that the number of FTSE-accredited employers has risen from four to 18—a dramatic rise—and that has been a striking success. However, the Government also need to address the challenge of low pay. It is not enough for Ministers to sound sympathetic; we need a concerted national effort, with the Government, employers, local authorities and communities working together. In that way we can build an economy that works not just for a few at the top, but for all working families.
The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)
It is a pleasure to reply on behalf of the Government to this thoughtful and interesting debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) not only on securing this debate during living wage week, but on his work, month in, month out, as deputy chair of the all-party group on poverty.
This has been an exemplary Backbench Business Committee debate. It has been polite, well researched, thoughtful and subtle, except when we were subjected to the ritual of Labour Members and nationalist party Members from other nations in our fine Union taking lumps out of one another. That is always a source of light relief for Government Members, so I make no objection.
It is fair to say that there is not a single Member of the House who does not want everyone in the country to command at least the living wage for their work. We share that goal, so the questions that we have debated so well today are how we get there, and how we ensure that the steps we take make progress and do not put at risk everything we have achieved.
We must remember that this country and economy were subjected to the most appalling shock. We lost 6% of our GDP as a result of the financial crash and the great recession that followed. The Low Pay Commission has not been able to recommend significant increases in the minimum wage until this year—it is important for me to say to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) that this year the increase was higher than the average increase in wages, but she is right that this is the first time for a few years that that has been possible. The Low Pay Commission has been unable to make such a recommendation until this year because of the weakness of the economy and the massive increase in unemployment.
Fortunately, that situation has improved—it is by no means perfect, but it has improved. We have a strong and stable growing economy. This economy has created 2 million jobs. In the past year, we have seen the largest fall in unemployment ever. I say that not just to blow the Government’s trumpet, as Ministers always do—a little trumpet blowing is part of the job—but because nothing makes a better backdrop for achieving sustainable increases in the minimum wage and the living wage than a stably growing economy that creates employment.
Once a person is in a job, it is far more likely that they will be able to secure increases in wages than if they are receiving unemployment benefit—it is much less likely that someone can go to an employer and say, “I do not want that job at that wage,” and persuade them to increase the wage. If someone is in a job and has worked well for a number of months, and if the employer looks around and sees that there are not quite so many people eager for that job, the ability of every employee and the unions who represent them to secure sustainable increases in wages is far greater. The most important thing, therefore, is a strong and stable economy that creates jobs.
The second most important thing is for those who can afford to pay more than the minimum wage to lead the way and set an example. Many hon. Members have mentioned the role of the Government, Departments, local authorities and major businesses in our economy. Others mentioned examples of businesses that can afford to pay more than the minimum wage and should, and that perhaps should know better, not least the premiership football clubs mentioned so eloquently by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy).
I make no pretence that I had anything to do with this because I have only recently been appointed, but I am delighted to be able to say that the two Departments in which I am a Minister—the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—are living wage payers for all their direct employees. That is important. The Department for Education also ensures that agency workers are paid more than the living wage. However, as hon. Members have pointed out, under some contracts—often cleaning or security contracts—we cannot guarantee that everybody receives more than the living wage.
We need to work on that, but we should not fool ourselves by thinking there is a simple lever we can pull. I believe almost any contract, if it is thought about intelligently, can be reconfigured in such a way that an equivalent level of service can be achieved without increasing the number of people employed, and that therefore productivity improvements can be sought that will make it possible for a contractor to pay a very slightly higher wage. I therefore do not believe there is necessarily a choice between lower service from contractors or lower wages. It is possible to maintain or even improve services and pay better wages, but it is not simple and it is not easy. The way to do it is by working with one’s contractors, explaining to them one’s hopes, ambitions and aspirations and hearing from them other ways we can perhaps change our demands as employers and contract letters, so that they can afford to pay those wages.
We heard examples from many hon. Members, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), of major companies that found a striking improvement in their ability to motivate and retain staff after they agreed to pay them the living wage. It is fantastic that companies such as KPMG and Costco are now willing to come out on the record and say that this is their experience. It is, however, very important that we understand that those companies may be in a position where they can do that, and that not every small and medium-sized business in the country is in that situation. It is through argument and example that the case is best made, not by imposition. That is why the Low Pay Commission does not believe that imposing a living wage, or making the national minimum wage rise to the level of the living wage, would be sensible.
Finally, before I give my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington a chance to sum up, it is important for us to be very careful about what we say about the minimum wage and how increases are projected or promised. One of the reasons that the fears raised by my party on the minimum wage were not realised—Members were right to say that it was very controversial when it was introduced—and why most business groups in the country now support the national minimum wage is the way it has been constructed. The Government submit evidence to the Low Pay Commission, which produces recommendations, and the Government normally follow those recommendations. It is very important that we stick with that approach and do not start imposing on the Low Pay Commission politically driven expectations that cannot be delivered in our economy.
Albert Owen
On the national minimum wage, is the Minister saying that his party in local government, and many other parties where they are in control, should introduce this and build it in where they are not bound by the Low Pay Commission?
Nick Boles
Wherever they responsibly can, yes. Forgive me, but I must let my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington sum up.
Chris White
This debate has been about the promotion of the living wage, and thanks to the contributions from both sides of the House, we have very much had that debate. I am grateful to Members who shared their experience and supported the development of this very important discussion. We have heard evidence of how important and good the living wage is for individuals, businesses and society. I think we all realise that we need to go further. It is important to remind ourselves that this is not just about living wage week; we need to be discussing and thinking about the living wage all year round. To all Members who took part, thank you very much indeed.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered promotion of the living wage.
Business without Debate
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Draft protection of charities bill (joint committee)
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Sainsbury’s Roadworks (Belgrave, Leicester)
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I am most grateful to the House for the opportunity to raise the important matter of the roadworks in Belgrave, Leicester. I am delighted to see the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with us this evening, and I thank her for being here.
The Belgrave road is known as the “Golden Mile”. Not only is that description known throughout the city, but its reputation is national and international. People come from every part of the world to this shopping hub, with its vibrant community, unique atmosphere and specialist stores: whether for saris at Saree Mandir, Ladlee or Milans; to buy the most delicious sweets made in Britain at Sharmilee or Bobby’s; or to shop at local stores such as Radia’s. I can remember the day I first set foot on this road, the day after being selected as the candidate for Leicester East in June 1985. I was struck by its charisma. The House will understand, therefore, why the road is of such significance to me and to Leicester.
Unfortunately, the Golden Mile is being tarnished by Britain’s second biggest retailer, Sainsbury’s, once affectionately known as the nation’s grocer. The roadworks it agreed to carry out have been repeatedly delayed and appallingly managed, leaving the area at certain times impassable. This is not some cul-de-sac, but an arterial road to Nottingham and a gateway to Leicester, the eighth and 12th-largest cities in the United Kingdom.
I have received hundreds of complaints and criticisms about how Sainsbury’s has dealt with this issue. We are dealing with a company that recently announced profits that have risen to £898 million. By the end of this debate, it will have made a further £50,000 in profit. Its customers are the people of the United Kingdom, but those in Leicester are being treated with contempt.
A deal was made between Leicester city council and Sainsbury’s in 2011 that gave Sainsbury’s planning permission for a new megastore in Rushey Mead. This section 106 agreement allowed for the alteration and improvement of highways around the Belgrave circle, with Sainsbury’s paying for the works. From the very beginning, there has been a lack of openness about how the proposal from Sainsbury’s was received and how this agreement was reached—for example, we have never been given firm answers regarding costs. I have made a freedom of information request for the relevant correspondence between Sainsbury’s and Leicester city council, but it was refused by the council, and I have subsequently appealed. I am prepared to go all the way on this. This was a simple request and can be easily found with a keyword in a search engine. Why is my request being blocked?
The proposals to demolish the flyover were initially welcomed, because of assurances by Sainsbury’s that the works would be completed in a short time and to a set timetable. The community, local councillors and I saw this as an opportunity to regenerate the area, because we accepted Sainsbury’s cast-iron guarantees. Unfortunately, however, Sainsbury’s has focused little of its attention on ensuring that the agreed local authority developments are completed to the agreed time scale, which has resulted in the chaos in Belgrave. Its focus has been elsewhere—at the bank.
At the other end of Belgrave road towards Rushey Mead, Sainsbury’s managed to open its new store exactly a year ago, causing huge disruption to the people and businesses of Rushey Mead. It seems where profits are concerned, Sainsbury’s, sadly, has little interest in the communities it operates within. However, the most protracted problem with the developments has been the completion of roadworks following the demolition of the Belgrave flyover. The flyover has long been seen as a dividing line between Belgrave and the city centre.
The demolition began on 15 February this year, with a publicly consulted “short” timetable of nine weeks. The disruption to the area was considerable, but the public put up with it because it was the right thing to do for that short period. To his credit, the mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby—whom you will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, as a former Member of this House and to whom I pay tribute for his vision and strategic approach—was right to suggest that the flyover should come down for the long-term benefit of the Belgrave area. He wants one city, without artificial dividing lines. Local people have subsequently told me that, without the shadow of the flyover, their homes now see daylight.
That period of disruption would have been tolerable as a necessary part of the wider deal if subsequent developments had been completed as agreed by Sainsbury’s. Instead, it has had a catastrophic effect on businesses and residents. The gridlock has been damaging for stores at one of the busiest times of the year. Only this morning, I heard Tricia Castaneda, of the Bridle Lane tavern, which is just in the Belgrave area, on Radio Leicester. She said that she had lost £40,000 in trade as a result of this disaster. Pitched as an opportunity to dramatically improve links from Belgrave road to Leicester city centre, the subsequent and ongoing road works have been exactly the opposite. Sainsbury’s announced in January that the majority of the works would be completed in October, in time for the Diwali celebrations. Leicester has the largest Diwali celebrations outside India. Some 20,000 people travel to the Belgrave road from all over Europe to see the best lights outside Mumbai being switched on, so this is no small meeting. It is genuinely a big deal.
The management of the scheme has been a disaster. The works will not now be completed, we are told, until March 2015. The oversight of the project has been hopelessly managed, with Sainsbury’s representatives failing to monitor the progress of Longcross, the contractors. What an extraordinary contract Sainsbury’s entered into with Longcross, which had already caused disruption in Rushey Mead. It faces no penalties for delays to the Belgrave project, removing any urgency to complete the works on schedule. From the perspective of many residents and businesses, it seems that for three months this year nothing happened at all. I am sure that Members will agree that there is nothing more irritating than queuing at road works, only to find nobody actually working there.
The primary interlocutor between Sainsbury’s and the community was a man called David Mills, whose impressive title is head of property communications—an odd title, which implies that property can talk. Sadly, he has not been the best possible ambassador for Sainsbury’s. Mr Mills has overseen an appalling lack of communication with the people of Belgrave, as he and his colleagues have failed repeatedly to meet members of the public. Indeed, an attempt to hold a public meeting on 7 October almost ended in farce, when Mr Mills sent my office in Leicester an e-mail confirming his attendance and then rang me to say he could not attend, as the city council had told him not to. That was subsequently found not to be the case. Not only had the mayor said no such thing, but he himself attended the meeting on the seventh, listened carefully to the public’s concerns and was congratulated for doing so.
Sainsbury’s has also failed to keep residents or businesses informed of the delays, nor has it explained the slow progress, the main cause of inconvenience and loss of trade in Belgrave. If Sainsbury’s thinks that is acceptable, it is off its trolley. The retail giant’s defence to the charges has been to point to a series of complicated letters and leaflets that it claims to have distributed around Belgrave, and to the hotline that it has provided. In my view and that of local residents, working in that way—and through its public relations firm, Gough Bailey Wright—was the wrong decision. It should have listened to local people by turning up to public meetings and hearing what they had to say.
In addition to those failings, the original development plans were changed without the public being properly consulted or, indeed, informed. Martin Fletcher, the head of highways at Leicester city council, has said that following the demolition of the flyover, the council “took stock” of possible changes. A decision was then made behind closed doors to add extra lanes to the planned roadworks. There was no logic to this decision. It was made without hearing what local councillors and residents wanted to say at public meetings. That ensured that the changes greatly worsened the already substantial transport problems in Belgrave. Most importantly, the council did not do what it should have done, which is to come to see local people and explain what it was doing.
The other council officer with a fancy title and large salary is Mr Andrew Smith, director of planning and transportation. Years ago, when I asked Mr Smith about the site in Rushey Mead, he told me that the matter was highly confidential and that he could not reveal any information about who was going to buy it. Eventually, behind the backs of local representatives and local people, the land was sold to Sainsbury’s. It is people like Mr Smith—with his inability to be open and transparent when asked simple questions, or to answer them with a straightforward answer—who give local government a bad name. I hope that he and his department will learn lessons from what has happened. We have still not been given any indication about what Sainsbury’s plans to do with its old site.
As you may by now have gathered, Madam Deputy Speaker, the whole community is united in its disappointment at how this matter has been handled. A few specific individuals have led the campaign of local residents and worked tirelessly to support residents and businesses. I want to thank Mr Dharmesh Lakhani, the chair of the Belgrave Business Association, Councillors Manjula Sood and Rashmi Joshi, Councillor—and now lord mayor of Leicester—John Thomas, former Councillor Mo Chohan, community spokesperson Ratilal Govind, and local business owners Suresh Gosai, Karan Modha, Atul Lakhani, Mehul Visram, Ruksi Patel, Rajinder Bhullar and Jayesh Mistry. My particular thanks go to the mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, for always stepping in to help when we requested his support and for his unwavering commitment to the people of Belgrave.
The residents of Belgrave want this shambles to be resolved, and they want action to be taken. We need a clear timetable for the completion of the works, with an immoveable deadline of 31 December 2014. The roadworks should have been completed by that date. They have already ruined Diwali and Christmas for local people, and further delays should not be allowed to ruin the new year celebrations as well.
There should be full and complete compensation for the shop owners, who have suffered huge losses because of Sainsbury’s delays. That is an absolute necessity. Hanif Pirani, a respected solicitor, has offered to act pro bono to launch a class action against Sainsbury’s on this matter. In my view, that will be worth millions of pounds, and Sainsbury’s will need to open its till—probably all its tills.
There should be full disclosure of all correspondence between the council, Sainsbury’s and Longcross, including all correspondence prior to and following the agreement that has been reached. In view of Sainsbury’s conduct in Belgrave, there should be an immediate suspension of all current planning applications by Sainsbury’s, and not just in Leicester, because councils may want to do that in other parts of the country. There should be a full review of such applications and the promises they make. In my view, that would be highly prudent.
Most importantly, I believe the law needs to be changed, so that developers must carry out agreed community projects before they can complete their own developments. It may be that the law allows it at the moment, but we have not been told that that is so. In this case, Sainsbury’s has failed to fulfil its end of the bargain, and I do not doubt it will do so elsewhere.
Finally, let this be a warning to councillors and residents of every town and city that when Sainsbury’s comes knocking on their door with large smiles, offering to build community facilities, people should be very wary of accepting these assurances. People should beware of grocers bearing gifts. When leaving the negotiating table with Sainsbury’s, one should count how many fingers one has afterwards. Here, it has undermined community development to benefit its own agenda. I hope this sad story compels other local authorities to think twice before agreeing anything with this company.
The consequences of Sainsbury’s recklessness threatens to destroy one of the most important and successful shopping areas in Leicester. Rather than Sainsbury’s slogan, “live well for less”, local people in Belgrave are paying more for a lot less—and Sainsbury’s is living very well. Let this debate be a message that the local community in Belgrave is fighting back.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Penny Mordaunt)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) on securing this debate on managing the provision of local infrastructure improvements necessary as a result of new development. He is particularly concerned about the management of new infrastructure in the Belgrave area of Leicester, following the demolition of a flyover and a former Sainsbury’s store, and about the ongoing construction of replacement road infrastructure as part of the mitigation works following the new Sainsbury’s development across town.
More specifically, the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns centre on the disruption and difficulties caused for residents and businesses, not only because of the apparent ongoing delays to those mitigation works, but because of an apparent lack of communication and information from those responsible for the works to those affected by them. Meanwhile, across town, the new Sainsbury’s store has been completed and opened for business.
The right hon. Gentleman calls for a change in the law to require such mitigation works to be completed prior to the completion of new developments that they were intended to mitigate. He will appreciate that I am unable to comment on specific planning cases, but I will briefly set out the situation as I understand it, having done some digging, and give him an outline of the general policy and legislation issues involved, which he asked me to do. At the end, I hope to give him a list of actions that he can take to ensure that his residents and business owners are appeased, which I am sure is the main reason for his securing this debate.
Sainsbury’s, I understand, is contributing several million pounds—the final amount is yet to be determined—towards new road infrastructure and a community regeneration scheme in the Belgrave area of Leicester. This funding is part of the mitigation agreed between Leicester city council and Sainsbury’s following planning permission for relocation of a Sainsbury’s store from Belgrave to Rushey Mead. The actual mitigation works are, I understand, being led by Leicester city council and Sainsbury’s in a partnership. I understand that delays have occurred to the construction of the new road but that this has at least partly been due to design changes agreed after discussions between the council and the community to increase the capacity of the new road by adding more lanes. Works are now scheduled to be completed in March 2015, having originally been programmed for last month. I fully understand the impact on the area of the loss of trade during Diwali and Christmas.
It is obviously vital that such changes and delays are clearly communicated to residents and businesses. Details of any potential compensation claimable, where appropriate, should be made available to those residents and businesses.
I understand that updates on the work have been communicated locally by Sainsbury’s and Leicester city council through a variety of means, including drop-in sessions, bulletins, and the helpline mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman. Clearly, however, that communication has not been adequate to keep people informed about the works, and about where they can have access to assistance and mitigation themselves. Crucially, I also understand that it is widely accepted locally that the works, when completed, will bring positive long-term benefits to the community, enhancing it and contributing to regeneration and growth.
As I have said, the details of measures involving the compensation that is potentially payable as a result of the work should be made clear to residents and businesses as part of Leicester city council’s overall communication strategy. That is good practice, and it clearly happens elsewhere.
Penny Mordaunt
As I proceed with my speech, the right hon. Gentleman will realise that I do not think that Sainsbury’s is the guilty party in this case. Responsibility for looking after the community and ensuring that compensation is paid—I can list a number of ways in which that can be done—lies with Leicester city council, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman would do best to focus his energy on that. If he looks up reports of Adjournment debates that I initiated as a Back Bencher, he will see that I am not shy about kicking big business when it does not do what it said it would do, but in this instance Sainsbury’s does not appear to have a case to answer.
I hope that what I say this evening will help the right hon. Gentleman to obtain some mitigation for his local businesses and residents. I can confirm that the Valuation Office Agency, which is responsible for business rates assessments, has already received a small number of claims in respect of the works. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the news that the agency will be speaking to businesses in the area shortly to establish whether rateable values should be reduced for all affected businesses. Local authorities, of course, have the powers given to them by the Government to vary business rates in areas that need particular help, and areas that they wish to regenerate.
There are practical options that the right hon. Gentleman can pursue. He has a reputation for being one of Parliament’s stellar communicators. I think that he should seize the initiative and use his skills to ensure that people have all the information that they need. I hope that I have helped to inform him of some of the routes that will enable them to receive compensation, and about the help that is available with business rates. Let me also direct him to the Great British High Street portal, which is a repository of good practice and ideas. It explains how high streets and town centres have helped to mitigate various problems. He will find not only inspiration but, probably, some contact details relating to people who have been in similar positions. Fundamentally, however, I think that the local authority needs to be a bit more on the ball and a bit more proactive in helping to mitigate the problems affecting its community.
The works at Belgrave are subject to a section 106 agreement between Leicester city council and Sainsbury’s. Section 106 agreements, more commonly known as planning obligations, are individual legal agreements between developers and local authorities. They are used to mitigate the impact of development for the benefit of local communities so that the development can be given planning consent. While subject to negotiation between parties, the obligation placed on the developer should address planning matters that are necessary to make development acceptable. That will often include time scales for completion of the works to be undertaken. In this instance, specific time scales for completion were not built into the agreement, at the council’s discretion. Because of the nature of the scheme and because the council felt that it might change, it did not include an end date for the works. It was perfectly able to do so under existing rules. However, an indicative completion date of October 2014 was agreed, and was, I understand, communicated locally, as was the extension to the works, which will be completed in March of next year.
The use of planning obligations is well established in the legislative framework of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It is a robust tool which allows authorities to obtain the appropriate mitigation for developments, and we do not consider that the changes suggested by the right hon. Gentleman are required. The council could, after all, have put in an end-date.
A blanket requirement to complete all mitigation prior to a new commercial, or other, development being completed would threaten cash flow, which, in many cases, would make development unviable. In some cases, mitigation will undoubtedly be essential beforehand, for safety reasons for example, and that is a matter for the planning process and the section 106 planning obligation.
When planning obligations are delivered successfully, the community gets the benefit of new and improved facilities, such as road improvements, affordable housing, education provision and open space, and the developer gets a balanced development, which serves the community effectively. Where developers breach the terms of a planning obligation, the local authority has powers to take legal action to enforce the obligation. A local authority also has the right to carry out the obligation itself and then recover any expense incurred from the developer in question. Sainsbury’s has done what has been asked of it. The city council already has a range of available options—although the last ones I have mentioned are probably not appropriate—but it certainly has tools at its disposal if it feels action is appropriate.
Planning obligations, and any subsequently agreed modifications to them, must be transparent and be made available to the public. This is a fundamental legal requirement. I am able to confirm that this requirement has been met in the case in question, the documents being available on Leicester city council’s website. However, beyond that simple requirement, it is clearly good practice—particularly when there are major works, such as those about which the right hon. Gentleman is concerned, which affect a large number of people—that those affected by the works are directly kept informed throughout the planning and construction processes. Most authorities have well-established procedures to ensure that this happens, and I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman has had to resort to a freedom of information request to get the information he is seeking, but he is right to pursue that.
The national planning policy framework sets out very clearly the importance that the Government attach to community engagement in the planning process. We want communities to accept new development in order to allow growth, and their ability to see clearly the benefits it can bring is key. This Government have led the way on community involvement and engagement in planning. Neighbourhood planning offers a real opportunity for communities to plan positively for their area—an opportunity that is being grabbed enthusiastically with both hands, as there are now 1,100 neighbourhood plans in production.
We have also led the way on reducing planning delays and encouraging development on site to start. To support local authority capacity to deal with major schemes, the Government have implemented a 15% inflation-related increase in application fees from November 2012 and have continued to fund the advisory team for large applications and the Planning Advisory Service.
There are many other schemes and ways in which the local authority can raise capital to assist with development works, and I would be happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman with that information and let him know about them.
According to my investigation—my officials have investigated this thoroughly—the right hon. Gentleman’s target should be Leicester city council, not Sainsbury’s. My Department stands ready to help mitigate the situation. We should stay in touch on it, and I congratulate him on securing the debate.
Question put and agreed to.