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Oral Answers to Questions
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Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
1. What recent discussions he has had with the First Minister on the supply of energy in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alistair Carmichael)
I have regular discussions with colleagues on issues affecting the energy sector in Scotland, including with the Scottish Government on energy supply issues.
Miss McIntosh
People in north Yorkshire have noted with great interest that the Scottish Government have banned fracking for the moment. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on progress towards a debate on energy supply not only for Scotland, but for the whole of the United Kingdom?
Mr Carmichael
My hon. Friend’s key words were “for the moment”. The Scottish Government have come forward with a moratorium, and I am sure that we shall all watch the debate with keen interest. I remind her and the House that we removed the Scottish provisions from the Infrastructure Bill, and that the power to license onshore exploration for oil and gas will be devolved under the Scotland Act that will come after the next election.
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
When the Secretary of State meets the First Minister, will he get information—this is not in the public arena—on how much compensation is being paid to wind farms in Scotland from his and my electricity bills as a consequence of the fact that they are, in my view, inefficient?
Mr Carmichael
I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman seeks that information from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, it will be forthcoming.
Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)
I am sure that the Secretary of State, as a highlands and islands MP, will share the sense of anger and injustice at SSE’s 2p surcharge on electricity costs, given that it made a profit of £1.5 billion last year. Will he do everything possible at the UK level to ameliorate this state of affairs, not least by endorsing the excellent campaign by The Press and Journal?
Mr Carmichael
I rarely have any difficulty in endorsing a campaign run by The Press and Journal. The question of the price being paid by electricity consumers across the highlands and islands is complex, but I know that we all benefit from being part of the wider UK energy market.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
Scottish generators, including Longannet, provide 12% of the electricity going into the British network, but pay 35% of the transmission charges. The Secretary of State has been in government for five years. What has he done to end that discrimination?
Mr Carmichael
The hon. Gentleman is well aware that transmission charging is the responsibility of Ofgem, the energy market regulator. He will also be aware of the work that Ofgem has been doing with other parts of the energy industry in relation to Project TransmiT.
Angus Robertson
Last week, the First Minister wrote to the Prime Minister about this very subject, asking
“the UK Government to initiate a dedicated capacity assessment for Scotland, informed by stakeholder views, and take steps to transfer to the Scottish Parliament the authority to set our own national reliability standard for electricity.”
Having failed to end the discriminatory transmission charges, will the UK Government agree to those reasonable suggestions?
Mr Carmichael
The hon. Gentleman and the First Minister must both be aware that National Grid has a constant process of reviewing energy supply. The system operators in Scotland have stress-tested 140 scenarios in which Longannet and other Scottish fossil fuel generators were closed, and National Grid has the tools to keep the lights on in every one of those scenarios, including by being resilient against one-in-600-year risks. Those are the facts, and they are preferable to the sort of scaremongering that we hear from the nationalists.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
But is the Secretary of State satisfied that the capacity of the electricity interconnector between Scotland and England is sufficient and will not act as a brake on competition in the supply and generating markets?
Mr Carmichael
That is exactly the kind of work that is within the ambit of National Grid and Ofgem.
Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
I have raised many times the devastation caused by abandoned coal mines in my constituency. The Secretary of State will be aware of the proposal for an exemption from carbon price support, which would greatly help their restoration and create 1,000 jobs. Can we expect good news on this in the Budget, and does he agree that the Scottish Government should step up to the plate with some of their £500 million surplus to help the restoration?
Mr Carmichael
First, I am happy to pay tribute to the hon. Lady, who has been a doughty fighter for her constituents’ interests in this regard. As for what will be in the Budget, I am afraid that, like the rest of us, she will have to wait and see, although I can assure her that my Department remains engaged on this issue. We continue to work closely with the Scottish Government on their joint taskforce, which will next meet in March. My right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will represent the UK Government on that occasion.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
2. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on cross-border trade between the north of England and the border region of Scotland of the proposals of the Smith commission.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alistair Carmichael)
As a result of the clear no vote in the referendum, there remain no barriers to trade across the whole of the UK. Nothing in the draft clauses changes that.
Guy Opperman
Does the Secretary of State agree that all political parties need to come together to ensure that airports such as Newcastle in the north-east have air passenger duty support so that they are not unfairly disadvantaged by the proposals of the Smith commission?
Mr Carmichael
I assure my hon. Friend that the basic principle of the Smith commission proposals is that there should be no detriment to any part of the UK—that was very much what the people of Scotland voted for on 18 September. Of course, it remains to be seen what will happen to levels of APD, once it is devolved, but he should take comfort from the fact that the principle is already well established that variable rates within the UK are possible, and he would be well advised to speak to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in that regard.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Had the Smith commission been faithful to the famous vow and had the Better Together parties not watered down the tepid Smith commission, does the Secretary of State think that the benefits to the north of England, as well as to Scotland, would have been greater?
Mr Carmichael
I know that it hurts the hon. Gentleman and causes him genuine pain, but the truth of the matter—he will have to accept this sooner or later, so he might as well get on and accept it now—is that the Smith commission has delivered on the vow. That was why his party signed up to it, even if, having done so, the Scottish National party could not run away from its commitments fast enough.
Michael Moore (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (LD)
The single market of the United Kingdom is vital to the fish processors and agricultural producers of Berwickshire, the coat hanger manufacturers of Jedburgh and the world-class knitwear manufacturers of Hawick, among others, so does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the major achievements of the Smith commission was to bring more powers to Scotland, but preserve that single market?
Mr Carmichael
Yes, absolutely. I particularly enjoyed joining my right hon. Friend recently in his constituency and learning from him about not only the challenges but the opportunities facing the knitwear industry. I know that that industry is of great importance to the economy in his area, and he has been a remarkable champion of it over the years.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
There is obvious eagerness within local authorities in the south of Scotland to have closer trade links with their counterparts in the north of England, as evidence from the work of the Scottish Affairs Committee suggests. Does the Secretary of State intend to engage with the Scottish Government to ensure that the borderland areas are able to exploit their full potential?
Mr Carmichael
Indeed. I am well aware of the work of the borderlands initiative and am more than happy to engage with it in any way it considers would be helpful. That has been very much the approach that I have taken in dealing with Scotland’s island communities—the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland—on their “Our Islands Our Future” campaign. I suggest that this Government’s willingness to hand power back to communities in Scotland bears very favourable contrast with the SNP Government in Edinburgh, who seem determined to centralise everything.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
3. What discussions he has had with the Scottish Government on practical steps to encourage employers to pay the living wage.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
I have regular discussions with the Scottish Government on a range of employment issues. The UK Government support businesses that choose to pay the living wage, where that is affordable and does not cost jobs.
Jim Sheridan
I thank the Minister for that response, which seems somewhat aspirational rather than ambitious. He will be aware that the Scottish Government at Holyrood refused to support the call for a living wage that was put forward by Labour in Scotland. Will he follow the example set by my local Labour-controlled Renfrewshire council, which has not only introduced a living wage, but used the procurement process to encourage its suppliers to pay the living wage?
David Mundell
There are excellent examples of local authorities taking forward initiatives with the living wage, and South Lanarkshire council is one. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman heard the speech that my colleague, Ruth Davidson, made to the Scottish Conservative conference on Friday in which she called for help and support for businesses that promoted the living wage. I hope Scottish Labour and the Scottish Government will support her in that regard.
Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
A Labour Government will ban the use of exploitative zero-hours contracts, which leave people not only not making the living wage, but unable to make a living on the minimum wage. Why will this Government not do the same?
David Mundell
The hon. Lady forgets that there was actually a Labour Government up until five years ago who took no action whatever on zero-hours contracts. This Government have banned exclusivity in zero-hours contracts, which is what leads to exploitation.
Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)
This Government are constantly making claims about new jobs that have been created in Scotland since the last election. Of those new jobs, what proportion have been in low-paying industries?
David Mundell
Since this Government came to power, 107 jobs a day have been created in Scotland. I am afraid that the hon. Lady has had a memory lapse, because she cannot remember the position on employment when this Government came to power and she cannot accept the good news of the creation of new jobs.
Margaret Curran
What I do remember is that the Labour Government implemented the minimum wage in the face of opposition from the Conservative party. According to new research from the House of Commons Library, 82% of these new jobs are in the low-paying sectors. That news comes days after the TUC revealed that one in five workers in Scotland is paid below the minimum wage. Just this morning, the Office for National Statistics revealed that 28% of workers are on zero-hours contracts. This Government stand up for the wrong people: they help out their friends who have been avoiding their taxes, yet they do not help those who work hard and play by the rules, but do not even get a decent wage in return. Will the Minister take any action in what remains of the last days of this Government to help ordinary working people to get a decent wage, or is the only hope is that in 71 days’ time, we get rid of this out of touch Government and get a Labour Government who will put working people first?
David Mundell
The hon. Lady could start by endorsing Ruth Davidson’s proposal to incentivise the paying of the minimum wage, and that is actually a fact, not rhetoric. As I have told the hon. Lady on numerous occasions, if she has evidence of people not being paid the minimum wage, she should bring that forward. Yesterday, the Government did something the Labour Government never did: we named and shamed 70 companies, including some in Scotland, that do not pay the minimum wage. What she should be celebrating is the fact that this Government have delivered 107 jobs a day in Scotland, 1,645 of which are in her constituency, as can be seen from the drop in jobseeker’s allowance claimants.
Dame Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
4. What recent discussions he has had with Ministers of the Scottish Government on property taxes in Scotland.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alistair Carmichael)
As part of the Scotland Act 2012 implementation process, UK Government Ministers have been in contact with Scottish Government Ministers to discuss devolved taxes, including property taxes, since the beginning of this year.
Dame Anne McGuire
May I encourage the Secretary of State to be a little more forthcoming and share with the House his view on whether Revenue Scotland is ready for the transfer of property taxes in April?
Mr Carmichael
The right hon. Lady will understand my hesitation when I say that we have to take the Scottish Government at their word. They assure us that they are ready and we have done everything within our power to assist them. If it should transpire that there are further difficulties that have not yet been foreseen or disclosed, we will do everything that we can to ensure that the system operates.
Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State see the SNP Government’s U-turn on the land and buildings transaction tax as a cause for concern or the sincerest form of flattery—#TartanTories?
Mr Carmichael
I think that is quite remarkable. The whole point of devolution is to allow the Scottish Government to do things differently. We devolved stamp duty land tax under the 2012 Act. They came forward with something that was different until this Government introduced a new system, when before we knew it they had changed to follow what was happening in the rest of the United Kingdom.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
6. For what proportion of participants in the Work programme in Scotland job outcome payments have been made to providers of that programme.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
Work programme participants are some of the hardest to help and can experience multiple barriers to finding work. There are two providers in Scotland: Ingeus has supported 21.2% of all claimants into a job outcome; and Working Links has supported 20.4% of claimants into a job outcome.
Sheila Gilmore
The Work programme has performed worse in Scotland than in any English region. In the meantime, successful local projects such as the Engine Shed in my constituency have had to close. Does the Minister agree that powers over this should be devolved as quickly as possible—and not just to the Scottish Parliament, but to local authorities?
David Mundell
I certainly agree that the Engine Shed was a great project. I have made it clear to the Deputy First Minister that if proposals are brought forward after the election for the devolution of the Work programme, separate from other items to be devolved, I would have an open mind about that.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Thanks to this Government, those helped into employment though the Work programme do not have to pay income tax on the first £10,000 they earn. Does the Minister agree that that represents progress towards economic growth in Scotland and opportunities for its young people?
David Mundell
Absolutely. Some 32,620 people in Scotland have found work through the Work programme, which means they can bring home a wage, support their family and play a part in their wider community.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
By any measure the Work programme has been a failure. It has wasted public money and let down the people depending on it. When will the Government listen to not only the Smith commission, but the dozens of civil society organisations in Scotland that have called for employment support to be devolved so that we can develop an integrated system in Scotland that actually works?
David Mundell
I do not think that the 32,620 people who have found work through the Work programme would agree with the hon. Lady’s assessment. It is now time for her party to come forward with its proposals for an alternative to the Work programme, rather than just criticising the Government and calling for more powers. This Government have given a commitment to effect a transition to such a programme, but first we need to know what it will be.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
11. The Work programme is obviously failing in my constituency and in the city of Dundee as a whole, where only one in seven participants actually get a job. What will the Minister do to address that problem?
David Mundell
I fully acknowledge that the hon. Gentleman has been a fervent campaigner on this issue—and, indeed, on employment—in his constituency, but I am sure that he welcomes the fact that over the past five years, under this Government, the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants in his constituency has gone down by 842—some 27%.
Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
9. Unemployment in the Motherwell, Wishaw and Bellshill area rose again last month, with more than 500 young people now unemployed. Why has the Tory Work programme failed them?
David Mundell
I absolutely dispute the claim that the Work programme has failed them. The Work programme looks to help the most vulnerable people into work, and people have moved into work over the past five years in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, where the JSA claimant count has come down by 1,403—some 39%. I am sure that even he welcomes that.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
7. What public consultation his Department is carrying out in Scotland on the draft clauses published following the recommendations of the Smith commission.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alistair Carmichael)
The Scotland Office is holding a series of events across Scotland to enable stakeholders to provide feedback on the draft clauses and how the new powers might be used. I can announce to the House today that the Government will now begin a public information campaign to enable people in Scotland to learn more about the devolution settlement and how it is changing. [Interruption.] This campaign will use social media, local media and an information booklet for every house in Scotland. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is a lot of noise in the Chamber. The House and perhaps the nation should hear Mr Christopher Chope.
Mr Chope
The nation would be interested to know that draft clause 1 has been widely condemned as legally vacuous. What is the Secretary of State going to do to ensure that the people of Scotland realise that it is legally vacuous and that if they support it, they will be supporting a meaningless constitutional proposal?
Mr Carmichael
I absolutely refute that suggestion and the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of that analysis as being widespread.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
13. Has the Secretary of State specifically discussed the question of varying tax bands under the Smith agreement, which seems a marvellous opportunity for Scotland to decide how it treats people with differing levels of income? It might be different from the way they are treated in the rest of the UK.
Mr Carmichael
The hon. Gentleman is right and he takes the debate in a direction in which it has to go. Surely the time has come when we should no longer be discussing where powers lie, but discussing what can be done with the substantial powers that the third most powerful devolved legislature anywhere in the world will have as a result of these proposals.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The out of touch House of Lords Constitution Committee has said that not enough thought has been given to the impact of giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote. I hope the Government will reject this recommendation and give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to have their say on who represents them in the Scottish Parliament.
Mr Carmichael
I confess that I always hold their lordships’ views in very high regard, but they would not normally be the first port of call that I would make when I was looking for advice either on democratic elections or on young people. The order will be before their lordships’ House tomorrow night. I am confident that it will be passed, as it was passed in this House, without Division.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
Given the powers that the Scottish Government already have, has the Secretary of State ever received an apology from them for their failure to spend £34 million on disabled children and their families and instead using it for the gimmick of keeping council tax static?
Mr Carmichael
There are many, many things for which the Scottish Government should apologise and I suspect that in the event that these apologies ever start coming, the right hon. Gentleman and I will not be at the top of the list to receive them. He is right, though, to point out that the freeze on council tax has caused real difficulties for many local authorities in Scotland, which will be outraged to see the size of the Scottish Government’s underspend this year.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
8. What discussions he has had with Scottish Government Ministers on the co-ordination of programmes to dual the A1.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
The provision of road transport in Scotland is a devolved matter. Department for Transport Ministers did, however, offer to work with Transport Scotland on a joint feasibility study on dualling the A1. The Scottish Government chose not to take up that offer.
Sir Alan Beith
Now that this coalition Government have committed £290 million to dualling the A1 on the English side of the border, should not the SNP Government in Scotland bring forward plans to dual remaining single carriageway sections on the Scottish side of the border?
David Mundell
I agree with my right hon. Friend. He may be aware that my colleague John Lamont MSP has been making exactly that call.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
As we await the dualling of the A1, has the Minister heard of the success of the average speed cameras on the A9? Accidents have been cut by 97%, speeding is down by 90% and the road experience has been totally transformed. Will he now get his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to abandon his reckless and irresponsible campaign to take those cameras down and put my constituents at risk once again?
Mr Speaker
Order. I think I was very generous. The hon. Gentleman started banging on about the A9, rather than the A1, but we will let him off on this occasion.
David Mundell
It is worse than that, Mr Speaker. We constantly hear complaints from the hon. Gentleman about this place intruding into the affairs of the Scottish Parliament, and yet he raises an issue that is solely the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
10. What discussions he has had with his ministerial colleagues on the potential implications for Scotland of English votes for English laws.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alistair Carmichael)
There is clear consensus that change is needed to address the anomalies in our constitutional arrangements, but no consensus on what form this change should take. The solution must be fair to all parts of the United Kingdom and strengthen the links between our family of nations so recently reaffirmed in the referendum in Scotland.
Mr Turner
I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he agree that most Scots, unlike Labour Members, recognise the unfairness of their MPs at Westminster intervening to affect English schools, English health and English councils now that those matters have been devolved from England to Scotland?
Mr Carmichael
I think I have already acknowledged that there are substantial anomalies within our constitutional arrangements. I caution the hon. Gentleman, however, about being too enthusiastic about replacing these anomalies with ones that could be even bigger.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 25 February.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House I shall have further such meetings later today.
John Woodcock
British support in Ukraine is welcome, but combined efforts against President Putin’s naked aggression have been woefully lacking. When the Prime Minister leaves office in 70 days, is he content for his place in history to be the Prime Minister whose weakness left Britain mired in years of conflict?
The Prime Minister
At the end of this Parliament, I believe that Government Members can be proud of the fact that we closed the massive black hole in our defence budget left by Labour. We can be proud of the fact that we see Voyager airplanes flying out of Brize Norton. We can be proud of the fact that we are building two aircraft carriers. We can be proud of the fact that we have got the Type 45 destroyers. We can be proud of the fact that submarines are rolling out of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and into the seas of the Atlantic to keep our country safe.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Last year my right hon. Friend strongly supported my Bill, which became the International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014, to protect women and girls from female genital mutilation and similar abominations. My amendment on Report to the Serious Crime Bill to protect young girls and women at risk from FGM in this country gained 272 votes. There were many deliberate abstentions, but it was defeated by a three-line coalition Whip. Following a letter from the Minister before the Report stage, several matters remained unresolved. I tried to intervene but I was not allowed to do so. Will my right hon. Friend write to me to explain how these young girls and women will be fully protected under the guidelines under the Act and otherwise?
The Prime Minister
I commend my hon. Friend for his Bill and for the campaign that he has waged in favour of that Bill and of equality in how we deliver aid and in this vital area. On the specific issue of the piece of legislation that he is referring to, my understanding is that we believe that the law as drafted covers the point that he is concerned about. I will of course write to him. But let me be absolutely clear: I think the work that we are doing, supported right across the House, in terms of combating FGM and forced marriage, and making sure that there are real rights for women in our country and across the world, is of vital importance.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
The reputation of every Member of this House is damaged when we see revelations such as those that we have in the past couple of days. Can I take it from the Government’s amendment today on second jobs that the Prime Minister is proposing no change to the current system?
The Prime Minister
Let me start by agreeing very much with the right hon. Gentleman that the allegations made against two very senior Members of this House of Commons are extremely serious; they need to be properly investigated. I believe that both Members have done the right thing by referring themselves to the House of Commons standards commissioner, and in having the Whip withdrawn and, indeed, retiring from this House. I think that is vitally important.
I certainly do not rule out further changes, but the most important thing we can do is to make sure we apply the rules: paid lobbying—banned; non-declaration of interests—banned; and making sure wrongdoing is investigated and punished. We are not making no change; we have just passed a lobbying Act, and we have also passed a recall Act so that people can sack their MP.
Edward Miliband
The Prime Minister does not rule out further change, and he has a chance to vote for change tonight. This is what he wrote in 2009:
“Being a Member of Parliament”—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The questions will be heard, and the answers will be heard. It is a very simple point, which I hope everyone can grasp.
Edward Miliband
This is what he wrote in 2009:
“Being a Member of Parliament must be a full-time commitment…The public deserves nothing less.”
He went on to say:
“Double-jobbing MPs won’t get a look-in when I’m in charge”.
What has changed?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman says we should look at the specifics. The difficulty with his specific proposal is that it would allow, for instance, someone to be a paid trade union official, but it would not allow someone to run a family business or a family shop. Like many of his proposals, it is not thought through; it is whipped up very quickly. If he thought it was such a good idea, why did he not put it in place four years ago?
Edward Miliband
Let us agree now that we will rule out anyone being a paid trade union official, a paid director or a paid consultant. Say yes, and we can restore the reputation of this House. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Efford, calm yourself. I fear you are about to explode, man. Get a grip. We must hear the answer from the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister
That is not the only problem with the right hon. Gentleman’s proposal. Let me take another problem with the proposal—his cap on earnings. Let me take a specific example—[Interruption.] I have got as long as it takes.
Let me take a very specific example. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), who is Labour’s education spokesman, would have last year earned over a 10% cap from being a college lecturer. I happen to think that is a very good thing: he brings to this House some outside experience, and he tops up that experience. I have to say it is a pity it does not show up in his education policy, but none the less, it is a good thing.
Fundamentally, there is a disagreement between the right hon. Gentleman and me. I think Parliament is stronger when we have people with different experiences coming to our House, but we must impose strict rules and punish people when they get it wrong.
Edward Miliband
We can definitely make progress. Let us agree to the principle of a cap, and we can consult on the level of the cap. The motion today is very specific about being a paid director or a paid consultant, and I have said from the Dispatch Box that we will also ban people who are a paid trade union official, the point the Prime Minister made to me. I repeat the offer to him: let us get it done, let us agree this to restore the reputation of the House—yes or no?
The Prime Minister
The problem is that the proposal in front of us allows for paid trade union officials, but does not allow for someone who runs a family business. I have to say that the problem with the right hon. Gentleman’s proposal is not just the nature of the proposal; there is also a problem with the timing of his proposal. He first put it forward two years ago. In the previous year—I have done some work—the person with the highest outside earnings on the Labour side was David Miliband. The right hon. Gentleman has not thought it through, he has not worked it out, it is totally inconsistent: it is like almost every other policy he comes up with.
Edward Miliband
So the Prime Minister is worried about the precise text of the motion. I am very happy by whatever means we can, perhaps by a manuscript amendment, to insert paid trade union officials. He and all his right hon. and hon. Friends will have the chance in the Lobbies tonight—this is a very big test—to vote for two jobs or for one. I will be voting for one job. What will he be voting for?
The Prime Minister
Where the Leader of the Opposition is absolutely right—he put this in his letter to me this week—is that
“the British people need to know that when they vote they are electing someone who will…not be swayed by what they may owe to the interests of others.”
The biggest problem we have on that front is that the trade union movement owns the Labour party lock, stock and barrel. So I make an offer to him: if there is no more support from trade unions for the Labour party, then we have got a deal.
Edward Miliband
If the Prime Minister wants to talk about party funding, let us talk about a party bought and sold by the hedge funds and a man who appointed a self-declared tax avoider as his treasurer—that is the Conservative party. He has one more chance. He talked big in opposition about change. He will be judged on the way he votes tonight. He should vote for one job, not two. Last chance: yes or no?
The Prime Minister
The problem with Members of Parliament being swayed by outside interests is best seen in this one example. This is the first Parliament in the history of Britain to pass an Act on lobbying. The Labour party has been lobbied by the trade unions to get rid of that Act. What have they agreed? They have agreed to scrap the lobbying Act. That is what they have done. They are owned lock, stock and block vote by the trade unions.
Mike Crockart
Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank hon. Members for their welcome.
I have harangued the Prime Minister on many occasions to do more on nuisance calls, so it is right today that I thank the Government for the announcement that was made on the subject by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport this morning. Of course, vulnerable consumers will still be targeted today and tomorrow by vicious scammers, who will pay no heed to the announcement. I therefore ask him politely to do all he can to help me set up a national call blocking scheme to protect vulnerable consumers in his constituency and in mine.
The Prime Minister
I will certainly look at the specific suggestion that the hon. Gentleman makes. I can announce today that we are changing the law to make it easier to hit companies with fines of up to £500,000 if they pursue nuisance calls. That will be welcomed up and down the country. I am sure that parties from all parts of the House will be doing a little light telephone canvassing and will be talking to people, but such things should never be done by nagging people or being a nuisance, which is what can happen. Proper punishments are being brought in today.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
Q2. It costs 40% more to train a teacher in Northern Ireland than in England. Does the Prime Minister share my concern that, despite commitments to tackle the costs of division in the Stormont House agreement, other parties have blocked Alliance attempts to desegregate teacher training in a way that would save money? Does that suggest to him, as it does to me, that their commitments to a shared future are not worth the paper they are written on?
The Prime Minister
I say to the hon. Lady—I think we are in absolute agreement on this—that we have to break down the barriers between communities. That is what the shared future agenda is all about. The Stormont House agreement should make that move faster. We are beginning to see shared campuses for education institutions in Northern Ireland, but we now need to see the sorts of things that she is talking about, such as shared approaches on teacher training, that can reduce costs and deliver a better service. That is what the agreement should be about.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Q3. Last Friday, I held my fourth Pendle jobs and apprenticeships fair, which was attended by more than 30 local companies and more than 700 jobseekers. Will the Prime Minister congratulate all those who have got jobs or started apprenticeships in Pendle since 2010? Unemployment in Pendle has fallen by 36% in just the last year, showing that our long-term economic plan is working.
The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who works tirelessly to support his constituents. I think these job fairs that many Members of Parliament have taken part in and run can do a huge amount in making sure that local people can see the opportunities that are being opened up by a successful and growing economy. In Pendle, the claimant count has fallen by 54% since the election, with the long-term youth claimant count falling by 50% in the last year alone. That shows that, as the OECD itself said yesterday, Britain has a long-term economic plan, it is working, and we should stick to it.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
As we have heard, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition agree that the reputation of politics needs improving, but would the Prime Minister agree that the latest format put forward by the broadcasters for TV election debates will not contribute to that? The broadcasters need to realise that these debates are for the benefit of voters as well as themselves, and that the unfair, irrational and legally implausible exclusion of the people of Northern Ireland from those debates—particularly the DUP, which has more votes and more seats than some parties that are included—cannot be justified. So will the Prime Minister agree to go back to the broadcasters and demand a rethink on the basis of justice and fairness, so that they come forward with proposals that he and the rest of us can agree to?
The Prime Minister
I have a lot of sympathy with what the right hon. Gentleman says. My argument was that you could not include one minor party without another—obviously I was referring specifically to the Greens on that occasion, but now, with it having been decided to include Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party, there does seem to be a difficulty in not addressing the question of the DUP. Certainly my party stands in every part of the United Kingdom, so I do think that is important, but I am sure his case will be taken seriously.
Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
Q4. Following the Chancellor’s significant commitment to London last week to create half a million jobs, build 100,000 new homes and invest £10 billion in transport infrastructure, does the Prime Minister agree that this is not just a long-term economic plan for London but, in stark contrast to other parties, which only offer London a mansion tax, is a commitment to make London the greatest capital city on earth?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is correct, because this plan for London is about being incredibly ambitious and trying to outpace the growth of New York, adding £6.4 billion to the London economy by 2030. That is what we are trying to do to see a higher growth rate. We have created something like half a million extra jobs in London since the election, and we need to keep on with that progress. As the OECD said yesterday:
“The UK is an actual textbook case, or is fast becoming, of best practice of how good labour market and of how good product market reform can support growth and job creation…my main message to you today is well done. Well done so far…But finish the job.”
It said, “You have a long-term economic plan, but you need to stick with it.” That is the view of the OECD, and that, I believe, should be backed by everyone in our country.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Last week, three young women from my constituency left their homes, travelled to Turkey—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I think we will start this question again. The hon. Lady has an extremely serious question to ask, and it must be heard by Members on both sides of the House with courtesy.
Rushanara Ali
Last week, three young women from my constituency left their homes, travelled to Turkey and are now thought to have been smuggled into Syria. Their families are devastated. I know that the Prime Minister is making every effort to find them and encourage their return. Will he set up an urgent inquiry into these events to ensure that families, schools, mosques, youth clubs, internet companies and all agencies are guided on how they can better protect our young people?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this heartbreaking case, which we also discussed in the House on Monday. Clearly, anyone who saw the parents on the television talking about their children could not help but be moved by their plight.
What I have done is asked the Home Secretary to look urgently, with the Transport Secretary, at all the protocols we have in place about young people and travelling, and at what airlines do and what we can do. My understanding is that the police did respond relatively quickly in informing the Turkish authorities, and that what the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister has said about a three-day delay is not accurate, but there are always lessons to learn. On this occasion, I suspect the lessons will be not just that we can tighten arrangements on aeroplanes and at our borders, but that we all have a responsibility—schools, parents, families, communities, universities, colleges—to fight this poisonous radicalisation of young people’s minds.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
Q5. Tomorrow, the Minister for Universities, Science and Cities will be in Cheshire to sign our local growth deal. It is a deal that will deliver two bridges for Warrington—infrastructure that has been much needed for the past 30 years. Does the Prime Minister agree that the fact we are finally addressing such infrastructure needs demonstrates a commitment to the north-west that was completely lacking under the previous Government?
The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend who has campaigned consistently on this issue. When I visited his constituency, he showed me the difference that those announcements will make to Warrington South. As a result of implementing the Cheshire and Warrington local growth deal, we expect to proceed with the construction of a high-level bridge crossing the Manchester ship canal. A new high-level crossing from the A56 Chester road will open up a substantial area of land for development immediately south of Warrington town centre. That will provide traffic relief, resilience, jobs, homes and livelihoods, which is what our long-term plan is all about.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Why did the Prime Minister deem it appropriate to outsource his response to one of my concerned constituents to a political correspondence manager housed in No. 10 Downing street, on paper bearing a Conservative party logo and with contents that referred to a Conservative manifesto and a Conservative Government’s legislation? It concluded in the hope that they—the Conservative party, I presume—could rely on my constituent’s support for many years to come. No Member of the House is permitted to use our parliamentary offices or revenues for political party campaigning. No. 10 Downing street does not become the property of its incumbent’s political party, so will the Prime Minister apologise not only to my constituent, but to the country for this gross misuse of national property and revenue?
The Prime Minister
If a letter was sent from the hon. Lady to me to be answered—such letters should always be answered by the Prime Minister to other Members of Parliament, and I will look into what happened in that case. Let me put on record how hard the correspondence unit works because it gets thousands of letters, including from Members of Parliament, every week of the year. I will look into that and ensure that she gets a proper reply from me. I say to all those living in Hampstead and Kilburn that they will be getting lots of letters from me in the coming weeks.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
Q6. Last week my right hon. Friend launched the franchise competition for rail services in East Anglia, including a demand for state-of-the-art rolling stock. He may be aware that some Members of the House want a long review of franchise competitions, leading possibly to a renationalisation of the railways. Does he understand the delays and misery that that would cause to commuters and travellers in Ipswich, Norwich, Colchester and up and down the Great Eastern main line if that were ever to happen?
The Prime Minister
First, I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he and other MPs from East Anglia have done to press for better rail services. We have a clear view, which is that we want to achieve journey times to Ipswich in 60 minutes and Norwich in 90 minutes, and that is what the reforms are all about.
On this day, it is worth saying happy birthday to the shadow Chancellor, given that he always makes quite a lot of noise on the Opposition Benches. Part of the aim of this programme, when the right hon. Gentleman has plenty of time after the election, is that he will be able to get to see Norwich City in just 90 minutes. I think that is only fair—he gives me a birthday present every week, so I thought I would give him one today.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Q7. In the United States, senators and congressmen face a cap on their outside earnings of 15%. Why is that appropriate for them but not for us?
The Prime Minister
If the cap is such a good idea, why are we not voting on it in the House of Commons tonight? If we want evidence that Labour’s policy has been written on the back of a fag packet, that tells us all we need to know. Obviously, with plain paper packaging we will be helping, Labour Members to have more room to write their policies on.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
May I assure my right hon. Friend—[Interruption.]
Sir Peter Tapsell
May I assure my right hon. Friend that I am not a paid trade union official but I fear that if Members of the House are not allowed a second job, membership of it will soon be largely confined to the inheritors of substantial fortunes or to those with rich spouses, or to obsessive crackpots or those who are unemployable anywhere else?
The Prime Minister
I want to be clear that the Father of the House does not fit into any of those categories. He makes an important point: Parliament is stronger because we have people with different experience. When we look around this Parliament, we see we have actually got practising doctors, practising dentists, people who served our country in Afghanistan or Iraq, and people who run family businesses or have other interests. What we want is a Parliament where people can come and share their experience and make some points, instead of just having a whole lot of trade union sponsored ciphers.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
Q8. I have asked the Prime Minister this question before and he did not answer: how many jobs should an MP have?
The Prime Minister
At the moment I am both the Member of Parliament for west Oxfordshire and I am the Prime Minister. To be honest, I do do constituency work every day, but I would mislead the House if I said that I spent more time on my constituency work than being Prime Minister. That is worth while reflecting on.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Q14. It being so successful, I wonder if—for the convenience of the House and particularly for Opposition Members—my right hon. Friend could set out the details of our long-term economic plan.
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. The plan is about skills, infrastructure, jobs and cutting taxes, but above all it is about people’s livelihoods—securing jobs and livelihoods for people across our country. The fact that Labour Members cannot talk about the economy any week when they come to this House is because we have created a thousand jobs every day this Government have been in office. They are keen to talk about second jobs because they do not want to talk about the jobs revolution in our country. They do not want to talk about the apprenticeships. They do not want to talk about business creation, and they do not want to talk about the OECD and the fact that our economy grew faster last year than any other major economy in the west. They cannot talk about the economy because they have got nothing to say about it.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
Q9. Is the Prime Minister aware that as a result of a 40% cut in the disabled students allowance many disabled students say that they might have to drop out of the courses they are on? Will he undertake to have an urgent review of that problem, because obviously I am sure that he does not want that to be the case?
The Prime Minister
I have looked specifically at this issue and had a constituency case connected to it. I will go back and look over it again, and perhaps write to the right hon. Gentleman, but it is important to recognise that—with the reform of disability living allowance going into personal independence payments—more of the most disabled people will be paid at the higher rate.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
Q10. I know the Prime Minister shares my enthusiastic support for organ donation and my joy at the 63% increase in what is the most wonderful gift that anyone can give since the organ donation task force reported in 2008—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman. It is discourteous to interrupt an hon. Member in the middle of his or her question. Let us hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say: it is a matter of manners.
Glyn Davies
Will the Prime Minister take an early opportunity, should one arise, to join me in helping to raise awareness of that wonderful achievement and to drive on the creation of ever greater success in the future?
The Prime Minister
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We have seen a very substantial increase in organ donation. That has been done without moving to a system of presumed consent, which I know the House discussed and voted on previously. I was not in favour of that, but I am in favour of doing more to lead by example and making sure that hospitals are pursuing the best practice. There has been a remarkable increase, and if there is anything I can do to help with his campaign, I would be delighted to do so.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Q11. The lobbying Act, which the Prime Minister mentioned earlier, did absolutely nothing to affect those who are lobbying specifically for commercial gain. Will he now introduce a register of professional lobbyists; not to stop it, but so we all know what they are up to?
The Prime Minister
First, before I answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, may I congratulate him on being appointed as the new chair of the parliamentary Labour party? I hope that in 70 days’ time he will be able to conduct a root and branch inquest into what went wrong.
Let me answer the hon. Gentleman’s question specifically. If he supports the lobbying Act, can he explain why trade unions in Britain have lobbied the Labour party to get rid of the Act? If we want an example of what is wrong with British politics, it is the massive money that goes from the unions to the Labour party that buys their candidates and buys their policies. The only reason their leader is sitting there is because a bunch of trade union barons thought he was more left-wing than his brother. That is what is wrong with British politics and that is what needs fixing.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
When the Prime Minister wrote to my local newspapers heralding the work done to bring superfast broadband to Somerset, was he aware that, according to the Government’s own figures, Somerset has 41% coverage at the moment? BT’s monopoly means that it will be the only organisation able to bid for the next phase of connections. That offers very little hope for the residents and business people in my area who do not have access to superfast broadband. What is he going to do about that?
The Prime Minister
What we are going to do is continue spending record sums on broadband roll-out. We have seen across the country that it is almost double from the 40% we inherited. There is more to do in the most rural areas, including the hon. Lady’s constituency. All local councils now have searchable websites so people can see when they expect broadband to get to their area. We need to look at creative solutions to make sure we get to the last 5%. It is a very important part of our long-term economic plan. That can only be secured by a Conservative majority Government.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Q12. I welcome the fact that the Government have been forced to accept our demands for people to be protected when buying tickets in the secondary ticketing market. If the Government had listened to us last year, thousands of rugby world cup and Ashes cricket fans would have been saved from having to pay more than face value for tickets. Why are the Government always on the side of people like bankers, tax dodgers and the organised gangs behind ticket touting in the secondary ticketing market, and never on the side of ordinary people in the street?
The Prime Minister
This is something that has happened after four and a half years of a Conservative Prime Minister that never happened after 13 years of a Labour Prime Minister. I will tell the hon. Gentleman whose side we are on: we are on the side of working people, because we are getting them jobs, we are cutting their taxes, and we are helping with child care. We sit opposite a party that is the party of Len McCluskey and the trade unions.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Q13. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that, hot on the heels of devolving powers on transport and housing, the welcome announcement that Manchester will take control of its £6 billion NHS budget shows the coalition’s commitment to local decision-making for Manchester, in stark contrast to the Labour Government that oversaw the closure of Withington hospital from Whitehall?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that this is an important breakthrough. It has been made possible by our reforms. It will help to bring the NHS and social care together. The shadow Health Secretary, who presumably knew absolutely nothing about this, does not understand that eight Labour authorities in Greater Manchester have been talking to us and working with us about how to make this a reality. What a contrast: people working together to improve the NHS, instead of trying to weaponise it across the Dispatch Box.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Last year, more than 3,000 desperate migrants drowned in the Mediterranean. Several hundred have already died this year trying to reach a place of safety. Many people, in absolute desperation, turn to traffickers to try to escape the crisis in Libya and in many other places. They are victims of war and oppression. The European Union is closing down Mare Nostrum, which has saved a very large number of lives, and is instead instituting something that will only protect Europe’s borders, not search for and rescue people. Will the Prime Minister go back and ensure that Europe adopts a humanitarian approach of saving these desperate people and supporting these desperate migrants who are trying to survive—that is all, survive—in Libya?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, but I am afraid that the statistics do not necessarily back up the case he is making. Mare Nostrum was a genuine attempt by the Italians to deal with this problem, but I think I am right in saying that more people died during the operation of that policy than when it was brought to an end. There are some answers. We need to make sure we press ahead with the Modern Slavery Bill, an historic piece of legislation taken through by this Government, that is doing a huge amount to deal with the problem of people trafficking. Yes, we need to do more to stabilise countries such as Libya and others on the Mediterranean, from which many of the problems derive. That serves to underline the important work done by our development budget.
Petition
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I wish to present a petition on changes to health service budgets in my constituency and in Wakefield district more generally. It is now quite clear that the Government intend further to cut NHS funding across the district. Local GPs surgeries are already struggling and these cuts will lead to the closure of small practices and job losses among doctors, nurses and other practitioners. Obviously, this is causing great alarm among my constituents, who are living in one of the most health-deprived areas in the country. This is why I am presenting a petition today signed by more than 1,460 individuals in my area.
The petition states:
“The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to reconsider the proposal to make these cuts to health service budgets in the Hemsworth area.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The Petition of residents of the Hemsworth constituency,
Declares that the Petitioners are concerned about cuts to health service budgets in the local area, particularly the proposed £3.8 million cuts from budgets for GPs; further that these cuts will affect all Practices funded through a Personal Medical Services (PMS) contract and will see £3.8million lost from this area over a three year period, starting in April 2015; further that local GP surgeries are already struggling and these cuts could lead to small practices closing and job losses; and further that a local petition on this matter has been signed by 1,464 individuals.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to reconsider the proposal to make these cuts to health service budgets in the Hemsworth area.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.]
[P001438]
Service Personnel (Ukraine)
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the deployment of UK personnel to train Ukrainian forces.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)
The Government’s position from the outset has been that we deplore Russian aggression in Ukraine. We do not believe that there is a military solution. There needs to be a diplomatic solution, which can be enabled through sanctions, pressure and the economic weight of Europe and America. Obviously, however, as the Prime Minister has said, where we can help a friend with non-lethal equipment, we should do so.
The second Minsk agreement of 12 February provided a framework for stabilising the situation in eastern Ukraine. We want it to succeed and we urge all sides to take the necessary steps to implement it. In the light of continued Russian-backed aggression in eastern Europe, the UK is committed to providing additional non-lethal support to the Ukrainian Government to help their forces deal with the pressures they are facing. As the Prime Minister confirmed in Parliament yesterday, we are providing additional non-lethal support by sending advisory and short-term training teams. This support, provided at the request of the Ukrainian Government, will help their armed forces develop and maintain the capacity and resilience they need, and help reduce fatalities and casualties.
Support to the Ukrainian armed forces is not new; we have been providing it for some time. This includes support on anti-corruption, on defence reform and on strategic communications and procurement. Over the last year, we have also provided personal protective equipment, winter fuel, medical kits and winter clothing for the Ukrainian armed forces.
As part of the wider Government effort to support Ukraine and ensure a robust international response to Russia’s aggression, UK personnel will now provide to the Ukrainian armed forces medical, logistics, infantry, and intelligence capacity-building training from mid-March. Most of the advisory and training support will take place in Ukraine, but well away from the areas affected by the conflict in the east of the country. The number of service personnel involved will be around 75.
In respect of medical support, we will provide combat life-support training through a “train the trainer package” to multiply the numbers trained. The logistics team will identify and help improve deficiencies within Ukraine’s logistics distribution system. The infantry training package will focus on protective measures to improve survivability, and the intelligence capacity building team will provide tactical-level analysis training. We are considering further requests from the Ukrainian Government for support and assistance, and we will work closely with key allies through the Ukraine-US-UK-Canada joint commission. In the meantime, Russia must abide by its commitments at Minsk. That means making the separatists withdraw their heavy weapons, stopping continued separatist attacks so that an effective ceasefire can hold, and allowing effective monitoring to take place.
Mr Jones
Let me begin by apologising to the Secretary of State and the House on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). As the Secretary of State knows, my hon. Friend is currently making a scheduled visit to our armed forces who are involved in Operation TOSCA.
Members on both sides of the House are rightly concerned about the serious and ongoing situation in eastern Ukraine, and about the question of an imminent ceasefire. Labour Members have made it clear that the international community must be ready to increase diplomatic pressure on the Kremlin should Russia fail to implement the ceasefire and change course. We support these non-lethal steps to improve the capacity of the Ukraine armed forces, but the public will want not only to know what strategic rationale lies behind the announcement, but to ask questions about the operation itself.
If this deployment is to succeed, it must form part of a broader NATO strategy. How does the Secretary of State’s announcement fit into the broader NATO strategy on Ukraine, and what discussions has he had with our NATO partners about the deployment? What is the overall strategic objective of the deployment, and how long has it been in the planning? How does it fit into the wider ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring about a peaceful resolution to the current crisis?
Let me now ask some specific questions about the operation itself. What force protection arrangements will there be for the UK service personnel who are involved in this operation, and how long does he expect the deployment to continue? What will be the legal status of the UK forces while they are in Ukraine?
As I have said, we support these non-lethal steps to reinforce the Ukrainian forces’ logistical, medical and intelligence capabilities. We also pay tribute to, and recognise the professionalism of, those of our armed forces who will take part in this vital operation.
Michael Fallon
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said.
Let me make it clear at the outset that Ukraine has the right to defend herself, and to defend her sovereign territory. The hon. Gentleman asked what was our strategic objective. It is to help Ukraine in that task: to help it to build up the capacity and resilience of its armed forces, and above all, when we can, to help to reduce the number of fatalities and casualties that are occurring.
The hon. Gentleman asked about NATO. This is not a NATO deployment; it follows a decision by the United Kingdom Government. Obviously we consult our allies very closely—I hope to do that in Washington very shortly—and NATO has set up a couple of trust funds, to which we have contributed, as part of its partnership with Ukraine. Nevertheless, this is not a NATO operation A number of our allies are considering providing non-lethal assistance, and the United States is already doing so.
As for how the deployment fits in with other efforts, it accompanies our continuing diplomatic efforts. I should emphasise that this country has been at the forefront of the efforts to impose sanctions on Russia. I should also emphasise that it is leading the efforts to ensure that those sanctions are renewed, and to make Moscow understand that unless its aggression ceases, it will face further sanctions and additional international isolation.
The hon. Gentleman asked about force protection. The training will be carried out either around Kiev itself or in the west of the country, an area that we know well and where exercises and training take place. Obviously, however, we will continue to assess what force protection is required for each specific mission. The hon. Gentleman asked about the status of our trainers. I want to make it very clear that we are providing this training capacity at the request of the Ukraine Government. Each of these things has been asked for by Ukraine; we are answering Kiev’s call.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The trouble with sending advisers is that, as the Americans found in Vietnam, and as many other nations have found since, mission creep eventually results in the sending of combat troops. Given that Ukraine is an area the size of France, where whole German armies of tens of thousands of men were enveloped and destroyed in the second world war, is there not a real danger of that? We must rule out sending ground troops, and we should concentrate our efforts on promoting peace, self-determination in the east within Ukraine’s borders, and solving what the Foreign Secretary described as a “sink of corruption” in Kiev. We should send advisers to help to sort out corruption, not wage war.
Michael Fallon
We already provide advice and support on how to tackle corruption inside the Ukrainian Government. We have done so over the past few months and, indeed, I think even before then. As for mission creep, may I make it absolutely clear that we are not deploying combat troops to Ukraine, and we will not do so? We are providing non-lethal assistance that has been requested by the Ukrainian Government to enhance the capability of their armed forces and to attempt to reduce the number of fatalities and casualties that they have suffered.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Of course everyone wants a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but are the Government not at risk of showing naivety in the face of a calculating thug in President Putin? Every time that the right hon. Gentleman stands at the Dispatch Box and rules out a military solution from the UK and its allies he makes such a military catastrophe more likely by emboldening Putin.
Michael Fallon
I do not accept that. We have to make it clear to Russia that it has to cease its aggression and its encouragement of the separatists in eastern Ukraine. The best way to do that, as we are already doing, is through sanctions and political pressure on Russia. Equally, it would not be right to refuse the call that we have received from Kiev—from the Ukrainian Government—to help with some of the basic training, support and equipment that they need.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
The whole House will recognise that there is a risk here, but does my right hon. Friend not agree that it is in our interests to check President Putin’s aggression? Does he also agree that that is entirely consistent with our obligations under the 1994 Budapest agreement, signed by Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Bill Clinton?
Michael Fallon
I agree with my hon. Friend, who has experience of serving in the Ministry of Defence. He is right about the aggression that Putin has shown. We need to stand up to that, but there are a number of routes to that. They are political and diplomatic: we do not think that there is a military solution to the conflict. However, where we have been asked to help, we should do so. We are a friend of Ukraine, and we should come to the help of a friend in need.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
Like the Defence Secretary, I abhor the Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, and I support the EU sanctions approach. Has he had the opportunity to review the Ukrainian media? The Kyev Post writes:
“The United Kingdom stunned officials across Europe with a unilateral announcement that it would send 75 troops to Ukraine…EU officials in Brussels first learned of the decision when contacted by the Kyiv Post for comment, and were unable to provide one.”
Why do our allies seem to be so badly informed, and why did the Government not come to the House and make a proactive statement to Parliament?
Michael Fallon
On the latter point, I announced in Defence questions on Monday that we were preparing such a package, and the Prime Minister gave details of the package to the Liaison Committee yesterday. One thing we cannot be accused of is not keeping Parliament informed: we are keeping Parliament informed. As for consultation with allies, of course we talk to them. I meet my fellow Defence Ministers in NATO all the time, and I shall meet another one later this afternoon. I saw High Representative Federica Mogherini yesterday. This is a decision for the UK Government; this is not a NATO deployment. It is a decision by the UK Government to respond to a request from the Ukrainian Government.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I welcome the Government’s initiative, particularly if it is alongside our allies in the United States. The Ukrainians need the ability to defend their homeland against a much more powerful aggressor and they require equipment such as unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and targeting. They require anti-tank capability and encrypted communications. Is not the argument that we cannot give defensive equipment to a country under threat because it might provoke a further reaction from Russia simply a bully’s charter that is already discredited by history?
Michael Fallon
I agree with my predecessor but one as Secretary of State. We are supplying defensive equipment. It might not be lethal, but it does help the Ukrainian armed forces better defend themselves. As I said in my initial statement, in addition to the secondment of 75 trainers we are considering a further request from the Ukrainian Government for additional equipment and support. That is non-lethal, but we reserve the right ultimately to keep it under review.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said that the 75 trainers would “mostly” be in Ukraine. Where else will they be operating from? If any Ukrainians are coming to the UK for training, can we have an absolute assurance for the citizens of the UK that we will not face another incident such as those in Bassingbourn, where we were training Libyans and members of the Cambridge community were assaulted? Can we have an assurance about how many are coming to the UK and where else they will be trained?
Michael Fallon
It is slightly unfortunate that the hon. Lady has compared the general purpose force we were attempting to train—a very raw force of recruits from Libya—with the Ukrainian armed forces. She asked me a straightforward and quite reasonable question about where else the training might be. There will be, and has already been, some training in the UK, but there can also be training in countries alongside Ukraine. We are looking at where the training can best be provided, but it is likely that most of it will be provided in Ukraine, in the Kiev area or elsewhere in the west of Ukraine, areas that are very familiar to the British military as we have been on exercise there in the past.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
It is of course very important that there should be non-lethal support and training, but in a parallel situation in north-east Iraq, where we are training the peshmerga in Kurdistan, we have discovered that the Americans and other EU allies are training on the front line and they find that much more effective than the kind of training we have been providing about 100 miles behind the front line. Is there not an argument that, although that support is non-lethal, we might find a way to move the troops forward so that they can advise the Ukrainians where they are doing the fighting?
Michael Fallon
I do not think it is right for other countries to get involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. On the contrary, Russia should now be withdrawing its heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine and be putting pressure on the separatists to lay down their arms. On the location of the training, we are not putting combat troops anywhere near the front line. The training we have been providing to the peshmerga in northern Iraq has, as my hon. Friend says, been well away from the front line. We have trained more than 1,000 peshmerga as well as supplying them with machine guns and ammunition.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
We know for a fact that the Russians are supplying lethal weapons to the rebels. NATO’s response has been pretty woeful, but may I ask a specific question about what the Secretary of State said? I am sure that he mentioned that he was considering what else can be done about further requests, so will he enlighten the House on what more might be being considered to be put in place in the future?
Michael Fallon
We have had a series of requests from the Ukrainian Government, including lists of equipment of all kinds. I do not want to give too many details, but we are looking at these shortfalls in their capacity and at what further training we might be able to provide in addition to the infantry training, logistics and medical and intelligence capacity-building training I described.
Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. These are proportionate and sensibly judged measures for us to take. We are good at this sort of thing and as we have been asked to help it is only right that we should do so. Let us not exaggerate the scale of what we are doing, however. The idea that 75 trainers will lead to creep into a mission in an area the size of France is clearly far-fetched, but we should be willing to respond to anything more of a similar kind and we should do so on a pan-governmental basis to help the Ukrainian Government build up their capacity more widely.
Michael Fallon
I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend, another former Minister in the Ministry of Defence. He has got it exactly right. We should respond to requests. Ukraine is our friend, it is in need and we should respond to requests, whether they are for equipment or additional training. I want to assure the House that that is exactly what we will continue to do.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Is the Secretary of State aware that mission creep knows no boundaries? That has happened so many times, as evidenced by the point made much earlier by one of his hon. Friends. In Vietnam, it started with only a little request. On Libya, not so long ago in this House I asked about mission creep and did not get a satisfactory answer. I never could and now I know the result: ISIL roaming over large areas of Libya. That is what mission creep did. As sure as night follows day, Ukraine will now realise that the United Kingdom is a participant in the battle and will ask for more. What is he going to do then?
Michael Fallon
It is rather odd to describe the operations in Libya as mission creep. This was a mission to get rid of Gaddafi and to help the Libyan people get rid of a brutal dictator; a dictator I believe the former Labour Government rather cosied up to—
Michael Fallon
It was a mission to help the Libyan people get rid of a dictator and give them the chance of choosing a better future. Obviously, we would want to see the situation in Libya improve.
This is a closely defined training mission. We think it is right to respond to the call for help. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should shun such a call, I cannot agree with him.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that last week Prime Minister Yatsenyuk told me that he regarded Britain, alongside America, as Ukraine’s strongest allies, and his statement this afternoon confirms that? Is my right hon. Friend aware that we have a special responsibility as a signatory of the Budapest memorandum to help Ukraine? Specifically, will he consider the requests made by the Ukrainian Government for defensive weapons such as counter-battery radar, electronic jamming equipment and anti-tank weaponry?
Michael Fallon
My hon. Friend is probably as knowledgeable as anybody about the affairs of Ukraine, as he chairs the all-party group. It is very clear to us that the Ukrainian armed forces are in desperate need of further equipment and they have supplied lists of equipment they would like. We are focusing, as I have said, on the non-lethal equipment we can supply and are considering the additional requests.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
At the very least, the House is entitled to know what equipment the Secretary of State is considering supplying to Ukrainians. So far, the Secretary of State has been very unwilling to detail any of those requests. We are entitled to know what is under consideration. Will he now give us some more detail on the nature of the equipment he is actively considering, as he outlined in his response?
Michael Fallon
As soon as we make a decision on what equipment to supply or to gift, we will of course inform Parliament in the normal way. If the equipment is to be gifted, a minute has to be laid before Parliament and that will be done.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
Like many people, I take an increasingly bleak view of the situation when we examine the psychology of this aggressor. What measures has my right hon. Friend taken with colleagues across Government to look at the possibility of this happening in other areas on the western boundary of Russia? What work should we be doing now to prepare for requests similar to that that he has received from the Ukrainian Government from countries such as Moldova or, God forbid, a NATO country, as we would be required to respond differently to an attack on one of those countries?
Michael Fallon
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee yesterday, we can now see a pattern of behaviour around the borders of Russia. We have seen it in Georgia and elsewhere. The first thing that we had to do about that was to stiffen up NATO to ensure that we had a rapid reaction force worthy of the name. That was agreed at the NATO summit last September, and we have now agreed our contribution to it. We will be a framework nation in 2017 and we will be seconding staff to the two divisional headquarters, in Poland and Romania. We will also be seconding staff to all six of the forward integration units. We are encouraging other NATO members to make similar commitments in order to reassure the members on NATO’s eastern flank that we are ready to stand by our commitments under article 5.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Whatever the Secretary of State might say, to the real world this will look like military intervention. At what point is he going to come here and seek the agreement of the House of Commons to this?
Michael Fallon
There is a well-established convention that if we were engaged in offensive military operations in a country we would of course come to the House, as we did last September when we obtained the authority of the House to carry out air strikes in Iraq. This, however, is not a military operation. We are providing trainers and advisers to help the armed forces of Ukraine better to defend themselves and to help to reduce the very high number of fatalities and casualties that they are suffering.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lesson of the cold war is that we secure peace through strength? I very much welcome this intervention, but we in the west must decide whether we are going to indicate our resolve to deter Russian aggression or not. Will he remind our American allies, whom I very much welcome as part of this initiative, that it was the sailing of their sixth fleet into the Black sea that stopped the invasion of Georgia in its tracks? When are the Americans going to come to this initiative with force?
Michael Fallon
I am looking forward to discussing this with the new American Secretary of Defence, Ash Carter, whose appointment I hope the whole House will welcome. I say to my hon. Friend that we cannot simply leave the defence of our continent to the Americans. They are involved in the joint commission with Ukraine, alongside Canada and ourselves, but it is also important for NATO to have the resolve to defend its own borders. That is why I hope that my hon. Friend welcomes the commitments made at the NATO summit, which we now need to follow through.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I should like to ask the Secretary of State for Defence how far the Government have really thought this thing through. Does he acknowledge that 75 trainers will be followed by 150 trainers, and that they will be followed by more and more? The gifting of weapons is being talked about, and we are now moving into a situation in which we are going to be in the conflict in Ukraine. NATO wants Ukraine as a member, contrary to everything that was agreed following the break-up of the Soviet Union on the non-alignment and independence of that country. Instead of upping the military ante, why will not the Government put huge efforts into trying to demilitarise Russian militarism and NATO expansionism, in order to bring about a longer-term sustainable peace in that area? The danger of getting involved in a hot war in central Europe has got a bit closer as a result of the Secretary of State’s statement today.
Michael Fallon
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. We are not supplying weapons and we are not attempting to escalate the conflict in any way. As I have said, we believe that in the end the answer has to be diplomatic and political, and the pressure therefore continues to be applied, through sanctions and so on. He invites us to help to demilitarise eastern Ukraine, but I think he ought to ask himself who has militarised the area and who has supplied weapons, tanks and heavy artillery across the border. It is now up to President Putin to withdraw his heavy weaponry, as was agreed at Minsk, and to implement the agreement that he has signed up to.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
As a follow-up to what my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) said about the 1994 agreement between Russia, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and the United States, under which the sovereignty of Ukraine was guaranteed in return for getting rid of the one third of the Russian nuclear arsenal that it had on its soil, may I suggest that there is an oblique lesson for us now as we think about whether we should replace the independent nuclear deterrent and whether we need to keep it?
Michael Fallon
So far as the 1994 agreement is concerned, it is for all parties to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine, but that has not happened in this Russian-backed aggression and the movement of heavy weapons and artillery from Russia across the border into eastern Ukraine. So far as the nuclear deterrent is concerned, the House debated the matter a few weeks ago and recorded one of the largest majorities in recent years in favour of building the successor submarines.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
It is clearly correct to support the effectiveness of the Ukrainian army and its capacity to protect the country from Russian aggression, but back in 2013 when we undertook the training of the Libyan troops, the Libyan Government paid for that training. Will the Secretary of State tell us who is to bear the cost of the proposed training in Ukraine, and whether there is any financial limit on the UK’s assistance to that country?
Michael Fallon
At the moment, we are bearing the cost of the training, and the costs involved in gifting any non-lethal equipment will be borne by my budget. So far as the Libyan training is concerned, I am afraid that I have to tell my right hon. Friend that although the Libyan Government had committed to pay for it, they have not quite paid for it all yet.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
We must all be concerned by the expansionist tendencies of the Putin regime, and it is therefore important to provide a robust response to the situation in Ukraine, but if we are going to train troops there, would not the logical step be to give them the wherewithal to use that training? Why are we not in a position to consider making equipment available to them as well?
Michael Fallon
We have not taken that decision. The equipment that we have supplied is non-lethal; essentially it is to help the Ukrainian armed forces to protect themselves better and to reduce the number of casualties. We do, however, reserve the right to keep that position under review.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has assured the House that we are giving non-lethal aid—that it was asked for and that we have given it. Have we been asked for lethal aid and, if so, what was our response?
Michael Fallon
The Ukrainian military has identified a whole series of equipment shortfalls that it would like to fill—a lot of its equipment is east European; it is old Soviet equipment that does not fit naturally with ours—but our decision at the moment is not to supply lethal aid.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that, regardless of any force protection measures taking place before deployment, our people will be legally authorised under any future rules of engagement to pick up weapons and defend themselves if they need to?
Michael Fallon
We will assess the force protection that is required for each of the different training teams. As I have told the House, we expect the training to be carried out in areas well away from the fighting, right over in the west of Ukraine or around Kiev, where our troops have exercised before and are used to exercising. I will of course keep my hon. Friend’s point under review.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
As a Member who has taken parliamentary delegations to Ukraine, spoken in the Ukrainian Parliament and believes himself to be a supporter of Ukraine, I say to my right hon. Friend that I am worried about this decision. All along, we have underestimated Russian sensitivities about Ukraine, and the Lords report said that we have sleepwalked into this mess. I fear that the thought of NATO troops, from us, in Ukraine will further destabilise things in the long term and will be used, possibly in March, by the Russians for further intervention. I do not think we have got the measure of Russia’s concerns about what it sees as a country that is very much part of its immediate diaspora.
Michael Fallon
There are, of course, Russian concerns, but above all there are Ukrainian concerns. It is eastern Ukraine that has been destabilised by Russia; this is a country whose sovereign territory has now been invaded by personnel from the Russian armed forces. As for my hon. Friend’s fear about NATO troops, let me emphasise again that these are not and will not be NATO troops—this is not a NATO mission. This is the British Government deciding to respond to a request for help by our friends in Kiev. It is right that we should answer that call and provide the training capacity, in which our armed forces excel, to help reduce fatalities and casualties.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
I welcome the Government’s announcement, and my right hon. Friend’s robust stance against Russian aggression and this threat to Ukrainian sovereignty. Can he tell us what engagement his Department or the Government more widely have had with the newly elected Moldovan Government, given the great uncertainty and concern about Trans-Dniester on the border between Ukraine and Moldova?
Michael Fallon
Indeed there is exactly that concern. As I have said, this seems to fit a pattern of Russian interference right along its southern and western border, and we need to be mindful of that. I have not yet had the opportunity to meet or talk to my Moldovan counterpart, but I look forward to doing so in due course.
Employment of People with Disabilities (Reporting)
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require listed companies, public bodies and voluntary agencies to report annually on the number and percentage of people they employ who have disabilities; and for connected purposes.
In the UK today, more than 11 million people are living with a disability, impairment or limiting long-term illness, and nearly 7 million of them are of working age. That is nearly one in five of the working population. People with disabilities continue to face many barriers in accessing work, whether they have a visible or invisible disability or illness. The barriers may be physical but they are also cultural. That is the situation despite the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and Equality Act 2010, which provided a legal platform to challenge discrimination based on disability. Even before that, the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944 and the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1958 prohibited employment-related discrimination against disabled people. Although some progress has been made, only 47% of working age disabled people are in employment, compared with nearly 80% of non-disabled people, and the figures vary considerably for different disabilities. So there is a disability employment gap of more than 30%, and it has widened slightly in recent years.
Although 4 million people with disabilities are working, another 1.3 million are available to and want to work but are currently unemployed. The vast majority of disabled people used to work, so this is such a waste of their skills, experience and talent. Attitudes, perceptions and judgments can get in the way of identifying someone’s talent or skills, and for people with disabilities that can be magnified, particularly in a job interview or at work.
A man in his 40s from Oldham told me that after an operation to remove a benign tumour left him disabled, he applied for hundreds of jobs but kept being knocked back. His experience was ignored and instead he was made to feel like a liability. He said:
“I’m ex-army, disciplined and driven to work like millions of other disabled people. I just need a chance.”
Adrian, from Saddleworth, who is in his 50s, left work in 2013, suffering from severe depression as a result of bullying. Now fully recovered, he is desperate to get back to work. He said:
“I think many employers look at mental health issues in your medical records and see it as a weakness.”
Working-age disabled people are twice as likely to be living in persistent poverty as non-disabled people, and that has implications for disabled people’s families, too. Families with one disabled member make up one third of all the families living in poverty. With the recent changes to social security support introduced by this Government, including nearly £24 billion to be cut from 3.7 million disabled people by 2018, the poverty and inequality experienced by disabled people are set to get worse. There are also implications for the economy and society as a whole; research from the Social Market Foundation has estimated that halving the disability employment gap and supporting 1 million more disabled people into work would boost the economy by £13 billion a year.
There are many reasons for the disability employment gap, including a lack of information and advice for employers. Discrimination against disabled workers is still prevalent. A recent survey showed that 15% of disabled people felt they had been discriminated against when applying for a job, and one in five felt that they had been discriminated against while in work. Information is not enough to address this—leadership is needed.
Governments set the tone for the culture of society explicitly, through their policies and laws, and more subtly, through the language they use and what they imply, which collectively tells us who they think are “worthy”—or not. This Government have made their views abundantly clear, from their swingeing cuts to social security support for disabled people to their overhaul of the work capability assessment process, which managed to be both dehumanising and ineffective. Their new sanctions policy has targeted the most vulnerable, bringing people to the brink, and people have died under it. We must also not forget their closure of Remploy factories for disabled people and their replacing them with—well, nothing. The chaos and inadequacy of the specialist employment support programme, Access to Work, which last year supported only 35,000 disabled people into work and at work, and the jobcentres’ disability employment service, with one adviser providing support to 600 disabled people, again reveal this Government’s priorities.
But what I, and many others, find so deeply offensive is the pejorative language that has been used by this Government, as they refer to people receiving social security as “shirkers” and “scroungers”—and that includes people with disabilities and limiting illnesses. The Government and anyone else who wilfully misrepresent the facts should be ashamed of themselves.
My Bill is a very modest step to help address that prevailing culture. People with disabilities should be able to access the same opportunities that everyone else can, including being able to use their talent and skills to the best of their ability. No one should feel they are unable to reach their full potential or that their hopes and dreams do not matter. By requiring employers with more than 250 employees to report the number and proportion of people with disabilities they employ, my Bill seeks to raise their awareness of the disability employment gap in their own organisation, prompting them to consider this information and what they may do about it. As we know, what is not measured or reported is rarely acted on. This is not about red tape; it is about what sort of society we want.
On its own, reporting will do little to address the disability employment gap. In addition to leadership from Government, we need leadership from organisations to shift attitudes to disability in the workplace. Training for employers, and more widely, can help develop empathy and change attitudes and behaviour. We also need practical measures to support disabled people at work, enabling them to thrive and protecting them from prematurely leaving the labour market. Some disability charities have recommended more flexible leave arrangements, as well as extending the Access to Work programme, which currently supports only a tiny minority of disabled people.
Although a number of employers do exceptional work in recruiting and retaining disabled employees, how does this apply to their procurement policies and supply chains? Of course more also needs to be done to help disabled people into work. As has been reported in recent Select Committee on Work and Pensions inquiries, the work capability assessment needs replacing with a more holistic, whole-person assessment. Instead of the increasingly punitive sanctions system, more appropriate support needs to be provided. One employment adviser helping 600 disabled people will just not cut it.
It is more than 70 years since legislation was first introduced to prohibit employment-related discrimination against disabled people. Sadly, we are still fighting to address this discrimination and the inequality in employment that people with disabilities still face. Changing attitudes and behaviour needs cultural change—it needs leadership. My Bill takes another step along this path for fairness.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Debbie Abrahams, Dame Anne Begg, Sheila Gilmore, Glenda Jackson, Teresa Pearce, Alex Cunningham, Mr Peter Hain, Mike Kane, Caroline Lucas, Alison McGovern and Grahame M. Morris present the Bill.
Debbie Abrahams accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 March, and to be printed (Bill 178).
Opposition Day
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Bankers’ Bonuses and the Banking Industry
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
15:58 - The House divided: - Ayes: 234 / Noes: 308 - Question accordingly negatived.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House believes bonuses should be rewards for exceptional performance and that, following the banking scandals that have emerged in the last few months, this year’s bank bonus round should reflect this principle; further believes that a tax on bank bonuses should be levied in order to fund a guaranteed paid starter job for young people who have been out of work for over a year, and that this tax should cover allowances paid by banks which attempt to get round the EU bonus cap; calls on the Government to reform the rules on bankers’ bonuses by extending clawback of bank bonuses that have already been paid in cases of inappropriate behaviour to at least 10 years and by also extending the deferral period for senior managers to 10 years, in line with the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards; and further calls on the Government to implement wider reform of the banking industry to increase competition and boost net lending to small and medium-sized businesses.
As we enter this year’s bank bonus season, I am reminded that seasons used to be for football and fashion, but it now seems that we have a season for bank bonuses as well. I am delighted to have this opportunity to set out everything that a Labour Government would do to reform the banking sector in this country, and to highlight the areas where the current Government have failed to make the necessary reforms.
Earlier this month, in our Opposition day debate on tax avoidance, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), with whom I have traded places today, explained how the tax system is underpinned by the principles of fairness, trust and transparency. Those principles are equally applicable to the banking sector. Just as a Labour Government will restore those principles to the tax system, ensuring that tax loopholes are closed, tax dodgers are caught, and everyone pays their fair share, so we will restore them to the banking sector. In doing so, we will be acting in the best interests of businesses, consumers, the wider economy and the banks themselves.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
The hon. Lady’s motion seeks to increase competition in banking. Will she therefore explain why the Labour Opposition voted against the Financial Services Act 2012, which specifically encouraged competition in banking services?
Cathy Jamieson
Having sat on the Bill Committee for that piece of legislation, I remember well the considerable discussion that there was. If the hon. Gentleman has read our paper on banking reform, he will know that we support the reference to the Competition and Markets Authority to ensure that we get new challenger banks in the system. That will be an important feature of our reforms in government.
Our programme of reform, as stated in our recent paper on banking, is designed to undo the reputational damage that has been inflicted by the financial crisis and the subsequent scandals. Our approach will help to restore the trust and confidence of savers, businesses and investors, and to ensure that fair dealing, integrity, prudence and probity are once again the pillars on which Britain’s banks are founded. In a global industry, an international reputation for good practice can only be a competitive advantage.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady believe that the tripartite system, which was brought in by the previous Prime Minister and the shadow Chancellor, was one reason why our banking system was left so much more vulnerable in the difficult time that we had? Does she accept that the Labour party should take responsibility for that?
Cathy Jamieson
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we did have a global financial crisis. The Labour party has accepted that perhaps the regulation could and should have been tighter; we have said that on numerous occasions. I was not in this place at the time of the financial crisis, but I do not recall many on the Conservative Benches making the case for tougher regulation. Indeed, the opposite is true; they were actually looking for light-touch regulation. I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but perhaps he should look at his own party’s record on this matter as well.
Cathy Jamieson
I want to make a bit of progress, but I will give way once more to the hon. Gentleman.
Guy Opperman
Clearly, regulation is needed, but it is only because we have relaxed some parts of the regulations that we have been able to allow up to 20 new challenger banks to be established since 2010. Does the hon. Lady think that her proposals will encourage or discourage challenger banks? The evidence thus far is that Labour has voted against every single measure that would create greater competition in banking.
Cathy Jamieson
I am now becoming a bit confused about what Conservative Members are arguing for here. Do they want more or less regulation? [Interruption.] Did I hear someone say both? The important issue here is to ensure that regulation is fit for purpose, and that we do not simply have more of the same when we talk about new entrants into the banking system.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Let me help to clarify the matter for the hon. Lady. The point that she was trying to make is that having an enormous amount of regulation can be ineffective and bureaucratic, but, equally, having too little regulation will not work. What we need is effective regulation. One of the most effective aspects of regulation, when it comes to changing behaviour, is the potential for criminal prosecution of those who do wrong. That is not mentioned in her motion. Will she address that during her speech?
Cathy Jamieson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving some clarity. He is absolutely right that regulation is part of the process, but we also need a culture change and an attitudinal change. He is correct to identify the lack of prosecutions. Although that is not mentioned specifically in the motion, I recommend that he reads Labour’s document, which takes account of that point. Our agenda is not entirely punitive, because it is driven by economic imperatives. We all know that the performance of the banking sector is vital to the health of Britain’s economy. It employs more than 1 million people, each of whom has an important role to play in advising businesses and consumers, and helping them to manage their money, invest wisely and plan for the future. Without the banks, consumers would be unable to save and borrow. Businesses would not have access to the patient finance that they need if they are to grow and to create high-quality, well-paid jobs.
Too often in recent years, many banks have fallen short of the very high standards that we expect of them; that is a view shared across the House. In many instances, they have not acted with trust and they have not acted fairly. At times, they have acted recklessly and unethically. Instead of helping their customers, they have exploited them.
Banks and their employees operate in a high-skilled environment, dealing with sophisticated financial instruments that are often beyond the ken of the average consumer and small business owner. Rather than using that knowledge to guide and advise consumers, they have, in some instances, abused that knowledge to exploit them. In investment, consumer and business banking, banks have betrayed the trust of customers and undermined the integrity of the industry. In doing so, they have totted up some truly colossal sums in fines.
Indeed, 2014 was a record year for fines in the City of London, culminating in the £1.1 billion fine levied by the Financial Conduct Authority on five banks, including HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland, for their part in the forex fixing scandal. In recent times, four UK banks—Barclays, HSBC, RBS and Lloyds—have also paid £1.5 billion in compensation for mis-selling interest rate hedging products. Other recent scandals include LIBOR fixing and the mis-selling of payment protection insurance.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way; she is making an intelligent speech. With regard to the recent fines, is it not fair to say that in the vast majority of cases the actions that led to those fines were perpetrated under the old regulator, the Financial Services Authority, and that the bringing to justice, meaning the fining, has been done under the new regulatory regime? Does that not reinforce how bad the old system was and how good the new one is?
Cathy Jamieson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for what I think was a bit of a compliment about me making an intelligent speech. Of course, he then proceeded to make a party political point by trying to shift the emphasis back on to what happened before, and I understand why he would seek to do so. It is important to acknowledge that there have been changes, but there is no evidence yet to suggest that all the behaviours that led to wrong decisions being taken have changed, so we still need to keep an eye on that.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
I would like to give the hon. Lady an opportunity to rise above the party politics that the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), were he here—I note that he is not—would no doubt be indulging in. Does she welcome the £5 million funding from LIBOR sources that has benefited charities up and down the country, including the East Anglia air ambulance in my constituency?
Cathy Jamieson
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. The shadow Chancellor is not here, but neither is the Chancellor, so I am not sure what point she was trying to make in that regard. I recognise that a significant amount of money has gone to support valuable organisations such as the one she mentioned, but I hope that she was in no way suggesting that the banks should not be paying attention to their current ways of operating. We must ensure that we never again have a situation in which those fines are necessary, so hopefully things will change.
Charlie Elphicke
Will the hon. Lady confirm that the forex and LIBOR scandals took place before this Government were elected, and that it is this Government’s regulatory regime that has taken action to deal with them? Does she also agree that bonuses tripled in four years under her Government, and that under this Government they are a fifth of what they were? Much progress has been made, and she ought to give the Government credit for the work they have done.
Cathy Jamieson
I will always give credit where it is due, but we also have to look at what has happened on this Government’s watch. As the hon. Gentleman knows, what we have seen with HSBC over the past few weeks shows that it can take a considerable time for some of those issues to come to light and be dealt with. The important point is to have a regulatory environment in place that allows those issues to be dealt with quickly, rather than just put to one side. We also need a change in culture to ensure that those things do not happen again.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very important point. She will remember that after the LIBOR scandal the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards set out a programme of reform for the banking sector. Is she as concerned as I am that those reforms have not gone nearly far enough in their implementation? We need a proper investment bank and proper competition in banking, and we must also ensure lending to businesses.
Cathy Jamieson
My hon. Friend makes a useful point. I am confident that he has read the paper we published on that, which highlights the need to ensure that finance gets to small and medium-sized enterprises, in particular, and the important role that a proper British investment bank can play.
Earlier this month we saw a new and startling example of impropriety, with the allegations that HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary actively advised customers on how to avoid, and indeed evade, tax. I want to emphasis again that all those activities are symptoms of a wider culture that has seeped from investment to retail banking. That culture has been characterised by short-termism and the pursuit of profit at the expense of all else—in many cases, at the expense of the banks’ own customers and the wider economy. That culture led to banks exploiting their consumers and ripping off the taxpayer.
That culture has also caused banks to lose sight of what should be their core function. The role of our high street banks is, or should be, twofold: they must serve the needs of consumers, providing basic borrowing and saving facilities and loans for mortgages to buy homes; and they must provide finance to businesses, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) suggested, enabling them to start up, grow and create well-paid and secure jobs. However, lending to business has fallen by over £55 billion since 2010, despite an array of Government schemes, such as Project Merlin and the funding for lending scheme, all of which have to varying degrees failed to deliver. Despite that, however, and despite all the scandals, the banks have continued to pay lavish bonuses to a small cohort of senior employees.
Mark Garnier
The hon. Lady is being very generous in giving way. She says that business lending is not quite what it was in the old days, but is it not fair to say that business lending in the old days was incredibly irrational and irresponsible, and that that led to the financial crisis that brought the banks down? We want the banks to lend, but we do not want them to lend irresponsibly and create another crisis.
Cathy Jamieson
I do not think that anyone is suggesting that we want irresponsible lending. We want those businesses that are valuable, sustainable and want to grow—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has heard from them in his constituency, as I have in mine—to be able to access finance. That is the important point.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous in giving way to Conservative Members, and I would like to quote another Conservative, albeit not a Member of this House. Kay Swinburne, an MEP for Wales, had this to say on the subject of the court case in Europe that the Government decided to contest with our money:
“I can tell you there is not a single constituent I have met that actually thinks we were right to have taken that to the courts”.
She then suggested that bankers could be “a little more innovative” in getting around the cap. That is the real voice of the Conservative party, even if Conservative Members are not expressing it here today.
Cathy Jamieson
I was planning to say something about the cap later, but my hon. Friend has made her point with words that I would have difficulty bettering.
Let me return to banks paying lavish bonuses. The public are understandably still questioning why, with wage stagnation and the cost of living crisis that they are all facing, senior bankers have continued to reward themselves in that way. Let us look at the figures. Last year, bonuses at Barclays were up 10% to £2.4 billion and those at Lloyds were up 8% to £395 million. The Royal Bank of Scotland, 79% of which is owned by the taxpayer, announced a bonus pool of £577 million. Some may say that that is all well and good, because it is just senior bankers enjoying the hard-earned fruits of their labour, but that is more difficult to justify in the light of recent scandals and given that two of the UK’s four largest banks—Barclays and RBS—have experienced drastic falls in profits. Earlier this week, with impeccable timing, of course, HSBC announced its bonus pool for the year, awarding its chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, £7.6 million—I repeat, £7.6 million—and paying 330 of its top employees in excess of €1 million, despite the revelations of recent weeks and a 17% fall in profits.
It would be remiss of me not to refer to the role that the Government have played in all this. As well as the failure of their schemes to galvanise lending, they have failed—this point was made my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish—to implement all the reforms recommended by the Independent Commission on Banking and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. They ignored Labour’s pleas for action to regulate benchmarks when the LIBOR scandal first came to light, and they have actively aided and abetted bankers’ efforts to safeguard their bonuses. As my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) pointed out, the Chancellor launched an ill-fated and misguided legal challenge to the EU bonus cap, which limits bonuses to 100% of fixed pay or 200% with shareholder approval, which still seems fairly generous.
Mark Garnier
What troubles me about a lot of what the hon. Lady is saying is that she is confusing how much bankers have been paid with how one goes about paying them. While many of us would agree that having pay packages of millions of pounds is an issue in itself, it is not to do with bonuses. She will probably propose in due course that bonuses should be clawed back over a period of 10 years, which I recommended as a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, so I agree with her entirely about that. However, capping bonuses reduces the amount of money that can be clawed back. In fact, if one pays a banker £1, 90p should be paid as a bonus, because then there will be more to claw back and therefore more sway over that banker to encourage them to behave better.
Cathy Jamieson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I know that he made those points during the work that he did. I am glad to hear that he agrees with us on some of this, and I will deal with a number of his points later.
We still have to look at the actions of this Government in taking on the legal challenge to the EU bonus cap, however. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not suggest for a moment that that was a sensible thing to do. I do not think that the public saw it in that way—
Cathy Jamieson
No, I want to finish this point.
As I said, it seemed that the scenario proposed was still fairly generous, but it was obviously not generous enough for the Chancellor, who decided to take legal action. The quest ended in failure after he meekly admitted defeat at the hands of the EU’s lawyers, but not before he had wasted thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money in legal fees. Let us remember that this Chancellor will not devote himself to ensuring that tax avoiders and evaders are brought to book, when the first thing that he does is to challenge something of that sort, but he will devote himself to defending the right of bankers to receive high bonuses, while spending taxpayers’ money as he does so.
The Chancellor has been a diligent defender of bankers on the home front, too. Last year he had to be pressurised by Labour and others into refusing to give taxpayer-owned RBS the shareholder permission it needed to breach the cap and to pay bonuses of 200% of salary, and he still has serious questions to answer on HSBC. Over recent weeks, he has done his best not to answer them and has sent his Treasury Ministers out to do the talking for him. On Monday, he finally put in an appearance, yet he did not have any answers at all, so we need to keep asking the same questions. Did he discuss allegations of tax evasion at HSBC with Lord Green before Lord Green was made a Tory Minister; why has only one person been prosecuted out of 1,100 names; and why has he signed a deal with Switzerland that could prevent HMRC from getting its hands on similar information in future? He has been Chancellor for nearly five years and this is his responsibility. He needs to start taking his responsibilities seriously. If he does not, people are going to draw their own conclusions.
Let me move on to Labour’s reforms. It has been clear since this Government took office that they do not have the stomach for the serious reforms that we need. As our motion explains, a Labour Government will do things very differently. Our starting point, as I outlined, will be trust and fairness. We believe that banks should serve the needs of their customers and the economy, and that bonuses should be a reward for exceptional performance, not a compensation for failure.
Cathy Jamieson
I will, in the hope that the hon. Gentleman is going to agree with my last point.
Guy Opperman
I do agree that there is a need for greater competition. Let me ask the hon. Lady this question again: why did she troop through the Lobby—I presume that she did so with the rest of her colleagues—to vote against the provisions on greater competition in the Financial Services Act 2012?
Cathy Jamieson
As I said to the hon. Gentleman earlier, perhaps he would like to take some time to read the report that we produced last week, which shows that we need to make several changes to ensure that there is greater competition. I do not see anything inconsistent in that and I hope that he will choose to read the report.
I want to return to the point that bonuses should be a reward for exceptional performance, not a compensation for failure.
Cathy Jamieson
I want to finish my point. I have been very generous and time is moving on.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way just on this point?
Cathy Jamieson
No, I am going to finish the point that I began.
Bonuses are a reward for exceptional performance in other industries, so that should be the case in the banking sector as well. However, despite the scandals that have emerged over the past year, most recently at HSBC, it looks as though this year’s round of bank bonuses will once again be very generous.
There needs to be more accountability in banking, and pay must be more closely aligned with long-term performance, so a Labour Government will embark on a serious and far-reaching programme of reform in the banking sector. We will reintroduce our successful tax on bankers’ bonuses, which generated over £3 billion in 2010, and act to ensure that this tax incorporates role-based pay or any other payments made by banks in an attempt to circumvent the EU bonus cap.
Cathy Jamieson
No, I am going to finish this point because it answers a number of questions that hon. Members have put.
We will use the money generated to fund our compulsory jobs guarantee, creating a paid job for every 16 to 24-year-old who has been out of work for over a year, and for those over the age of 25 who have been out of work for more than two years. According to the latest labour force survey, youth unemployment was 740,000 in the three months to December 2014, which was an increase of 3,000 on the previous quarter. We know that being unemployed while young damages people’s prospects years into the future. Research shows that young people who have been unemployed for a year will, on average, be £125,000 worse off over their working lifetime, which means that a person on the average wage would have to work nearly six years longer to make up for the cost of being unemployed while young.
Cathy Jamieson
I am not going to give way because I am making important and serious points about the future of our young people. I have been very generous in giving way and I want to finish this point. Our bank bonus tax not only will offer a lifeline for thousands of young people, helping them to earn, learn, and get a foot on the career ladder, but will help the economy and mean that the banks give something back to society.
In addition to that and our wider programme of reform, we will extend the deferral and clawback period for bonuses, ensuring that rewards are paid out proportionately and can be recouped when evidence of reckless or inappropriate behaviour is revealed further down the line. As I said, the financial crisis and recent scandals have shown that risky decisions can take up to a decade to have an impact. The next Labour Government will therefore ensure that if bankers have been shown to have acted inappropriately or made reckless decisions, banks will be able to claw back any bonuses awarded. We will act on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards by extending the period for the clawback of bank bonuses that have already been paid to at least 10 years. We will also extend deferral periods for senior managers to at least 10 years, which will help to deter the rash and short-sighted behaviour that we have seen in the past, and to encourage banks and their employers to have a view of the long term.
Cathy Jamieson
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman once more, given his role on the Parliamentary Commission.
Mark Garnier
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady; she really is being incredibly generous. Capping bonuses and targeting the bonus with a tax in itself will inevitably drive banks’ behaviour towards the perverse outcomes that none of us in the Chamber wants. If we tax bonuses, the banks will change them into something else. They cannot wriggle out of a balance sheet tax, which this Government have imposed, but they will be able to wriggle out of a bonus tax, and we cannot avoid that.
Cathy Jamieson
I believe that the hon. Gentleman is trying to be helpful by making points that I know have been made before, but I refer him to the previous occasion on which a bankers bonus tax was implemented, when a number of anti-avoidance measures were put in place to deal with such a problem. We do not want any unintended consequences.
I am trying to signal our intent. When we are in government, we intend to make the tax work to change the culture and practice in banking, as well as to ensure that we help our young people. I am sure that any folks listening to my speech who are thinking about devising ways of not paying up or not making a fair contribution will hear the intent in what I am saying and therefore not pursue such a course.
I remind hon. Members who have not already read our “Plan for Banking Reform”, which was published last week, that it sets out a series of wide-ranging reforms to the banking sector. It builds on much of the work done by the commissions and is informed by speaking to people in the industry. It focuses on the four key areas of stability, competition, access to finance, and culture and pay. The one-off tax on bankers bonuses is just one part of the reform process, but it is an important part.
Last week, I hosted a jobs fair in my constituency, as have many hon. Members on both sides of the House. I saw at first hand how much the young unemployed people who came along want to work and to contribute to society. I met people who have been out of work over a fairly lengthy period and are desperate for the opportunity to get back into employment and to contribute to society. They want decent jobs with decent pay; they do not want the instability of being on zero-hours contracts or of working for umbrella companies that are more interested in avoiding paying their taxes than in paying their way in society. We need to ensure that such young people and the long-term unemployed—not just in my constituency, but right across the UK—get the help that they need. These young people need to make the first step on to the careers ladder, and the long-term unemployed need help to get back into real jobs. It is absolutely vital that such support is given to not only our young people, but the long-term unemployed, who are almost at risk of being frozen out of the jobs market.
As I said, Labour’s programme of banking reform is driven by economic imperatives. The motion sets out that banks should make a social contribution as well as an economic one, and that the bonuses they pay should be a reward for exceptional performance, not a compensation for failure. I believe that those are vital steps along the road to restoring fairness, stability and trust to the sector so that banks serve the needs of the wider economy. I hope that the Government see fit on this occasion to support our motion.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrea Leadsom)
I have to say that I am extremely disappointed by the remarks of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson). I find it absolutely astonishing that Labour Members have the courage to raise the issue of bankers’ bonuses. Perhaps they have forgotten that it was under their light-touch regulatory regime that the worst excesses of the banking sector were allowed to flourish. I wonder whether she regrets the fact that the shadow Chancellor is not in the House today. Does she suspect that he regrets saying, as City Minister in June 2006, that
“nothing should be done to put at risk a light-touch, risk-based regulatory regime”?
Does she think that he regrets presiding over a system under which £66 billion was paid out in bonuses on his watch?
Cathy Jamieson
I wonder whether the Minister heard what I said when I was challenged about whether the shadow Chancellor ought to be in the Chamber. I noted that the Chancellor is not present, and I raised the question of what Conservative Members had done on light-touch regulation. Were they not arguing for it? Can she give me an example from that time when her party proposed something different?
Andrea Leadsom
That is just another typical Opposition ploy. At that point, the Conservative party was in opposition and the Labour party was in government. It is absolutely unconscionable for the Labour party to suggest that the Opposition of the day should have saved the Labour Government from their own excesses.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Charlie Elphicke
Does my hon. Friend not think that the last intervention is reminiscent of arsonists throwing rocks at the firefighters who have worked so hard to put out the fire the arsonists started?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is quite right. It is extraordinary that Labour Members have the cheek to come to the House and suggest that Conservative Members are somehow responsible.
I want to draw to the House’s attention the very prescient quote from the former Prime Minister when, representing the previous Government, he addressed the City in his Mansion House speech in 2002:
“What you as the City of London have done for financial services, we as a Government aim to do for the economy as a whole.”
And didn’t they just? It is absolutely extraordinary that under the “intensely relaxed” Labour Administration, bankers were rewarded for taking excessive risk, and if they failed, were allowed to get away with it—heads they win, tails the taxpayer loses.
Mr Jackson
Is not this debate a displacement activity for a party that does not have any coherent narrative to deal with jobs, growth and the economy? Is it not reckless of Her Majesty’s Opposition to keep recycling the tax on bankers’ bonuses—10 times over—without ever having to account for where that money will actually go?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is exactly right that the Opposition are simply trying to recycle something as a distraction. I am truly delighted that the motion gives me the opportunity to set out the wide-ranging measures that this Government have taken to sort out the appalling legacy of the Labour party on banks and remuneration. We have taken an extraordinarily wide-ranging set of measures to sort out a mess left, once again, by a Labour Government.
Debbie Abrahams
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for ultimately giving way. Will she remind the House how much more the Government are borrowing now compared with 2010?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady will know that the Government have taken steps to bring down significantly the amount we are borrowing each year to get our economy on the road to recovery after the disaster caused by the Labour party.
To return to the point of this debate, the real fact is that the public are absolutely right to be furious about the behaviour and misconduct of banks. It still feels as though there are fresh examples every day of the shameful practices that went on in the bad old days. The public will want to know what this Government have done to sort out the mess left by the previous Government.
I can tell the House that, under this Government, we have the toughest remuneration regime of any major financial centre in the world; we are making banks raise their standards, rebuild their reputation and get back to the job they used to do prudently and respectably for centuries; and we are making sure that we never go back to the bad old days of banking.
Andrea Leadsom
I will give way in a moment, but I want to be very clear at this point. In such debates, there is always a sense that somehow all bankers are terrible people. The truth is that the vast majority of the up to 2 million people employed in financial services do an honest day’s work and always have done. They would not seek to rip anybody off, or distort anything they do. They are honest, decent people. I want to pay tribute to the work of financial services not just in oiling the wheels of our economy, but in contributing so much to our economy as a whole. Notwithstanding the very real misconduct issues, which have disgusted all of us right across the country, it is true that only a small number of people are responsible for such wrongdoing. I will talk about what we have done to put that right after I have given way.
Guy Opperman
Will my hon. Friend also make the point that this Government have ensured that LIBOR funds, which were not previously given to good causes, have benefited air ambulances—my hon. Friends and I supported them at No. 11 Downing street last night—and 96 military charities? This Government have brought in a magnificent innovation that supports wonderful charities.
Andrea Leadsom
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. The Government are extremely proud that fines for misconduct go to good causes, unlike under the Labour party, when any fines for misconduct were passed straight back into the hands of the people who committed it. The LIBOR fines have gone to military charities and air ambulances, as he pointed out, and the fines for the appalling foreign exchange rigging will support the NHS and GP surgeries in particular.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is a well-informed Minister. Will she tell the House what she did in her years as a banker at BZW and Barclays and, latterly, as a head of corporate governance to lobby for tighter financial regulation?
Andrea Leadsom
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to say that for the last 10 years of my career at Invesco Perpetual, I was responsible for writing a quantitative bonus scheme that measured the performance of fund managers over three, five and 10 years according to the performance of the team, the business and the individual, which involved clawbacks, as appropriate. I started that work in 1999 and finished it in 2009, so I can say with confidence that I did my bit on remuneration.
What have the Government done that we are so proud of? First, we have brought down the quantum of bonuses. City bonuses are now a fifth of what they were under Labour. The banks that were bailed out by the taxpayer have been a key focus for the Government, so let me inform the House about what is happening with bonuses at RBS. We will ensure that the total bonus pool comes down again, both in total and per head. That will continue the reductions that made last year’s bonuses more than two-thirds lower than those in 2009. The bonus pool at the investment bank will come down too in total and per head. We are continuing to restrict cash bonuses to £2,000, and no executive director will receive a bonus.
Let me also tell the House what is happening at Lloyds. This week, we announced that we are getting back another half a billion pounds for taxpayers—money that they had to put in. We can do that because since the crisis Lloyds has gone from failure to being a strong, profitable bank that is helping to drive the UK recovery and is contributing £230 million a year through the bank levy. We will ensure that Lloyds sees its bonus pool reduce this year and we are continuing to restrict cash bonuses to £2,000.
Let us compare that with the Labour party, which presided over a system that paid Fred Goodwin a cash bonus of £2.9 million in 2007. It is now calling for a 10-year clawback on bonuses—once again asking us to clear up the mess that it left—and has spent its bank tax proposal 10 times over.
The Government have made the link between bonuses and performance crystal clear. Bankers should be in no doubt that their bonuses are at risk should misbehaviour occur. Under this Government, highly paid bankers and those who are liable for big decisions have their bonuses deferred over at least three years, and at least 60% must be deferred for senior managers. Bonuses are now clearly linked to the performance of banks, since 50% of any bonus must be paid in shares or similar instruments. Deferred bonuses can be subject to cancellation in the future. Since the start of this year, bonuses can be clawed back up to seven years after they are paid out when misconduct or serious performance issues come to light. Guaranteed bonuses, which were commonplace under the previous Government, are banned in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
We have taken the lead in ensuring that there is transparency in senior executives’ pay arrangements. We have ensured that all the top 15 banks have signed up to the strengthened code of practice, which is a notable improvement on the two that had signed up when Labour left office. Our reforms to company law mean that shareholders are guaranteed a binding vote on pay policy.
We are not stopping there. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which was attended so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), made strong recommendations on bankers’ pay.
David Mowat
The Minister is right to say that the level of bonuses has reduced hugely in the past few years. However, does she agree that the real issue with banking is not the bonus level, but the level of absolute remuneration, which the Labour party’s policy does not address? Why does she think banks require so many people to earn more than £1 million a year, in a way that oil companies and pharmaceutical companies do not? The issue is the absolute level of remuneration.
Andrea Leadsom
Philosophically, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Many people across the country will agree that the absolute level of remuneration in financial services needs to be clearly justified. Although the Conservative party truly believes that wealth creation, which creates jobs, tax revenue for the Exchequer and growth for our economy, should be properly remunerated, we want to give as much power as possible to shareholders to ensure that they can take decisions that make it absolutely clear that remuneration should reflect the contribution of the individual, and not just some norm in the industry.
We have agreed with the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and asked the financial services regulators to look into implementing them, in particular the extension of clawback to 10 years when an investigation into an individual is ongoing and the extension of deferral to seven years for senior managers, which is a significant increase from the current three years. The regulators are due to publish final rules in response to the consultation shortly. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that we want to keep our independent regulators independent, so that they act in the best interests of our economy and not in the interests of a political party.
Mr Marcus Jones
My hon. Friend has mentioned power for shareholders and political interference. Does she agree that it is not right for the Government to intervene in certain situations, such as in the financial crash, when the last Prime Minister effectively pushed Lloyds TSB and RBS into a shotgun marriage?
Andrea Leadsom
I agree with my hon. Friend in principle. We want to see the market working properly, shareholders taking the decisions on remuneration and businesses acting fairly in the interests of all their stakeholders. That is why we have been so determined to sort out transparency, fairness and the binding votes that boards have in regard to the actions of the banks.
Our desire to see a lack of political intervention is why we have opposed and continue to oppose the deeply flawed and politically motivated EU cap on bonuses. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor, the Governor of the Bank of England and the head of the Prudential Regulation Authority agree that it will not control bankers’ pay, but instead push up fixed pay, make it more difficult to claw back earnings when things go wrong, weaken financial stability and make it more likely that the taxpayer, rather than the banker, pays the cost of mistakes. We continue to believe that the cap is fundamentally flawed. Members will know that we have, however, withdrawn our legal challenge to the cap and are instead looking at how else we can build a system of pay in global banking that encourages responsibility, rather than undermines it.
Helen Goodman
Will the hon. Lady explain to the House and the country why it is wrong to cap bankers’ bonuses but right to cap nurses’ pay?
Andrea Leadsom
The point that we have made about the bankers bonus cap is that bankers will find other ways to remunerate themselves in fixed pay, rather than in variable pay. The hon. Lady smiles, but she perhaps fails to understand that the whole point of the regime we have put in place is to ensure that bankers are accountable. The way for them to be accountable is through variable pay, which is performance related, unlike fixed pay. The problem with the cap on bonuses is that it will put up fixed pay.
Andrea Leadsom
I will not take another intervention on that point because I have explained it twice and would like to move on.
The cap remains fundamentally flawed, so we are looking at other ways to ensure that there is accountability. We do, however, fear that fixed pay is going up and there is some evidence of that. Last November, the Chancellor wrote to the Governor of the Bank of England to ask him to encourage this work in his role as chairman of the Financial Stability Board. Such methods at a global level might include standards that ensure that non-bonus or fixed pay is also put at risk, maximising clawback or paying senior staff in performance-related bonds. Any such solution must be international in nature to be effective. That is why we are pushing the Financial Stability Board, which is uniquely well placed, to pursue these issues with urgency.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
I welcome all the action that the Government have taken to clamp down on excessive banking bonuses, but it is not the case that, as my hon. Friend said earlier, more than 2 million people are employed in the financial services industry in Britain, and not all of them are millionaires? It is important that we take into account the fact that there are people in the banking sector on relatively low pay. Not every banker is earning £1 million or more a year.
Andrea Leadsom
I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that point, and I am happy to reiterate my remark that the financial services sector employs up to 2 million in this country, most of them outside the City and many of them doing regular jobs in banks and call centres, or even in places such as a new dealing room that has been set up outside Birmingham, which I recently had the pleasure of visiting. All those people are as mortified as the rest of us at the behaviour of a few, so it is always important to remember that we are talking about the behaviour of a few, not of the many.
The third thing that the Government have done is to improve the accountability of bankers. I hope hon. Members will agree that the vast majority of people in the financial sector are decent people who have played by the rules and just want to get on with providing a valued and trusted service to their customers. We must have high standards in banking, because that is what will help the UK to continue to thrive as a leading and trusted financial centre. The sector remains a huge asset to the British economy, contributing almost an eighth of the total tax receipts and giving us a trade surplus of £16 billion last year.
Banking oils the wheels of the economy, helps our businesses grow, fosters investment and boosts aspiration. When bankers get it right, it is a driver of this country’s growth. When they get it wrong, the damage is consequentially enormous, because it threatens the livelihood of millions of people in this country, as we saw during the financial crisis.
The public will want to know that this Government have made reckless misconduct leading to bank failure a criminal offence, and overseen banks being fined heavily for their worst excesses. There have been £450 million of fines for the disgraceful rigging of LIBOR and £1.1 billion of fines for the manipulation of foreign exchange rates—disgusting and unacceptable behaviour. I know that all Members will be reassured to know that the Serious Fraud Office has opened investigations into a number of individuals in relation to the manipulation of LIBOR and forex. Of course, many firms have sacked and dismissed staff found guilty as part of their own internal investigations.
Richard Fuller
My hon. Friend is now stressing one point that the everyday people feel is most important about the reform of our banking system—that when bankers do wrong, they should face criminal prosecution and the prospect of jail. Is she satisfied that we now have the right measures in place—measures that the last Government did not put in place—and will she assure the House that she will ensure that the Government use all their powers to enforce the regulations as far as possible?
Andrea Leadsom
That is an important point. This Government have taken every step we can think of to ensure accountability, prevent future wrongdoing and improve standards in banking. We are always open to new suggestions, but it is our genuine belief that we have fundamentally changed the underlying systems that banks work with. I can certainly reassure my hon. Friend that when I speak to the chief executives of banks, as I do regularly, they assure me that they, too, take the matter extremely seriously and have put in place checks so that they can indentify wrongdoing and punish the offenders under their own steam, as hon. Members will have seen in the press today.
Andrea Leadsom
I will not give way again; I am just coming to the end of my speech, and I want to give other Members the chance to contribute.
Fourthly, in our efforts to rebuild this vital industry, we have put in place the regulatory reforms necessary to improve bankers’ conduct and make banks serve their clients better, whether they are small and medium-sized enterprises or members of the public. We have legislated for a new senior managers and certification regime, to strengthen the accountability of senior management and raise the standards of individual conduct. We also launched an enforcement review, which recommended improvements to how regulators make decisions relating to enforcement.
We have promoted choice and competition in the retail banking sector, putting it at the heart of our regulatory system. By making it easier for customers to switch banks we are incentivising banks to look after their customers better, and by opening the door for new and smaller banks to compete with the established names we are ensuring that the entire sector ups its game, not least in helping our small and medium-sized businesses grow and expand. That is good for the customer, good for the sector and good for the wider economy.
Reforming remuneration for bankers has been a major priority for this Government. We are sorting out the mess left by the Labour party. It is not a pleasant spectacle when you lend someone your car, and they crash it and then criticise you for not repairing it quickly enough. I totally reject the proposals for changes that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun made. This Government are doing the work needed to ensure that the UK’s financial services are fit for the 21st century and that we put the bad old days of banking behind us.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
I think it is fair to say that many of us have been speaking to ever-rising numbers of constituents in the past few weeks, and I am confident that that will continue in the weeks to come. Members will acknowledge that the sense on the doorstep and on high streets is that there will be a recovery that genuinely touches every part of our country only when the talent that is wasting away in each of our communities can find fulfilment again in the dignity of decent work.
Welcome though the recent falls in unemployment are—although, worryingly, youth unemployment rose in the last quarter—they conceal the scale of long-term unemployment, particularly among young people. In my constituency, some 520 people have been out of work for either a year or more in the case of 18 to 24-year-olds, or two years or more in the case of over-25s. That accounts for one fifth of the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count in my constituency.
I have met the families of many young people, who have told me exactly the same story: those young people have gone to college and undertaken good vocational training, but ended up in long-term unemployment at the end of it. They have done the right thing but ended up without work for long periods, so now the Government must do the right thing by them and act to restore their right to a decent job. They are people with ambition, aspiration and great prospects, but they are currently denied the right to work by a way of running the economy that lets inequality rip, with the majority of the gains from growth going to people at the top of society, while low pay, insecure hours and increasingly insecure terms and conditions at work leave a persistent gap between rich and poor.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has started exactly where this debate should start—with who needs to benefit, which is young people who are looking for work but have been out of work for some time. Does he agree that it is not only about giving them jobs, but about giving them the opportunity for careers and long-term employment? The Conservative party says that it is the party of opportunity, after all.
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend’s point will have as much salience in Inverclyde as it does in Glasgow North East and, I believe, in every constituency. When the maximum number of people in this country are involved in the economy, we have a broader tax base and more tax revenue coming in. That is the only credible plan for reducing the deficit in a fair way in the next Parliament. Any Chancellor who wants to have a credible deficit reduction plan has to have a credible plan for abolishing long-term and youth unemployment.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
I am aware that the hon. Gentleman was not here during the last Parliament—at least, I do not think he was—but how does he feel about the fact that his party was in government for 13 years to deliver its vision, yet youth unemployment rose and inequality widened? Why should we believe that it will be different in the future?
Mr Bain
I was here for four months of the previous Parliament, when a tax on bankers’ bonuses brought in £3.4 billion in revenue and we introduced a 50p top rate of tax for people earning £150,000 a year or more. The next Parliament should reintroduce that to ensure that the wealthiest in society make a fairer contribution to getting our deficit down, and so that we bring back opportunities for young people who have been denied them during this Parliament.
Mr Stewart Jackson
I admire the hon. Gentleman’s sincerity, but his argument would carry more weight were it not for the fact that under the previous Government—run by the party of which he is a member and supports—during a period of economic growth 5.2 million people were left on out-of-work benefits and youth unemployment doubled. The gap between the richest and poorest 10% widened. That is his Government’s record, and it ill behoves him to lecture our Government who have done a lot to address those key issues.
Mr Bain
The Government whom the previous Labour Government replaced were content to leave a wages structure in place in this country in which security guards earned less than £1 an hour. That inequality had to be tackled, and that gap reduced during the previous Parliament. People will want to hear during this debate about the next Parliament, and about our vision for the future of a high-skill, higher wage, higher investment economy. I believe that the Labour party has the more convincing vision.
Guy Opperman
I have here the House of Commons unemployment statistics for February 2015 for Glasgow North East. Surely this Government’s long-term economic plan has done something when the number of total claimants has reduced by 19.6% in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, youth unemployment for 18 to 24-year-olds has reduced by 27%, and those unemployed for more than 12 months—a more difficult area—have reduced by 37%. Are we doing something right?
Mr Bain
The hon. Gentleman cites figures that demonstrate that in the last month—[Interruption.] Well, I will give him figures from the Office for National Statistics. In the past month, unemployment in my constituency rose by nearly 50 people. He does not cite the International Labour Organisation figures. If he genuinely believes that unemployment of 2,500 people in my constituency should be tolerated by any Government, he misjudges not just the attitude of my constituents, but the good sense of the British people.
Charlie Elphicke
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that welfare reforms, the long-term economic plan, and the jobs revolution that we have seen have been great at getting people back into work so that they can fulfil and achieve their potential? Does he not welcome that?
Helen Goodman
Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government have manipulated the jobseeker’s allowance figures by increasing the number of sanctions, which are now affecting some 25% of people who go to the jobcentre?
Mr Bain
I agree with my hon. Friend. In this country people want targets for abolishing long-term youth and adult unemployment, not targets in jobcentres for sanctions. We see that in our constituency offices when people arrive in a desperate state having been sanctioned because of edicts from the office of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
The vision of a different economy was picked up by the OECD yesterday in its report. It stated that future growth and rises in living standards in this country will come only if our economy sees increases in productivity, exports and levels of investment. We must improve our skills record and, importantly, sort out more secure and long-term pathways to finance for business and industry in this country—real structural reform for our banks must happen in the next Parliament.
A high-skill, high-investment, higher-wage economy cannot be built when thousands of people are locked outside the labour market for long periods, with skills going to waste and promise left unfulfilled. In 10 weeks’ time—10 weeks tomorrow—my constituents and the rest of the country will go to the polling stations in the hope that change is on the way with a new Government. However, the House does not have to wait that long. By passing the motion today, it can send a powerful message to the Chancellor that a Budget that will command support in the country in a few weeks’ time must have the purpose of abolishing the scourge of long-term unemployment that is so destructive of long-term income prospects, and corrosive of the human spirit.
The House should do more. We must restore fairness to our taxation system and reintroduce that tax on highly paid financiers who have pocketed some of the biggest gains from this Government over the past five years. With the 50p tax cut, for the last few years they have had a Government who have been on their side. Now the British people, who are meeting the burden of high long-term unemployment costs through our social security system, need a new Government who are on their side instead.
With as much as £34 billion a year in taxes going uncollected under this Government, we need policies that maximise revenues and encourage excluded parts of our society back into the labour market. Sweden’s equivalent of the jobs guarantee policy was first introduced in 1983 under a social democratic Government, and it helped balance the books there in the mid-1990s while restoring the right to work to thousands of people. That jobs guarantee was followed in Norway, Finland and Denmark. We should match that ambition in this country by having more people in work and paying into the system, and becoming better off and improving our public finances at the same time.
With bonuses paid by the financial sector since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007 having reached £100 billion this year, and with a few at the top pocketing the biggest gains, the case for asking for a greater contribution from those people—given the taxpayer assistance that has been provided to the banks and financial sector since 2008—is unanswerable. With the Office for Budget Responsibility having revised down by £48 billion at the autumn statement the levels of revenue from income tax and national insurance from the next financial year until 2018-19, the case for more people being in work, and for the super-rich to pay their fair share, makes best economic sense. That is why it is right to increase the clawback period for bonuses paid to people guilty of misconduct in the financial sector from seven years to 10 years, and—crucially—to introduce penalties in law for breaches of the general anti-abuse rule on avoidance.
As the High Pay Centre has shown in recent months, the link between company performance and executive remuneration and bonuses at the very top is tenuous at best. Reform of corporate governance so as to have an employee representative on remuneration committees would help secure greater accountability over what highly rewarded executives receive, and the wider commercial and social obligations that they should have in mind.
Too often, pay structures reward failure when instead there must be a greater relationship with long-term performance. That can be dealt with by the Financial Conduct Authority and greater legal transparency on bonuses, and secured by reform of the laws and corporate governance. Through the taxation system, we in this House can do a great deal more to discourage irresponsibility in the financial sector, and secure justice for the disadvantaged by raising £1.5 billion to £2 billion through a repeat of the bank bonus tax, to fund the jobs guarantee policy that will help so many long-term and young unemployed people. But as has also come up in this debate, we also need to deal with the structural reforms in the banking system which are needed to restore proper channels of finance to small and medium businesses.
A British investment bank, constructed for the purpose and capitalised by some of the revenues we can expect from 3G and 4G licences in the future, is the best way to deal with the gap in the British economy and ensure stable finance for small businesses. As the OECD pointed out yesterday, ensuring consistent lending for businesses is vital for future growth, and policies such as funding for lending have not bridged the gap. They have not delivered the necessary impetus to net lending and the next Parliament and Government need to be much more ambitious on that front.
Mr Stewart Jackson
The hon. Gentleman is elucidating another straw man, which was articulated by the shadow Minister—that we somehow have a crisis in lending. The fact is that businesses of all sizes hold unprecedented levels of cash reserves and they will spend if we have a benign macro-economic policy framework. That is not what is being offered by his party, so any accusations of missing lending targets obscures the bigger picture.
Mr Bain
I am citing evidence—I hope that the hon. Gentleman has been listening carefully—from the OECD and Bank of England reports that net lending to business has continued to fall. The OECD said yesterday that weak lending is a structural problem in the British economy. He might think that I am raising a straw man, but I hope that he is not accusing those organisations of doing so. It is their argument that this Government have left unsolved that structural weakness in the past five years. Tougher action is needed in the next Parliament to secure stable finance for our businesses, because that is how we will get the jobs and growth that will generate the tax revenues and lower the deficit.
Helen Goodman
If it is the case that some firms have high cash balances and others face shortages in investment, it is far from being an example of the success of the current banking system: it is a demonstration of its failure.
Mr Bain
Businesses have told me that the absence of a strong investment bank, such as they have in Germany, France, and South Korea and as the Federal Reserve acts in the US economy, is equivalent to our business having one hand tied behind its back. It is that structural flaw that must be addressed in the next Parliament, but it is absent from the Government’s thinking, given what the Minister said.
The OECD also raised a further problem—the risks that the shadow banking sector could cause to our banking sector. We heard nothing from the Minister about closing loopholes that hedge funds have been able to exploit or about strengthening the tools to oversee the shadow banking sector, given the potential risk to financial stability that the OECD mentioned.
The debate is important because the Government have the perfect opportunity in the coming weeks to aim for fairness, with a proper jobs guarantee policy, and a bank bonus tax that would extend opportunity as well as responsibility. If they fail to take that opportunity, Labour will take our case for change to the country and the British people. I am confident that they will vote for change and vote for a new Government on 7 May.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I must first mention the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and point out that I am attempting to create two banks in the north-east at present. My life savings, virtually, are in the Atom bank, which is an internet start-up that has been set up by individuals just outside Durham. We are also attempting to merge the Tynedale community bank with the Prince Bishops bank in Stanley in County Durham, with a view to creating an enhanced credit union.
Having made that declaration, I would like to take the House on a journey. The very first constituent who came to me after I had been elected in 2010 had had his bank finance taken away and, for that reason, his business had failed. It was not through any fault of the business, but because of the bank lending provisions at the time. The bank was local, in Newcastle and then London, and was one of the large banks. That case made it patently clear to me that we needed greater competition. To that end, we have spent much time in this Parliament, both as the Government and individually, trying to create that greater competition.
When we assess the quality of the Labour proposals—I confess that I have not had the great joy and pleasure of reading the shadow Chancellor’s proposals for banking reform, to which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) referred, but I have glanced at some of the issues—we must look at the record over the last few years. That must start—and I twice raised this with the hon. Lady and did not get a reply—with the Financial Services Act 2012. On 23 April 2012, I spoke in the debate on the Bill. To the Labour party’s eternal shame, it tabled amendment 28, which sought to delete clause 5 of the Act. That would have removed “The competition objective”. Labour claims to be in favour of competition, but I find it utterly illogical and wrong that it should have sought to vote down the specific proposals in the Act that encourage competition. The proposals are simple and I would have thought that those who profess to want competition in banking would be in favour of them. They include
“the ease with which consumers who obtain those services can change the person from whom they obtain them”—
bank switching, and
“the ease with which new entrants can enter the market”.
That is challenger banks and local banks. The clause also includes
“the ease with which consumers who may wish to use those services…can access them”.
I could go on.
I refer to clause 5 because the House and the country will have to judge Labour on what it has done in the past. I have looked briefly at the grave and weighty tome—I speak ironically, I am afraid—published by the shadow Chancellor and the shadow Financial Secretary on proposed banking reform. It says that Labour wants to see
“At least two new challenger banks”.
I hate to say it, but over the last four years some 20-plus new challenger banks have been created under this Government. I have met many of them, including Metro, which is the biggest and the best, Aldermore and Virgin. Those of us who have been trying to increase competition would view the hon. Lady’s argument—which is, presumably, that 20 is good but we want two more—as illogical. I want an awful lot more than two more. Why she chose two, rather than one or 10, I am at a loss to understand, but doubtless when I read the grave and weighty tome, all will become clear.
We need to assess the way in which the Government have addressed the creation of greater competition. The creation of a new bank faces four fundamental challenges—I know because I have attempted to navigate my way through them over the last four and three quarter years. The first was a lack of legislation to facilitate such change. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and I went to see Sir Hector Sants, the then chairman of the regulatory authority, and he agreed and changed the rules. Previously, if I wished to create a challenger bank or new local bank, I would have been judged on the same basis as Barclays or the other big banks. I would have to have capital up front massively in excess of £50 million and my board would have to be set up years in advance—to say it was bureaucratic would be an understatement.
The point I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun was that, in some respects, for the creation of local challenger banks, regulation had to be tweaked slightly so that it was not light-touch—to return to the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) who, as usual, is not in his place—but different and better. First, we introduced the Financial Services Act 2012, which provides the framework for the regulatory authorities to encourage greater competition. Secondly, having passed that legislation, notwithstanding Labour opposition, we tackled the length and complexity of the authorisation process. Setting up a new bank traditionally took years and a huge amount of money. We all want greater competition, and for the FSA to abbreviate the process—in planning, this is done through a pre-authorisation process—and help a potential new bank through it. The long and short of it is that the FSA has dramatically reduced the bureaucratic process and the number of years it took to set up a new bank. As a result, some extraordinarily successful new banks—for example, the Hampshire Trust and the Cambridge and Counties bank, which is effectively a local authority utilising its pension fund to do LEP-style investments in local businesses and communities—have come forward in the past few years.
The third big change was the reduction in the capital requirement. Huge amounts of money were needed to create a local or any kind of bank, but local banks are not now being judged on the scale of Barclays, because they do not want to be like Barclays or any other high street bank. Finally, the scale and complexity of the infrastructure and the information exchange between all the bank authorities was changed, as it needed to be.
I will be nice to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun: of course I would welcome two more new challenger banks. The consequence, however, of the past four and three quarter years of change in the regulatory, legal and bureaucratic process and in the general climate of FSA behaviour is that we have in excess of 20 new start-ups. For the first time, we have new banks taking people on in the high street. I see that myself, because not only am I able to play a tiny part in the creation of a significant new bank in the north-east based in County Durham, but we are trying to fill a gap in the high street in my community in Northumberland.
The Government have changed the rules on credit unions to make it possible to have two types of credit union. You and I, Mr Deputy Speaker, will know that the traditional credit union model requires people to borrow for a very long period of time. The credit union is a very laudable and good thing and we should continue to support it, but there is a gap in the market. That gap has been filled, in my community and up and down the country, by payday lenders. As a result of high street banks not being able to lend in one way and credit unions being relatively restricted, there is a gap. The gap can be filled by community banks, which would effectively be bulked-up credit unions. There is a fantastic number of examples. Several are in large Labour areas, such as Glasgow. The Salford credit union is going from strength to strength. I have spent considerable time getting to know the Prince Bishops bank, which is based literally on the high street in Stanley in County Durham. It competes with what we would think of as high street banks and is, effectively, a bulked-up credit union. That surely shows that the Government are taking things in the right direction.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
Many credit unions, which are run mainly by volunteers, are the victims of their own success, as they become too large and usually disband because they cannot handle the administration, the back-office work, that comes with it. How does the hon. Gentleman envisage credit unions being able to manage themselves as community banks and, potentially, as building societies? What legislation would help with that?
Guy Opperman
The legislation is already there. The hon. Gentleman should speak to the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is doing a fantastic job on the board of the Prince Bishops bank. I happily praise him for the work he is doing with the local community—with the church, the local authority and the housing association. To improve the quality of a credit union and make it viable, one has to, for example, ensure that payments to local authorities and housing associations go through the credit union, so it becomes a clearing bank in the normal way. There must be a greater degree of lending on a long-term basis. To put it bluntly, the credit union needs to go after middle-class lenders, because they are the ones who will make the deposits.
In Northumberland, a large proportion of my constituents are off-grid and have to purchase 500 litres of oil at a time. That costs approximately £350, now about £275. Banks will not give the lending facility to many unbanked people, because the number is too low, but if they were to save with a bulked-up credit union or community bank, that community bank could be the lender of choice for that specific purpose. Such people would, because they are mostly homeowners, be the sort of new lenders and new depositors who can provide the critical mass and the clout for the enhanced credit union-community bank to be more viable. The traditional problem with a credit union is that it does not have the deposit savings unless it has a white knight or a very strong church or trade union backing it.
We can discuss this another time—Mr Deputy Speaker will say that I am straying from the substance of the motion—but opportunities are out there. The point goes to the substance of the motion, which is competition. A credit union should provide competition on the high street to high street banks. Traditionally, credit unions have struggled. The Government’s changes have made it easier for them.
I will touch on two further points and then bring my remarks to a close. The sins of the bad, all of which we deprecate, are now paying for the good works of the good. We cannot have this debate without talking about LIBOR and about the terrible things that happen. However, the Government have done a wonderful thing in saying that the 96 military charities should receive the funds of the LIBOR fines and that air ambulances should receive a considerable amount of money. Last night, I was at No. 11 Downing street with the Chancellor. Representatives of many of the air ambulances throughout the country, including from Essex, were there. They are receiving significant sums of money by reason of the Chancellor’s decision on LIBOR funds. That is a fantastic thing. It was first announced in the 2012 autumn statement, originally for just military charities. It has now developed into other areas—the Minister spoke of GPs and other health services. The great work done by the air ambulances should be noted. The support we are giving to them is crucial.
I want to make one final point on the motion, which refers to tackling unemployment and youth unemployment as the purpose behind everything that it proposes. It is hard to read the House of Commons Library unemployment statistics and find a single Member of Parliament who has not benefited from a dramatic reduction in unemployment.
Guy Opperman
I know the hon. Lady reasonably well and presumed she would be quite chirpy in her usual fashion. The House of Commons’ “Unemployment by Constituency” research paper 1509, published on 18 February 2015, shows that there has been a 34% reduction in unemployment in her constituency of Bishop Auckland. The reduction for those aged 50 and over is 24%. The 12-month unemployment figure, which of course is the very difficult area to address, has seen a 45% reduction in the past year. Youth unemployment is often prayed in aid by the Opposition—and understandably so, as we all agree that we need to address it.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Whether or not the hon. Gentleman is talking about the hon. Lady’s constituency is not the question. It is a question of whether Mr Opperman wishes to give way.
Guy Opperman
I am afraid that I will not give way—first, because I have already gone on too long and, secondly, because I want to enlighten the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who would surely welcome the fact that unemployment for 18 to 24-year-olds in her constituency has reduced over this last year by 40.2%. I could say much more, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I think you would stop me doing so.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
As the motion states, we believe bonuses should be a reward “for exceptional performance” and not a compensation for failure. This applies in other industries and it should in banking, too. Many industries, particularly those in the public sector, manage to get by without awarding bonuses. In industries such as banking, where the bonus culture does exist, there needs to be more accountability. Pay must be more closely linked with long-term performance.
Chris Evans
Does my hon. Friend have sympathy for the high-street bank worker, who has had nothing to do with the scandals, but has often had to take abuse from customers for them? As someone who worked in a bank, my hon. Friend will know that these same high street workers are under strong pressure to achieve sales targets and that when they do not, they often face disciplinary action. Does she think that is fair, particularly when the senior executives are taking such massive bonuses?
Liz McInnes
I thank my hon. Friend for his series of questions. I will try to answer them in the order he asked them. I think my hon. Friend alluded to my having worked in a bank—
Liz McInnes
It was my hon. Friend who worked in a bank; now I understand. My two elder sisters both worked in banks and both were forced out because of the selling culture overtaking the “service to the customer” side of banking, so I fully understand the plight of the ordinary bank worker and the pressure they are under, not to mention the abuse they sometimes suffer because of misunderstanding on the part of the general public about the role of ordinary workers in banking. I thus fully appreciate my hon. Friend’s points, and I hope that answers his questions adequately.
I was referring to the scandals over the last year, most recently, as we are all aware, at HSBC. Regrettably, it looks like this year’s round of bank bonuses will be very generous once again. That is why Labour is determined to repeat its tax on bankers’ bonuses in order to fund a paid starter job for every young person out of work for more than a year. We will also extend clawback of bank bonuses that have already been paid, where inappropriate behaviour has come to light, to at least 10 years.
This Government have not done nearly enough to rein in excessive pay and bonuses. They have refused to repeat Labour’s tax on bankers’ bonuses and they have stopped short of implementing all the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. Instead of repeating Labour’s tax on bankers’ bonuses, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has instead wasted taxpayers’ money by mounting a misguided and ill-fated legal challenge to the EU cap, which limits bonuses to 100% of salary—or even up to 200%, with shareholder approval.
The next Labour Government will guarantee a job for all young people on unemployment benefits for over a year and also for all adults aged 25 and over who are on unemployment benefit for over two years. This is the only policy we will fund with the proceeds of the bank bonus tax.
Being unemployed when young really damages prospects years into the future, so this is an important policy for Labour to champion. According to the latest labour force survey, youth unemployment stood at 740,000 in the three months to December 2014—an increase of 3,000 in comparison with the last quarter. Research shows that young people unemployed for a year will, on average, be £125,000 worse off over their working lifetimes. That means someone on the average wage would have to work nearly six years longer to make up for the cost of being unemployed when young.
The performance of the banking sector is vital to the health of the UK economy. The finance and insurance sector makes up around 8% of the total UK economy, employing more than 1 million people who carry out essential roles working with businesses and consumers to manage their money and ensure that they are able to invest, make profits and plan for the future. Too often in recent times, however, banks have continued to pay high bonuses in the face of falling profits and falling standards. This has led to a level of pay and bonuses to some highly paid bankers that has become disconnected from banks’ performance and their wider economic contribution.
Last year saw a marked increase in the level of bonuses paid by banks, with three out of four major high-street banks increasing their bonus pool in comparison with the previous year. While thousands of bank employees, along with millions of other taxpayers, are struggling by on modest salaries and face a rise in the cost of living, those at the top are benefiting from high bonuses, reinforced by the Government’s tax cuts for the top 1%.
Bonuses have remained high in the face of a series of high-profile scandals. Barclays, HSBC, RBS and Lloyds have paid £1.5 billion in compensation for mis-selling interest rate hedging products. Other recent scandals include HSBC’s role in facilitating tax avoidance, the LIBOR fixing scandal and the mis-selling of payment protection insurance. At the same time, however, many banks are failing to fulfil their core functions. Lending for businesses has fallen by £55 billion since 2010, with several Government lending schemes having little impact. Labour believes that action is needed to ensure that banks act with greater restraint, that pay mirrors performance and that bonuses can be clawed back for up to 10 years in cases where malpractice has come to light.
Following the LIBOR scandal, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards examined how the culture of the banking sector should be reformed. Although this led to some important reforms, such as the introduction of a ring fence between investment and retail banking, the Government’s implementation of the recommendations has too often fallen short. The Government have also failed to implement the institutional reform we need around access to finance, such as the setting up of a proper British investment bank, which could provide vital financing to small and medium-sized businesses and start-ups.
The banking sector plays a vital role in the UK economy. As the global financial crisis showed, the dislocation of the banking sector undermines the whole economy. Financial incentives for bank employees need to be better linked to the long-term stability and performance of their banks.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
It is interesting to take part in another Opposition day debate on this subject. The Opposition had 13 years to deliver their dream for the financial services and banking sector, but what they left us was, of course, a nightmare, and we have had to do a lot to tidy it up. Without wanting to threaten coalition entente cordiale, I should say that people who examine this subject trace some of the problems back to the deregulation that took place in 1986. It was so drastic that it has been called the big bang. It is certainly true that my coalition partners were still calling for lighter regulation as late as 2007.
However, between us, we recognised that there was a nightmare to sort out, and a great deal has happened, principally the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013. Let me pick out three items. First, there is a new criminal offence that covers those who run banks and building societies and have engaged in reckless misconduct. The penalty is a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, or an unlimited fine. Secondly, we have worked closely with other countries to tackle risk by introducing strict requirements in relation to the capital that banks must hold. Thirdly, we have prevented banks from engaging in or promoting tax avoidance by making the 15 biggest banks sign up to a code of practice. My party wants more to be done about that: we think that there is room for a new offence of corporate failure to prevent economic crime. We believe that not just those who evade taxes but those who advise or enable them should be prosecuted.
We are still seeing scandal after scandal, and it is notable that most of the scandals that are still hitting the news arose on the last Government’s watch—or the seeds were sown then—so we have had a great deal to do. We introduced the banking levy, and we have kept it going. My party wants it to continue, so that banks go on contributing to the process of rebalancing our budget and helping our economy.
As we have heard from several Members today, bankers are paid a lot. I think that there is a fundamental cultural problem. When an organisation has money to allocate, it has to think about its stakeholders. It has to think about its customers in terms of services and pricing, and it has to think about its shareholders in terms of the reward on the capital that they have invested. It also has to think about investing in its own business. About 10 years ago, my daughter worked in a branch of Barclays bank that was still using punch card machines that I thought had gone out in the late 1970s.
Staff are, of course, part of the balance, but I think most of us feel that the balance between the various stakeholders in some of the big banks has been tipped too far towards senior staff. However, bonuses are a great deal lower than they were. They have fallen from nearly £11 billion, or £33,000 a head, in 2007 to less than £2 billion, or £6,000 a head, in 2013. They are rising a little as banks are getting their act together, but they are nowhere near as high as they once were.
As so often happens with Labour motions, the Opposition have tried to connect two completely disconnected issues. We can have a debate about banking and we can have a debate about youth unemployment, but it is not logical or correct to suggest that the one either depends on the other or is solved by the other.
Of course I support moves to reduce youth unemployment. For me, however, unemployment is not about percentages but about people, and 830 fewer people in my constituency have been out of work in the last year. Unemployment remains far too high, and it is particularly high in the north-east, but it has fallen by an average of about 1,000 people per constituency in the north-east over the past year. In my constituency, youth unemployment has fallen by 43% since the 2010 election, when I inherited my legacy.
The motion asks us to consider the issue of youth unemployment, and also to consider the proposition that the bankers’ bonus tax will help to sort it out. The bonus tax has become the magic porridge pot of Labour policy making. I have a list of nine uses to which Labour Members have put it so far, and I think that my hon. Friends could raise the number to about 11. The last occasion on which we discussed the subject was quite remarkable. The shadow Minister who opened the debate referred to one use for the tax while the Minister who closed it referred to a different one, so they obviously had not shared notes. Perhaps, given that we are so near to a general election, they will finally settle on a use for it.
Let us now think about what will actually happen. If I understand the Opposition’s policy correctly, they want individuals to pay 50% tax on their bonuses, and they want banks to pay 50% tax on those bonuses. Of course, banks have other employment costs, particularly national insurance. Barclays has calculated that, when all that is added together, it will be paying 115% tax on its bonuses. Is it really likely that a bank will continue to declare £1 of bonuses to ensure that a Labour Government receive £1.15?
Matt, the famous cartoonist, must have been very prescient when he prepared his 2015 calendar. The cartoon for this very month shows a banker sitting behind a desk and someone else standing some distance away from him. The banker is saying “I cannot give you a bonus, but there is a £2 million reward for the person who finds my umbrella”—and there is an umbrella on the floor between them. In other words, banks will find ways around this.
It is not just Matt who has made the point. Referring to Labour’s bankers’ bonus tax, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) said:
“I think it will be a one-off thing because, frankly, the very people you are after here are very good at getting out of these things and...will find all sorts of imaginative ways of avoiding it in the future.”
David Mowat
The Opposition’s policy would result in avoidance of the tax through increased fixed-level pay and reduced variable-level pay. A much better way of taxing banks is to tax their balance sheets, which is what the Government have done, because taxation of that kind cannot be avoided in the same way.
Ian Swales
My hon. Friend has made an extremely good point, and his words stand on the record. In fact, I was about to mention an aspect of what he has said. It is interesting to note that the motion itself refers to an avoidance method, and tries to close the loophole. As for the clawback proposal, the more we disincentivise banks from paying bonuses, the lower will be the amount that is available for clawback purposes. So, as my hon. Friend has just suggested, the policy is self-defeating.
The banks say that high pay and large bonuses are necessary for competition, but new competition is already emerging. I recommend all Members to visit their local branch of Handelsbanken, which has no targets and does not pay bonuses. It is an incredibly successful bank, and is growing very fast in this country. Competition has already started to undermine the business models of the large banks. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) mentioned Atom bank. I too have visited its offices, and I am trying to support it as much as I can. Banks of that kind will disrupt existing business models, because they have a much lower cost base than traditional banks. We will see movement: the banks that think life will continue unchanged will find themselves pursued by competition.
One aspect of new funding that needs to be examined is crowdfunding. I think that the next Government will find that they need to consider regulation in that area. We are just starting to hear about some of the scandals involving a practice that is, at present, largely unregulated.
In general, we need to encourage competition, we need disruptive business models, and we need to recognise that, in the private sector, competition should be allowed to beat down bad practice and encourage good practice. We need a successful financial services sector, and we need it to be well regulated. The sector has made it very clear that it does not want a Government who are either anti-Europe or anti-business.
My conclusion is this. If the question is “How do we make our economy stronger and society fairer?”, nothing that we have heard from the Opposition today makes me feel confident that they are the answer.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), and to have listened to the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). It is clear that Members representing constituencies in the north-east are extremely interested in the debate, and that in itself is significant. The fact is that the banking system is currently not serving our region well. What the hon. Member for Redcar said about the Handeslbanken was absolutely right, and the work that the hon. Member for Hexham has been doing with Atom bank is necessary because of the failure of the current banking system. I would almost go so far as to say that his concern about finance for small and medium-sized enterprises and about tackling financial exclusion would make him a far better junior Minister in the Treasury dealing with this industry than the complacent former banker who currently seems to fulfil the role.
I agree with what the hon. Member for Redcar said about the need to regulate crowdfunding. He is absolutely right: it is a fashionable new thing, and people just leap into it, just as—as he pointed out—they leapt into the free market in 1986, without thinking about the consequences. Both hon. Gentlemen pointed up the inadequacies of banking in this country, but neither of them defended bonus levels and the method of paying them that we can see in most of the financial sector. I do not understand why they will not come into the Lobby with Labour Members at 4 o’clock, because that is where the logic of their position should take them.
In the north-east it is true that unemployment is down—we had the highest unemployment in the country at 10%—but cuts and the depression in the economy of the north-east mean that earnings are down between 4% and 9%. It is not a thriving region, and no one is happy about that.
Guy Opperman
Clearly more needs to be done in the north-east—no one disputes that—but does the hon. Lady not agree that the autumn purchasing managers index survey showed that we had the fastest private sector growth? We have the largest exports, and the largest export growth of any part of the country. After London, the north-east has more tech start-ups than any region in the country. There is more to be done, but I would not want her to paint a picture of doom and gloom for a second.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we are indeed a successful exporting region, but the Government are spending 520 times as much on the transport industry in London as they are in our region, which does not make sense. That is one reason why the Opposition want to set up a business investment bank.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Low wages are a problem not just in the north-east but in the north-west and across the country. A third of hourly paid workers in my constituency are paid less than the living wage, and 57% of part-time workers are paid less than the living wage, which means that they depend on other taxpayers to support them so that they can get to a point where they receive a living wage.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. That is why people watching the debate will find it absolutely incredible that millions of pounds have been paid to bankers in bonuses.
I should like to come back to the central points in the motion. Pay should be a reward for good performance, but we have seen a disconnect between bank performance and the pay of many senior executives and traders. We have discussed whether or not there is improved accountability in the banking system. At the Dispatch Box, the Minister tried to persuade us that that was all sorted and that everything was fine and good. However, the argument that it was right for the Government to resist the EU cap on bonuses because if bankers did not receive bonuses they would just receive higher pay reveals that accountability mechanisms have completely failed. If those mechanisms were working properly, shareholders would be able to prevent that abuse and something that is in effect a loophole. [Interruption.] I thought that the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) would intervene, as that was a point that he made.
David Mowat
I thank the hon. Lady for encouraging me to speak. I agree with her. The issue is not about whether to have bonuses or not; it is about absolute levels of remuneration in banks. I do not understand why the Labour party is not trying to address that. There is a good point to be made about why Barclays needs 1,000 people who earn £1 million a year while other organisations do not. The only explanation in the end is that the market is not working properly, which is why we must have more challenger banks to compete that away.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman, if I may say so, makes a fair point. One of the regrets of Opposition Members is that not all the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards have been implemented. The weakness of the arrangements set up by the Government was illustrated only this week in the statement by Mr Gulliver, who now heads up HSBC. He said that he could not possibly be expected to know what his many thousands of staff were doing. If we are to have a proper accountability mechanism looking from the outside in at what the banks are doing, we need proper internal management systems; otherwise, the whole thing becomes meaningless. Mr Gulliver is therefore hoist by his own petard.
Ian Swales
I used to work in a large global organisation, and does the hon. Lady accept that part of the problem is culture? It is true that someone cannot be expected to know what every employee is doing at their desk at any moment, but if people do not have the right culture down the management chain those sorts of things happen.
Helen Goodman
That is common sense, and that is why the right culture was not encouraged when the Chancellor toddled off to Brussels to defend high bonuses. That did not engender the kind of attitude that we want to see.
David Mowat
The hon. Lady made an important point about Gulliver and the management philosophy that he appeared to espouse. We could call it something pretty close to plausible deniability: “I don’t know what they’re doing in Mexico—it’s a long way away. I don’t know what they’re doing in Switzerland—we’ve only just bought it.” If that is the management model, that is a better advert for the banks being split up than the retail/investment dichotomy that we have spent so long discussing.
Helen Goodman
That is another good point from the hon. Gentleman.
What will our constituents think of the fact that last year we saw an increase in the level of bonuses paid by the banks? What is happening at the top of the banks is not the same as what is happening for the ordinary people whom we meet behind the counter. It does not seem reasonable that bonuses are high when we have had high-profile scandals with LIBOR and forex fixing and with the revelations about tax avoidance through Switzerland.
One thing that particularly concerns me about HSBC is the disconnect between the amount of time and energy the bank is clearly prepared to put into setting up special arrangements for its private clients overseas, turning a blind eye to aggressive tax avoidance, and its attitude to my constituents when it wanted to close the branch in Shildon. We have a serious problem with financial exclusion and the major banks are taking themselves out of the poorest communities, leaving them prey to the Wongas of this world. When I wrote to HSBC saying that that was very regrettable and would mean that there was no longer anywhere for people even to access cash in a town with nearly 10,000 citizens, it would not even give a contribution to the local credit union. That shows a degree of arrogance and a lack of social responsibility that I am sure every Member of the House would deplore. I see that even the Exchequer Secretary is shaking her head in disappointment at hearing that.
We need a banking system that provides banking facilities for everybody in this country and for the whole community. Speaking as the Member of this House who was responsible for handling financial exclusion at the end of the previous Government, I think that it is fine to encourage credit unions, which are very nice institutions, but I do not believe that it is credible to believe that they could set up the kind of national network needed to fill the gaps. That is why, once upon a time, we had a more effective post office banking arrangement. We already have an infrastructure, and we already have institutional arrangements. We would do much better to build on them.
Cathy Jamieson
While my hon. Friend is on the point of credit unions, does she support our proposal to increase the levy on payday lenders to support various ethical alternatives, including the expansion of credit unions? I am sure that she will, as she has a great deal of expertise in this matter.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The extortionate charges put on the most vulnerable have been a total disgrace and there is something interesting to say about why a significant proportion of people in this country are unbanked. That is generally put down to being about the high lending risk in that community. It is partly about that, but it is also about the costs of having the institutional infrastructure to reach that community. That is one area where the main high street banks have failed disastrously in this country.
Chris Evans
My hon. Friend might know about the basic bank account, which was introduced when I worked in a bank. It allowed people on benefits to pay in their jobseeker’s allowance. There was no credit scoring for overdrafts, credit cards or anything like that. People would pay in their benefits and they would be largely forgotten about by the banks. There would be no account management, and if those people needed to borrow, they would fall into the hands of the payday lenders. They were completely ignored. How do we ensure that banks manage these people into mainstream banking as their needs change—as they get a job, look for a house or something similar?
Helen Goodman
Gosh, I am not sure that I have an instant answer to that complex question. This is the kind of thing that we need to think about more. When we hear that in the middle of the financial crash bankers phoned Treasury Ministers from New York worrying about their bonuses and not about the kind of people my hon. Friend has just described, we are bound to say that there is a culture problem in this industry. I also want to say something about the problems that—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) needs to show a little more respect.
I want to say something about the need to provide more finance to manufacturing. One thing I am really puzzled by is what performance these bonuses are for. I have a lot of metal-bashers in my constituency and in the middle of the crash they had a lot of problems with their banks. I am sure that other hon. Members will have experienced this. They thought it was absolutely dreadful because they had to drive all the way down to Leeds, and blah-di-blah-di-blah.
The problem with that is that the assessments were being made by people with no scientific understanding and with very little understanding of industry. We are seeing phenomenally high bonuses for people who are no doubt absolutely brilliant and a whizz at the latest hedge fund hoojimaflip and at how to make four more basis points, but who are not very good at what they really need to be good at, which is understanding the financial needs of British industry. That is what we want, but that is not what we are getting. That is why the Opposition are proposing a British investment bank with regional arms and regional focus. The industrial base in the north-east is clearly different from that in London, so we need different expertise in different places. We are just not seeing that in the banks at the moment.
It is alarming that Lloyds, which is 24% owned by the taxpayer, is expected to have a bonus pool of £375 million this year. I could not understand the remarks made by the Economic Secretary. I think she said that no one at Lloyds was going to get a bonus of more than £2,000 this year, but my understanding is that the chief executive could receive more than £7 million in a three-year pay deal. I hope that the Exchequer Secretary will explain whether people will be getting £2,000, several hundred thousand pounds or millions of pounds. RBS, which is 79% owned by the taxpayer, was fined £400 million for its part in the forex fixing scandal, yet it is reported to be considering a bonus pool of around £500 million. There is a general problem with the culture of the banks and the level of bonuses being paid, but there is a specific problem with banks in which we the taxpayers have large equity stakes. Treasury Ministers have a particular responsibility to look at what is going on in those banks and to think about how they are going to control it, in our interests as shareholders as well as our interests as taxpayers.
I wonder what Ministers think about the report in the Financial Times yesterday, headlined “Rothschild eyes early bonus round to avoid possible windfall tax”. It stated:
“Rothschild, the boutique investment bank,”—
for those of us who had never heard of Rothschild—
“is considering paying its 2014 bonuses early to avoid the extra taxes Labour has vowed to introduced if it returns to power, two sources familiar with the bank’s thinking said. The deliberations show how seriously businesses are taking the prospect of Labour winning the May 7 election”.
Those people are good at assessing risk, and it is clear that they are expecting a Labour Government.
It is worth thinking about the purpose of the banking system. It is a shame that the Economic Secretary is no longer here, because I am sure that she has seen the book produced by the Church of England, “On Rock or Sand”, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury writes an extremely interesting essay about economic purpose. He says that there are three criteria against which economic institutions should be judged. The first is fairness, and we can see the problem in the banking sector in that regard. The second is generosity, but that does not mean that banks should be generous to those who have the most. The third is sustainability. Judging by what is happening at the moment, the institutions seem to be failing on all three counts. However, taxing bankers’ bonuses and rechanneling the money towards providing employment for young people would help banks to meet those criteria, and that is what we are proposing to do. I believe that that is what people in this country expect from the financial institutions.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), as I did last week. I hope that there will also be sufficient time to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) to follow me. I shall therefore try to ensure that my remarks are more to the point than they might otherwise have been.
I have always been a strong believer in having diversity and competition in the banking system, and I share the concern expressed by many that we have an oligopoly in our system. That is not healthy; there is not enough choice or competition. We need more competition, and I personally would be quite radical and ensure that the banks were separated up to a greater extent than they are today. It is also a concern that the establishment of the banking system in this country has meant that the banks are too big to fail. We could cure that by having depositor preference, because it would then be a matter for the bondholders, who would be much more interested in ensuring that the banks behaved and did not overpay bonuses.
What will not work is Members of this House pontificating about bonuses and what the bonus levels should be; waving a magic wand and saying that they should be this, that and the other; and trying to micro-manage banking business from afar. What makes it even worse is the way the previous Government carried on and the shameless hypocrisy of the Labour party that we have heard today. Let us not forget that the forex and LIBOR scandals happened under the previous Labour Government. Our Government have sorted out the regulatory system and have been cleaning up the mess. Under the previous Government bonuses tripled in four years and £66 billion of bonuses were paid out. The Labour party wishes to forget that. Fred Goodwin became Sir Frederick Goodwin then, and honours, baubles, bonuses and bag slaps were scattered around happily in those days. Labour now wishes to forget that. Under our Government bonuses are now a fifth of what they were then.
Chris Evans
Does the hon. Gentleman think the Conservative party is being wise after the event? Was it not the Conservative leader, the current Prime Minister, who argued in 2007 for less red tape and less regulation for the banking industry?
Charlie Elphicke
The issue is not the extent of regulation, but the format of regulation and the fact that the previous Government took the Bank of England out of the picture. The one organisation that understands the prudential nature of risk management was pushed to one side. That, together with the failure to police risk, was at the heart of what went wrong with our banking system, so I completely reject the hon. Gentleman’s point.
The Opposition say, “Let’s have a bankers’ bonus tax, so we can raise some money.” Yet again, we have heard that the Opposition want to spend it, this time on
“a guaranteed paid starter job for young people who have been out of work for over a year”.
That is what they say today but that is the 12th time over that they have spent it; I hate to correct my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), who thought it was only the 10th time and had lost count. That is understandable, because previously the Opposition have spent this on: the youth jobs guarantee; reversing the VAT increase; more capital spending; reversing the child benefit savings; reversing tax credit savings; more money for the regional growth fund; cutting the deficit; turning empty shops into community centres; spending more on public services; building 25,000 new houses; and free child care. Now it is being spent on starter jobs for young people, but perhaps next week it might be spent on houses again—who knows? It just depends on the thing of the moment, does it not? That underlines the ludicrousness of the Opposition’s position: they simply cannot add up and cannot spend their various banking bonus tax ideas in any competent way at all.
Leaving that aside, the permanent bank levy introduced by this Government is expected to raise £2.9 billion in 2015-16 and then £2.8 billion each year thereafter. That is more than was raised by the one-off bonus tax introduced by the previous Government. I suspect what will happen is that the Labour party will end up with its madcap plans raising less money and the party then being in a quandary as to where to spend it, because it has committed it on multiple occasions. That goes to the heart of the massive contradictions of Labour policy making.
The one thing I want to touch on is the idea that we should have the European Union decide on the levels of pay, bonuses or indeed anything in this country. Let me gently remind the Opposition of a couple of things. First, we are an independent nation. Secondly, we have an independent currency—we are not part of the eurozone. I do not understand why the Opposition think it is a good idea to have the European Union tell us how to manage our banking system. We are competent enough as a country—goodness knows, we have run our own affairs for the past 1,000 years—to decide how we should organise our banking system, and pay, bonuses and bonus taxes in our banking system, without needing help from the European Union.
Helen Goodman
I do not think every last detail of the running of these things should be handed over to the European Union, as the hon. Gentleman describes it, but the fact is that all the time we hear from the bankers that they will whizz off to Geneva—some of them do seem to be whizzing off there—to Paris or to Frankfurt. The purpose of having a European-wide approach on bonuses is to avoid exactly that kind of behaviour.
Charlie Elphicke
I hear what the hon. Lady is saying, but we are not in the euro. The only time that we would need some measure of control from the European Union is if we were in the euro. I simply do not accept the argument. Our objection to the European Union trying to tell us how to run our banking system and our bank bonuses is that we do not want to see pay rise and rocket in the banking system, which is what would happen—permanent fixed pay would rise. That is what we are most concerned about and why we have put up such resistance. There is also the principle that we can manage our own affairs in the City of London and in the financial services market, and we do not need any assistance from Brussels. I say shame on the Labour party for thinking that it is better to accept diktat from Brussels than decisions made in this Chamber.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) for curtailing his remarks so well. I wish to make two points at the end of this debate. First, the thrust of the motion is to replace a levy on the balance sheet, which is not avoidable or evadable, with a tax on bonuses, which is both those things. It is a bizarre policy. The Opposition seem to have mixed up the real issue, which is the overly high level of remuneration in banks, with the fact that it is split between variable and fixed pay. They appear to think that it is fine to pay someone £3 million a year, but that they should not be paid £2 million with a £1 million bonus, and that the extra bit needs to be taxed much more. That is just wrong. Apart from anything else, that £1 million can be clawed back under our current proposals, and indeed even under the Opposition’s proposals.
The real issue to consider is: what is so unique about the structure of the banking industry that means that banks have to pay so many of their employees so much? The same does not happen in the oil or the pharmaceuticals industries—those companies are worth more than big banks. Earlier, I cited the example of Barclays, which feels the need to pay 1,000 people more than £1 million a year. I am sure that those people work extremely hard, but people in Shell, BP, Glaxo and AstraZeneca work hard, too, and those companies are also world class and world-beating organisations, but they do not have that salary structure. The only explanation is that the market is not working, which is something that both sides of the House should consider when drawing up banking reforms. There is something in the way that investment banks work that stops new entrants coming into the market. I have reflected on this and feel that that is almost certainly the case.
If the chief executive officer of a company is hiring an investment bank, they would not get fired for hiring Goldman Sachs—in the same way that someone in IT would not get fired for hiring IBM. Typically, a CEO will last for only two years in a new company—they do not last long and they do not get many chances. If Goldman Sachs comes along with a big transaction, it bases the price of that transaction not on how much effort it takes to do it but on the 1% increased value in the company. Well, if I am the CEO of Apple and I increase by 1% the value of Apple, which is worth £500 billion a year, and Goldman Sachs gets a slight percentage of that, there is an awful lot of money swilling around. That makes it very hard for new entrants to enter that market.
We all have to address the matter of why it is so hard to get challenger banks into that market, because that is where the abuses occur. The problems do not often occur in the retail sector. We should also address the matter of why it is that so many people need to earn so much, when the shareholders in those organisations do not earn much.
Secondly, I want to reflect on what has happened in HSBC over the last little while. HSBC has been running a management structure that is based on plausible deniability. In Mexico, it has been trading with drug cartels, and it has been involved in evasion in Switzerland and it is saying, “We just did not know that our guys were doing that.” The question is: if its management structure is based on plausible deniability, what is the point of the board and the chief executive? We should think about that, because it provides a better argument for splitting up banks than this dichotomy between retail and investment, because it is, prima facie, a bank that is too big to manage.
Here is the truth of it. The guy who was running the operation in Mexico was told, “This is your target. We don’t really care what you have to do to make it. If you can’t make it, the next guy will.” That is how these banks operate. That is the structure of plausible deniability. That is why we need the cultural change that Ministers on the Front Bench are trying to achieve.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to wind up the debate and speak in favour of the Opposition’s motion. We have had a very good debate and heard some excellent contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) spoke powerfully about youth unemployment and the danger of insecure employment. I think that Government Members are too often unwilling to engage with the difficulties posed by insecure employment, and not only for those individuals working on zero-hours contracts, but for the economy as a whole.
My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) made an interesting point about the experiences of members of her family who have worked in banks and the pressures put on ordinary bank workers to meet selling targets. It is the ordinary workers in banks who are often first in line for abuse when a scandal hits, rather than the small number of individuals at the top of those institutions who might have engaged in the reckless behaviour.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) made a speech that was a tour de force. She spoke about how banking has not served her region, the north-east, particularly well. She made an interesting point about the dangers of crowdfunding, which the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) also mentioned. Her points about financial exclusion and the failures of regular banking to serve all our communities, particularly those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, were very well made, and they had not been picked up by others in the debate.
As my hon. Friend the shadow Financial Secretary set out in her opening remarks, the time has come for bonuses to be a reward for exceptional performance, not compensation for failure. With the bonus season upon us, this debate is a timely reminder that the public remain rightly angry about the many banking scandals we have seen and that they will be astonished if they see failure continue to be rewarded with sums of money so far out of the reach of working people on lower and middle incomes.
Our banking sector is vital to the UK economy. Banking and insurance make up 8% of the UK economy and provide employment for up to 2 million people. Without the banks, individual consumers would be unable to save and borrow and businesses would not have access to the finance they need in order to grow and create high-quality, well-paid jobs. The importance of banking for individuals, businesses and UK plc means that it is vital that our banking system is underpinned by the principles of fairness, trust and transparency. The next Labour Government will restore those principles to the banking sector.
Too often fundamental trust in the system has been shaken by behaviour that has been unfair, reckless, unethical or a combination of all three, and 2014 was a record year for fines in the City of London. The FCA levied £1.1 billion on five banks, including HSBC and RBS, for their part in the forex fixing scandal, and four UK banks—Barclays, HSBC, RBS and Lloyds—have paid £1.5 billion in compensation for mis-selling interest rate hedging products, which we have debated on a number of occasions in the Chamber. We have also had the LIBOR and PPI mis-selling scandals. Trust and confidence have been fundamentally shaken by the recent revelations about the Swiss arm of HSBC helping its customers to avoid and evade tax. On the one hand customers have been exploited, and on the other hand the taxpayer has been ripped off.
That unacceptable state of affairs is made worse by the fact that the sector has not fulfilled some of its core functions. Banks must provide basic borrowing and saving facilities for consumers and finance for businesses so that they can either start up or grow. However, we know that net lending to business has fallen by over £55 billion since 2010. A couple of Government Members made the point that of course we do not want to see irresponsible lending and suggested that businesses are actually sitting on large cash reserves and somehow the lack of lending from banks is not a big problem.
That is clearly not the Government’s view, because they keep coming up with different schemes to try and encourage lending by banks—schemes which have, unfortunately, failed to turn the situation around in any meaningful way. I am sure Members across the House regularly meet business people in their constituency advice surgeries, who come to us with complaints that they have viable businesses looking to grow and employ more people, but they cannot get access to finance from banks. This remains a key problem, which the Government’s various schemes to try to get net lending up have unfortunately failed to resolve.
So there are huge fines for breaking rules and a failure to fulfil the core functions of the sector. Despite all this, senior employees continue to receive huge bonuses. We can all see that the current state of affairs is difficult to justify. We know that last year’s bonus round exposed the gap between pay and performance. Barclays and RBS increased their bonus pool, despite falling profits. Indeed, at Barclays we saw a fall in profits of 32%, yet the bonus pool increased by 10%. We now learn that at HSBC the chief executive will receive £7.6 million and 330 staff will receive more than €1 million each, at a time when profits are down and the tax avoidance and evasion scandal continues to rage. What are the public supposed to make of all this? Not much, I would say.
The Government for their part have failed to act fully on proposals for reform and have failed to provide answers on HSBC—
Shabana Mahmood
I am sorry, I will not because of time.
The Government have failed to provide answers on HSBC in a way that would inspire confidence and they have wasted money challenging the EU bank bonus cap. What can we do to turn this situation around? It is clear that we need to reconnect the level of pay and bonuses of some highly paid bankers with the wider performance of the banks and their wider economic contribution.
A Labour Government would repeat the tax on bankers’ bonuses, which we introduced in 2009, to raise £1.5 billion to £2 billion. This tax—[Interruption.] I will come to that point in a moment for Government Members. This tax, alongside a restriction on—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady must be allowed to finish her speech.
Shabana Mahmood
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
This tax, alongside a restriction on pension tax relief, would fund a compulsory jobs guarantee. Let me deal with the point made by hon. Members chuntering from a sedentary position. The tax would be spent only once and only for one measure—that is, our compulsory jobs guarantee. That has been the case for as long as we have had our compulsory jobs guarantee policy. I find it interesting that the only line of attack that Government Members have on the compulsory jobs guarantee is to imply, incorrectly, that the bank bonus tax is being spent more than once. It is a weak line of attack from Government Members who do not want to engage with the substance of the policy—a compulsory jobs guarantee for the long-term youth unemployed.
Only one point was made about the substance of our policy, which was about the potential scope for tax avoidance. The first outing of the bank bonus tax introduced by the Labour Government had stringent anti-avoidance measures attached to it, and we would repeat those measures to make sure that the tax was not aggressively avoided and that all the revenue that we expect to be raised will be realised in order to fund our proposals for a compulsory jobs guarantee.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Shabana Mahmood
Certainly not to a Member who has just come in for the winding-up speeches, if I may say so.
A measure such as I have described is clearly needed because we know that the latest labour force survey data show that youth unemployment was at 740,000 in the three months to December 2014. To Government Members who try to take comfort from some of the welcome decreases that we have seen in constituencies across the country, as though that means that everything is hunky-dory, I would say that 740,000 young people unemployed are 740,000 too many. There is nothing to be complacent about. We need a rocket booster under our approach to long-term youth unemployment. That rocket booster will be provided by a tax on bank bonuses to fund a compulsory jobs guarantee. Government Members should examine their consciences to decide whether they think that we do in fact need strong measures to tackle the scourge of youth unemployment, and join us in the Lobby to support our motion.
We need to restore trust and accountability to the sector. I call on the House to support the motion and the need to take meaningful action to ensure that bonuses reward exceptional performance, and that where bonuses are given, they are taxed and the revenue is used to deliver the much-needed compulsory jobs guarantee.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Priti Patel)
I thank all Members who have contributed to this debate, which has been quite wide-ranging; it even became a debate on the north-east region at one point. I commend my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman), for Redcar (Ian Swales), for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and for Warrington South (David Mowat) for their speeches. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, who made a very thoughtful and considered speech about the changes made by the Government through the banking reforms. He also highlighted the role of challenger banks and his own commitment to that through his work locally. He is clearly a champion not just for his constituency and region but for challenger banks, and that is to be commended.
I think it is fair to say that we all agree that the banking scandals that have emerged in the past years have been disgraceful, and we have shown that consensus during this debate. They have, without a doubt, shaken public trust in a proud British banking history, and revealed pockets of rottenness at the heart of the banking system. The country is understandably angry about the reports of practices, behaviour and conduct that have become legendary in the banking scandals of recent years.
Priti Patel
I will not because of the time, if my hon. Friend will accept that.
We can never go back to the bad old contaminated days when the culture in the banking sector was so wrong. That is why the actions taken by this Government, which were long overdue, and neglected by the previous Government, will ensure that the system and the sector never go back to those bad old days. The core action that has been undertaken to tackle misconduct has been pure reform on misconduct and clearing up remuneration. The reforms have ensured that we have the toughest remuneration regime of any major financial sector. Through the Government’s reforms, we have ensured that rotten behaviour in the sector will be punished. We have heard about criminal sanctions today.
The overall contribution of the sector is hugely important to the country’s economy, but we must ensure that we reform its reputation and conduct, and change the culture to bring probity and integrity back into a system that was challenged and flawed. Back in 2010, we had a banking system that had no connection between performance and remuneration, and that rewarded, and was dominated by, excessive risk taking. There was no accountability for losses. It was a sector where wrong practices and the wrong culture had become institutionalised, and, more disgracefully, where people who should have known better turned a blind eye and looked the other way.
Like any responsible Government, our job is to bring back measures and laws, and a regulatory framework, that were sorely lacking in the past to ensure that the financial sector regains its reputation, while stamping down on the reprehensible behaviours of the culture that the country witnessed in the past. This Government have brought in reforms, transparency, a regulatory framework, and the ability to make sure that those who did wrong would not go unpunished. We have made reckless misconduct leading to bank failure a criminal offence. We have strengthened the accountability of senior management and the powers of the regulators. We have increased choice and competition in the retail banking sector to help create a sector that genuinely puts consumers first and brings through the regulatory changes that are required.
That also means clamping down on unacceptable pay practices. We have heard plenty of references to that throughout the debate. Hon. Members spoke about remuneration in two banks in particular: RBS and Lloyds. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked for clarity on Lloyds. This week, we announced that we are getting another £500 million back for the taxpayer, which is money that we have put in and are now taking out. We can do that because, since the crisis, Lloyds has gone from failure to being a strong and profitable bank that is helping to drive the recovery. The bank contributes £238 million per year through the bank levy. It will have its bonus pool reduced this year, and we are continuing to restrict its cash bonuses to £2,000. It is absolutely right to ensure that the culture is completely reformed.
Both the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham mentioned not only challenger banks, but the issue of financial exclusion. I want to pay tribute to organisations such as challenger banks and credit unions. I spend a lot of time in my constituency of Witham at the Holdfast credit union, which does so much for those who are excluded.
Through our reforms, we are ensuring that banks that need to be punished are punished. The reforms have led to greater disclosure and transparency, and we have also reformed bonuses. We are consulting on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards to strengthen the rules further. There is no doubt that actions speak louder than words, and we have taken action.
The EU bonus cap, which has been mentioned, would not control bankers’ pay. It would push up fixed pay, and make it difficult to claw back bankers’ earnings when things go wrong. It would weaken financial stability and ultimately make it more likely that the taxpayer, rather than the banker, paid the cost of any mistakes. Unfortunately, that has already started to happen and the cap remains fundamentally flawed, but we are willing to draw a line under the issue, and the legal challenge has been withdrawn. Instead, we are looking at other ways of building a system of pay in global banking that encourages rather than undermines responsibility.
It is fair to say that bankers got it very wrong over a number of years. Regrettably, they are still getting it wrong, and several Members mentioned HSBC. Its chief executive, who is in front of the Treasury Committee this afternoon, has apologised for the failures and errors, which have been pushed out into the public domain. However, the reality is that the Government have taken action to sort out the mess.
The job is not over. We must continue to be firm in working with the regulators to stamp out malpractice. We should continue down the path we have set: linking pay and performance; making sure that failure is not rewarded; and ensuring accountability by our most senior managers. We should be proud of being the toughest major financial centre in the world on remuneration, but we should also be careful not to get carried away with the rhetoric and damage the competitiveness of one of this country’s most prized economic assets.
This Government have set the sector back on the right path, so I urge hon. Members to reject the Labour party’s motion. As Opposition Members have pointed out, the motion refers to job guarantees, but the best guarantee for jobs is to stick to the Government’s long- term economic plan, under which youth unemployment and unemployment have declined.
Question put.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 3 February, during the debate on mitochondrial DNA, I deliberately abstained from the vote because I did not feel that I fully understood all the arguments, yet I was recorded as having been in the Aye Lobby. I took the matter up afterwards with the officials, and received a full apology and explanation. I said that I was quite happy to let the matter rest there, despite the fact that some of my constituents had contacted me and questioned the veracity of what I had said to them.
I was therefore perturbed when on Monday, in an equally controversial and free vote on abortion during the Serious Crime Bill, I acted as one of the Tellers for the Ayes, being a strong supporter of the amendment, yet I was recorded as having voted in the No Lobby on Division 157. I took the matter up again and have been furnished with an explanation that I have forwarded to you, Mr Speaker, since it is a slightly more complicated scenario. As constituents have contacted me, I first wish to put on the record the way that I voted. Secondly, with the greatest of respect, I wish to say that it is very important that every single vote by Members in this House is recorded correctly.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his characteristic courtesy in giving me advance notice of its likely content. I understand his frustration. He has placed the facts on the record and I am informed that the Hansard record has also now been corrected. He correctly pointed out that he has received a comprehensive explanation, which he understands—also correctly—has been copied to me. That explanation, very properly, is comprehensive, and occupies a page and a half of A4. The House will be relieved to know that I do not intend to read it out, but suffice it to say that I believe confidence can be placed in it. Officials of this place put great importance on recording and publishing Divisions accurately, and I am informed that they will redouble their efforts to minimise such errors. The hon. Gentleman has properly drawn attention to this matter. He is also a reasonable man and I hope that he will accept that explanation. We will leave it there for now.
Members’ Paid Directorships and Consultancies
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 219 / Noes: 287 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Speaker
I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. A manuscript amendment to the Opposition motion on paid directorships and consultancies and hon. Members has been tabled by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) to add at the end of the motion the words, “or be paid trade union officials.”
As I have said, I have already selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. Under Standing Order No. 31, when a Minister moves an amendment on an Opposition day, the question before the House is that the original words stand part of the question. It is on that motion that debate proceeds and, at the end, the House is invited to vote on it. If the Opposition motion is agreed to by the House, it becomes a resolution of the House. If the Opposition motion is disagreed to by the House, the Standing Order obliges the Chair to put forthwith the question on the amendment moved by a Minister. If that is agreed to, the Chair will declare the main question, as amended, to be agreed to.
The situation is, therefore, that once a Minister has moved an amendment to an Opposition motion on an Opposition day, it is not possible for a second amendment, whether manuscript or not, to the Opposition motion to be put to the House. Assuming that the Leader of the House will move his amendment, I cannot therefore select the manuscript amendment.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker, in the light of your ruling. The manuscript amendment was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) in response to something that the Prime Minister said, in Prime Minister’s questions, that he wanted to happen. If the Leader of the House were to withdraw or not move his amendment to the motion, would it then be possible under Standing Order No. 31 for the manuscript amendment tabled by my hon. Friend to be moved?
Mr Speaker
I can confirm that if the Leader of the House were to decide not to move his amendment, it would be open to me to decide whether to select the manuscript amendment. That is indeed the factual position. We should now proceed with the debate.
Ms Angela Eagle
I beg to move,
That this House believes that, as part of a wider regulatory framework for hon. Members’ second jobs, from the start of the next Parliament no hon. Members should be permitted to hold paid directorships or consultancies.
I wonder whether the Leader of the House could indicate—he could even shout over the Dispatch Box—before I begin my speech whether, in the light of the attempts by the new chair of the parliamentary Labour party to give the Prime Minister what he said he wanted at Prime Minister’s questions today, it is his intention not to move his amendment to today’s motion.
The First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr William Hague)
I will most certainly move the Government amendment today. It is an excellent amendment. It is not my role to facilitate the Opposition’s making up their policy as they go along throughout the afternoon.
Ms Eagle
I want to make it clear that we are actually trying to facilitate what the Prime Minister said he wanted during Prime Minister’s questions. We are not making up our policy as we go along; we are trying to include all views in it. It is in that spirit that I want to open the debate and move the motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which proposes that this House bans MPs from holding paid directorships or consultancies.
Ms Eagle
Let me finish my first sentence. If our manuscript amendment is accepted, the motion would also ban paid trade union officials. The public deserve to be safe in the knowledge that every Member of Parliament works and acts in the interests of their local constituents, and not in the interests of anyone paying them.
Ms Eagle
Let me make a little bit of progress and then I will give way.
I note that, unusually, the Government have tabled an amendment that simply restates the status quo and would completely obliterate the Opposition motion. I intend to deal with all that, but first I want to take a few minutes to deal with the circumstances in which the House of Commons finds itself, and argue that the time has come to make a decisive break with the status quo on Members’ remunerated interests. I believe the current situation has become untenable.
I do not intend to talk about the detail of what was revealed in the “Dispatches” programme on Monday. I think we should concentrate in this debate on developing a solution to this recurring problem. Those events are being dealt with by the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and that investigatory process must take its course, although that I note that the court of public opinion has already pretty firmly made up its mind. If the rules were clear and easy to follow, rather than riddled with grey areas and open to endless convenient interpretation, perhaps we would not find ourselves repeatedly having to deal with newspaper headlines such as the ones we have witnessed once more this week. It is undeniably true that these headlines bring this place into disrepute, as far as voters are concerned. Theirs is the opinion, I believe, that we must take the most seriously. They are, after all, the people we have been sent here to represent.
Philip Davies
I just wondered on what basis the Leader of the Opposition thought he was an authority on being a world-leading constituency MP. He happens to be my mum’s MP and the MP for the area in which I was born and brought up. It happens to be the consensus of opinion there that he does not really care about Doncaster. He is hardly ever there. In fact, he is known locally as Ed Moribund. Why should those of us who work hard in our constituencies week in, week out take any lessons from the Leader of the Opposition on what it takes to be an effective constituency MP?
Ms Eagle
I am rather sorry I gave way to the hon. Gentleman. What we are trying to do with this debate is take a cool, hard look at the situation that faces the House in relation to its rules on outside interests, and the experience we have all had of them in this Parliament and over time. This is not about partisan views about who is a good or bad MP in their constituency. That is for the voters to decide, and they will decide that in their own way on 7 May. As a Parliament and a legislature, we all have a duty to ensure that the rules by which we operate are kept up to date and are fit for purpose. One of the arguments I am trying to make today is that we are not now in that situation, and we have to take radical action to ensure that we bring ourselves back in line with the levels of conduct that our constituents expect of all of us.
Gregory Barker
On that point, I do not think anybody in this House is condoning the breach of rules that exist for a very clear purpose. However, if we are talking about being good parliamentarians and representing our constituents, how much time over the last week, or in any week this month, have the hon. Lady and her shadow Cabinet colleagues spent away from this place, neither in their constituency nor performing their parliamentary duties, but instead campaigning on behalf of the Labour party in the country? How much time are they spending doing that, rather than pursuing their parliamentary duties?
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
I hope that my hon. Friend will address the argument that a second job helps MPs to keep in touch. My view is that visiting local schools, going to local businesses and workplaces to talk to managers and the work force, spending time with local charitable organisations, and going to day care centres for the elderly is how we should keep in touch with our constituents. That is the work that we should value.
Ms Eagle
My hon. Friend is right. There are many ways of keeping in touch that do not involve the exchange of large amounts of money.
An extremely bad and unfair impression of the motives of all Members of this House has now been formed, and it is being reinforced by this latest occurrence. Let me be clear: being a Member of Parliament is an extremely demanding and tough job, and it is done with integrity and dedication by the vast majority of colleagues in all parties. Unfortunately, however, the perception is growing that some MPs are in it only for what they can get, rather than for what they can give, and that is not an impression that we can allow to fester any longer. “You’re all in it for yourselves”—how many times have we heard that said?
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I have some sympathy with the motion, but why does it not cover somebody who earns £15,000 outside this place lecturing, while someone earning a lesser amount through a directorship is covered? It seems a little confusing to some of us.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady also clarify whether she is talking about cash payments only, or whether the motion includes payments in kind, in the form of goods and services?
Ms Eagle
If we are talking about the cap—it is not referred to in the motion, but we are considering it for our own policies—we need to consult so that we can reach a sensible decision about what it should mean.
What impression are our constituents expected to form when Lord Heseltine opines on “Newsnight” that being an MP is “not a full-time job”, or when Lord Lawson tells Sky News that
“if you’re just a constituency Member, you do have time on your hands”?
That is not a description of the job of being a Member of Parliament that I have ever recognised in the 23 years in which I have had the honour to represent the people of Wallasey in this place. It is not a description, either, that the public are willing to accept. Their expectations of their MP have changed dramatically, even over the years I have been in this place, and they have certainly changed dramatically in the last 40 years. Our workloads have increased exponentially. It is time that our rules were changed to acknowledge the very different context in which we must now all do our jobs.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady confirm that it is the principle rather than the time that is important? She has spoken, as have others in recent days, about the time commitment for people who do things beyond their primary duties as elected Members of Parliament. Members of both Front-Bench teams, of course, spend an incredible amount of time on matters beyond their core responsibilities as constituency Members. Surely it is just the principle of earning outside that she is worried about.
Ms Eagle
It is about remuneration, and the perception that Members have other interests that they may be putting before their primary interests. Given the cynical age in which we live, we need to think about that a great deal more carefully than we may have done in the past.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
We should really accept that this is about money. It is about Members—primarily Government Members—who want to be paid extra. [Interruption.] They want to be paid extra, and they want to be paid extra because they are Members of Parliament. My constituents know that, and their constituents know that. That is why the public are not prepared to put up with this any longer.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
The Independent published an interesting league table today, listing the top 10 MPs who earn money outside the House. I am also interested in the choice of words in the motion—and, indeed, in the manuscript amendment, if we are able to see it. Does the hon. Lady believe that anything in the motion would affect the earnings of No. 1 on that list, who earned £962,000 last year—the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)?
Ms Eagle
Let me take this opportunity to make it extremely clear that the motion is not aimed at any particular individual. It is concerned with what Parliament should do to modernise the way in which it interacts with the world outside. I night add that I suspect that ex-Prime Ministers have a rather higher earnings potential than many of the rest of us. Furthermore—I should make this point, now that the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) has brought the issue up—I understand that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath gives every penny of that money to charity, and does not take any of it himself. Given the import of the hon. Gentleman’s question, I think that should be put on the record.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the hon. Lady acknowledge right now that some of the highest earners from outside interests are members of the Labour party? It is this Westminster establishment that the people of this country hold in such contempt. Is that not the reason why both the main Westminster establishment parties can barely exceed 60% in the polls at the moment? A curse on both their houses!
Ms Eagle
I last heard that the Scottish National party had received some particularly large donations from individuals, but I do not want to have this kind of debate about the issue. I am trying to talk about the future, and about how the House regulates matters that have such an important bearing on the way in which our constituents regard this place and us. If we are to increase trust in our politics, we must pay very close attention to what is happening in this instance.
Andrew Gwynne
Is not the issue that we are in danger of seeing a toxic mix, and that politicians just do not get it? Does my hon. Friend agree that we must send the clear message that being a Member of Parliament is an honour and a privilege, and a full-time job?
Sir Edward Leigh
As a matter of interest, will the Labour Front Bench commit to implementing the pay award from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority in full?
Ms Eagle
My understanding of our position on the IPSA pay award is that the leader of our party has said that it should not go ahead as long as other public sector workers and workers in this country are experiencing a huge standard of living crisis. That is the situation as set out by my right hon. Friend.
It is time that we acknowledged the very different context in which we must all do our jobs, as it has changed. A YouGov poll in 2013 showed that 62% of people felt that MPs should focus on their parliamentary job full time, and over half favoured an outright ban on all second jobs. The proposals in the motion are just a start, but if enacted they would enable us to deal with the ongoing and corrosive issue of remunerated interests, and to begin to restore the health of our democracy and our constituents’ trust in the people they send to this place.
Let me turn to the actual terms of the motion, rather than the wildly inaccurate version that the Prime Minister sought unsuccessfully to dismiss earlier today. Our proposal states clearly that after
“the start of the next Parliament”
no Member of the House should be permitted to hold a directorship or a paid consultancy or, if our manuscript amendment had been accepted, be a paid trade union official. That is a commitment that we will honour in the Labour party by changing the parliamentary Labour party standing orders. All our existing Members of Parliament and candidates who are standing at the general election have been put on notice to expect that.
If the Government had accepted that rule when we first argued for it in 2013, the reputational damage inflicted this week would not have happened. The motion also states that we need
“a wider regulatory framework for…second jobs”
for MPs. The Prime Minister was wrong when he sought to characterise our proposals as an outright ban. We have set out some ways in which a regulatory framework might operate. That could include setting a cap on earnings from second jobs that is sufficiently high to allow, for example, Members to maintain professional qualifications. However, we will consult on that point with everyone who wishes to share their views. Our aim is to get a system that is fair and workable.
Our intention in the motion is simple. We need to be completely clear with the public that when they do us the honour of electing us to Parliament, they can expect our attention to be focused primarily on serving them.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
Is the hon. Lady telling the House that there are two classes of outside interest: professionals, such as some of our colleagues who are doctors or dentists, who need to maintain their skills; and another set who are directors or consultants, who have nothing to offer the House and do not have skills that need to be maintained? If someone is in business and they need to maintain contact with industry it would be unlawful for them to carry on that business, thereby depriving the House of people with experience and preventing them from keeping their skills current.
Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), how would the hon. Lady deal with a farmer who was elected to Parliament? Most farms are incorporated, so the farmer would be a director. He would make a contribution to agricultural debates. If the motion is accepted, what advice would she give the farmer? Should he retire? Does he sell the farm? What?
Ms Eagle
We want to consult appropriately on this, but Ministers give up their interests and put them in trust when they go into government. There could be proposals that would enable Members to keep hold of the things they did before they were elected without being directly paid for them while they served in this place. There is a consultation process and if the right hon. Gentleman wants to get involved, I am more than happy to listen to what he has to say. It is important, however, that we make this break with the past. Decades ago, being an MP might have been seen as a second job but times have changed radically and we need to change with them.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Some of the people watching the debate will be absolutely incredulous at the views of some Government Members. The Prime Minister said that the reasoning behind second jobs was that he thought they would give people a better understanding of the world outside. I think that more people need to have a better view of the world outside before they become MPs. Does my hon. Friend agree that nobody forces us to come here and get paid £67,000, which is a king’s ransom to many of the people we represent? Those Members do not need second jobs, but if they do there are food banks in every one of their constituencies. Go and volunteer in them.
Ms Eagle
My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a point that is acute and important.
To those who argue that this will all narrow the experience of politicians in Westminster, I would argue that experience useful in our legislature is not purely gained by being paid for doing a second or third job. I have found many interesting and enjoyable ways over the years to stay in touch with constituents and gain a valuable insight into what is happening in the communities we represent. The payment of large supplementary incomes is not essential in gaining that experience.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend believe that for the sake of clarity, particularly for people outside this place, everyone who speaks or intervenes should say how much they earn from outside sources and what they do with the money? I will start by saying that I earn £7,000 a year and for the past 27 years every penny of it has gone to charity.
Jack Lopresti
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and I have no outside interests to declare. How would her plans affect reservists, who serve in the military and can often be off on operational tours for months on end earning extra income?
Ms Eagle
I see no reason why the cap cannot be constituted in such a way as to ensure that people can carry on serving in the armed forces. Government Members must not caricature these proposals. They are about remunerated directorships and consultancies, not about the sort of things that people did before they came to this House.
It is a matter of great regret that the Prime Minister has been so unwilling to recognise the damage that second jobs are doing to the reputation of Parliament and that he dismissed so quickly the attempts of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition to make cross-party progress on a ban earlier this week. In opposition, the Prime Minister said:
“Being a Member of Parliament must be a full-time commitment…The public deserves nothing less.”
He knew it then, but once in power he refused to do anything to deal with the problem of second jobs, preferring instead to defend the discredited status quo in which the public have lost faith. The amendment that the Leader of the House will, regrettably, soon move defends the status quo, and even at this late stage the Prime Minister could admit that there is a case for change and get on board.
Ms Eagle
I have given way a lot, so I will not.
The Deputy Prime Minister said earlier today:
“The principle is if you are devoting yourself to public service, that is what you should do…I don't think anyone finds it acceptable…people regard politics as nothing more than a part-time hobby.”
He went on to say that
“the principle should be you are elected to do a job, that is your vocation, that is your act of public service, that is what you should be doing for your constituents”.
Well, I agree, and it is not often that I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister. In the light of that comment, perhaps he will confirm that he and his colleagues will join us in the Lobby tonight. If they do, we can really begin to make progress.
Ms Eagle
No, I am right at the end of my speech and I have given way a lot.
The choice is clear. Are we here to serve our constituents or are we here to serve our own self-interest? Are were going to change a broken system or are we going to ignore the public’s clamour for reform? After the election, no Labour MP will have a paid directorship or consultancy, and Labour’s manifesto will include a promise to ensure that that applies to all MPs. Wider reform is now being rejected because the Conservatives are the defenders of a tired and discredited status quo. To reform our politics, we need to stand up to vested interests, not cosy up to them. We need to stand up for the powerless, not the powerful. And we need to accept that sometimes in this place, things need to change. That time has come.
Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance. I am sure that no Member would wish to contribute to the debate, given its subject matter, without declaring any relevant interests. What guidance can you give to Members, given the terms of the motion, on what they should declare before intervening or making a speech?
Mr Speaker
It is the responsibility of each individual Member to declare as appropriate. The obligation is no different in this debate from it would be in any other debate, and I assume that all hon. and right hon. Members are fully conscious of their responsibilities in this matter.
The First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr William Hague)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“reminds hon. Members of their commitment to uphold the Code of Conduct, not least that Members should act on all occasions in accordance with the public trust placed in them, that they should always behave with probity and integrity, including in their use of public resources, that no Member should act as a paid advocate in any proceedings of the House and that the acceptance by a Member of a bribe to influence his or her conduct as a Member, including any fee, compensation or reward in connection with the promotion of, or opposition to, any Bill, Motion, or other material submitted, or intended to be submitted to the House, or to any Committee of the House, is contrary to the law of Parliament.”
As the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) has acknowledged, the Opposition have moved their motion today because of the questions raised concerning the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). It is entirely proper that our two colleagues have referred themselves to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and we should await the outcome of those proceedings. However, as Leader of the House, I can say that, given the high regard in which those two Members have always been held, these circumstances are the cause of some sadness across the House. In the meantime, I hope that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the contribution that the right hon. Member for Blackburn and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington have made to the House, to our national life and to international relations over many years.
It is vital for the health and strength of our democracy that the public have confidence in the integrity of—
Mr Hague
I will just start my argument, then I will give way to my hon. Friend.
It is vital for the health and strength of our democracy that the public have confidence in the integrity of the democratic process and in the standards of conduct of all Members of this House. We live in an age of greater accountability and transparency, and the House of Commons has to live up to that. Transparency is an absolutely fundamental need in a democracy, and it would not be acceptable for Government policy to be influenced from outside by anybody in a way that was deliberately out of sight.
Sir Gerald Howarth
I should like to put on record that my interests are declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in the usual way—[Interruption.] And I am proud of those interests, too.
Does my right hon. Friend not agree that it smacks of extraordinary opportunism on the part of the Opposition to take a whole afternoon to debate this issue? Have they nothing to say about the OECD congratulating the United Kingdom on managing the recovery of our economy after Labour destroyed it? Should not that be the subject of today’s debate?
Mr Hague
This is a week of remarkable economic news and good international endorsement of the Government, and that is no doubt partly why the Opposition have chosen to debate other matters today. Nevertheless, the issues of transparency and the reputation of the House are important at all times.
Mr Hague
I will give way in a moment.
The reinforcement of transparency and accountability need constant effort, and that is part of what has been happening in recent years. At the end of the last Parliament, as the House knows, agreement was reached on the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. Since then, more has been done than ever before in Parliament and in government on transparency. We have created a statutory register of lobbyists and appointed the registrar; we are legislating for the recall of MPs; and we have strengthened the rules governing the appointment of Ministers after they leave office to business appointments to cover all appointments or employment they wish to take up within two years of leaving office—there has been a very substantial increase in transparency on Ministers and former Ministers.
Ian Murray
The Leader of the House rightly talks about transparency, but may I just push him on that? Can he, and his Government, be wholly transparent with the House and the country by telling us how many jobs, additional to being an MP, he thinks it is acceptable for people in this House to have?
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Does the Leader of the House share my concern that, understandably perhaps, 10 weeks before an election this rather opportunistic motion is put forward? These issues are not for this House; they are for IPSA. After the expenses scandal, we set up IPSA to look at this and other issues. If we want to unravel what IPSA has done, either on this matter or on the issue of salaries, we do so at our peril.
Mr Hague
Salaries and allowances are for IPSA, but there have been independent reports on this issue. Again, I will come to that in a moment, but I just want to finish the point about the substantial increase in transparency that has rightly taken place in recent years. That does not mean we have finished the job of making Parliament more responsive to public concerns. The shadow Leader of the House has said some things about what will be in the Labour manifesto on this, but there will be matters about Parliament in the Conservative manifesto, including reducing the size of the House of Commons, and equalising the size of constituencies, thereby being fair to all parties and all constituencies, and saving money in the process.
Andrew Gwynne
But surely the right hon. Gentleman understands, when he talks about transparency, that it is also about how we as Members of Parliament and this House of Commons are viewed from outside. Does he therefore agree with his colleague and former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine that being an MP is
“not a full-time job”?
Mr Hague
I was about to agree with something the Leader of the Opposition said, so I hope the hon. Gentleman will let me go on to that. Certainly I found when I was Foreign Secretary, for instance, that I still performed the functions of a Member of Parliament, even though I spent probably 90% of my time on being Foreign Secretary.
On Monday, the Leader of the Opposition wrote to the Prime Minister and said:
“I believe MPs are dedicated to the service of their constituents and the overwhelming majority follow the rules.”
The shadow Leader of the House said a similar thing just now, and I believe that is right, across all parties—I hope I can say that as Leader of the House. The Leader of the Opposition went on to say that
“the British people need to know that when they vote they are electing someone who will represent them directly, and not be swayed by what they may owe to the interests of others.”
He wrote that without a hint of irony, having been elected entirely dependent on trade union votes and having presided over the most union-dominated Labour party in 30 years. Of all the candidates selected under his leadership, 61% are union-linked, and more than half of those come from a single union. He did not see the irony in what he was writing.
Mr Hague
Let me just develop this point. There are four very revealing points about the Opposition motion that I want to challenge. It is not a motion to ban second jobs—that would not be its effect—and it is not entirely clear what it would ban and what it would not ban. As one of my hon. Friends said, would it ban someone from being a partner of a professional firm? The motion does not mention that. Are lawyers, accountants and management consultants therefore in a different category, according to the Opposition? There is some discussion now taking place on the Opposition Front Bench about whether it would ban a partner of a professional firm, but there is no clarity here. The motion just asked us to make a decision. It is helpful when making a decision to know what is being put to the House. Does it ban someone from owning their own business? Are they banned from owning their own business if they are a director of that business, but not if they are not a director of that business? Have the Opposition thought that out? Does it mean—and this is an important question—that someone who sets up their own business, succeeds with it, creates jobs and contributes to the British economy is then to be barred from the House of Commons because they are a director of that business? That would be the effect. There are three-quarters of a million more businesses in this country after the past four years, and more of the people who created those businesses need to come into the House of Commons and not be discouraged from doing so. One suspects that, after a short examination, this motion shows as much understanding of business as the shadow Chancellor does on a bad night on “Newsnight”.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
May I restate the concerns of the public and highlight the fact that someone who is the director of a private health care company—as many Conservative Members are—may participate in legislation that brings a direct benefit? That is appalling.
Mr Hague
Let me continue, because I am talking about the motion. We only have to examine it for a moment to see that it is calculated to create a headline rather than to solve a problem. The next most revealing point about it is that it is different from the policy the Opposition state outside the House. That policy was described to the Guardian newspaper earlier this week—therefore it must be accurate. It said:
“The opposition Labour leader is expected to put the ban on MPs’ second jobs in his manifesto and say he will consult on proposals to limit the amount of money MPs could earn from outside parliament to 10% or 15% of their salary – in effect, limiting outside earnings to about £10,000.”
It will not have escaped the attention of the House that there is no mention of this cap in the Opposition motion, although it may be part of the wider strategy referred to in the motion. Could this be because there are Opposition Members, including in the shadow Cabinet, who currently earn more than 15% of their salaries outside the House of Commons? I will come to them in a moment.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
As a graduate of the university of life and the school of hard knocks, I can say that this is the best job I have ever had. If a Member of Parliament is doing his or her job properly here and in their constituency, where do they find the time to have other jobs?
Mr Hague
Members will have different views about that. The views of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) were given a few years ago when these matters were discussed. He was a Minister at the time. He said:
“My interests do not adversely affect my ability to discharge my public responsibilities. On the contrary, I believe they help me to be a more effective MP precisely because they sustain my practical experience in the relevant fields.”
Members are entitled to hold that view, just as they are entitled to hold the view expressed by my hon. Friend.
Conor Burns
May I use this intervention to do what I probably should have done when I intervened on the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), which is to draw the House’s attention to my declarations in the register? My right hon. Friend has written a couple of very successful and enjoyable books while serving in this House. Does he feel that he was not serving his constituents during that period? He probably spent less of his spare time with his wife when he was writing those books, but continued to serve his constituents very well.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As I understand the rules—perhaps I could get some guidance on this—a Member should declare what those interests are, as opposed simply to referring the House to the “register”.
Mr Speaker
“Erskine May” does treat of this matter. The short answer to the hon. Lady is that, yes, it should be clear to the House what is constituted by the interest, because that makes the debate that much more intelligible. It is a straightforward point, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising it, and I have ruled, on advice, accordingly.
Gregory Barker
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for Labour millionaires to give us the value of their freehold property in London when declaring their interests—
Mr Speaker
Order. Sit down. The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced ex-Minister, and that was a very poor attempt at a point of order—it did not even begin to get into the category of a point of order. [Interruption.] Order. The right hon. Gentleman should not be wittering irrelevantly from a sedentary position. I have ruled on the matter, and I have done with clarity and accuracy. Those hon. Members can accept it, and that is the end of it.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that we all want to get this right. Very often in debate all that it has been necessary to say is, “I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.” Just to be absolutely clear, I think that what you have said means that we will all have to recite into the record exactly what is in our entry in the register. If that is what you would like us to do when called to speak, I for one am happy to do it. It will take a little time, but I am very willing to do it in the interests of transparency.
Mr Speaker
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. The answer is very straightforward, and it is twofold: first, of course individual Members must take responsibility for what they say in this House when they rise to their feet; and secondly, very simply, the interest in question has to be sufficiently clear to be informative to the House in the context of the debate. It is a very straightforward point and I have now made it twice. I hope that it is clear to all right hon. and hon. Members.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. It might be helpful to ask you about my understanding that it is not customary to explain points of one’s interests in interventions or supplementary questions; that is normally reserved for main speeches, the idea being that it advances the debate.
Mr Speaker
The short answer is that the declaration should be made where it does not impede the progress of debate, and it should certainly not impair the decorum of the debate. [Interruption.] Order. Members can study the matter, which is treated of in some detail in “Erskine May”. The House would be the first to complain, and rightly so, if I were to read out what is in “Erskine May”. I do not do that. I do not need to do that. Members should apprise themselves of what is said in “Erskine May” on the matter and judge their actions accordingly, which I know the hon. Gentleman, in particular, is extremely adept at doing. I suggest that others could usefully follow his example.
Paul Flynn
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Very briefly, would it not solve the problem, and be in the spirit of “Erskine May”, if Members gave us not a long catalogue of interests, but an approximate total of the money they receive from them every year?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member of this House. He has made his point, and I think that he has done so with a puckish grin. He knows that I do not need to rule upon it.
Mr Speaker
Mr Murray has a very solemn expression upon his face, which gives the impression at least that he has a serious point of order to raise. I hope that he has.
Ian Murray
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. For clarity, although “Erskine May” does give direction in this House, I received a complaint from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for saying in this House, “I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests”, and the complaint was upheld on the basis that I did not say what the interest was. Practically, in this parliamentary term I had to apologise to the House for declaring my interests but not saying what those interests were.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] Order. I hope that the House will understand that I cannot be expected to offer Members a tutorial on the matter. People would think it very odd if the Speaker were inclined to do so. [Interruption.] Order. If Members are uncertain and want my advice from the Chair—I do not think that the Leader of the House is in need of my advice on the matter—I say that it is probably better for them to err on the side of caution, and to reveal more rather than less is a very safe course of action. I think that treats of the gravamen of the point of order raised by the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). I have sought to help the House, but I think that I can best help it now by enabling the Leader of the House to continue with his oration.
Conor Burns
Having known you for more than 20 years, I would not wish to find myself in the position of having to rise to my feet to apologise to you and to the House, so let me say that my entry in the register shows that I work nine hours a month for a construction and civil engineering company that I worked for prior to coming to this House. For the avoidance of doubt, that company does something that Opposition Front Benchers are doing now: digging holes.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has no need to apologise to me. [Interruption.] Come on—let us try to preserve some decency of spirit in these matters. I say genuinely to the hon. Gentleman that he sought advice on this matter and he has tried to do the right thing. What he has just said is the right thing and I thank him for it.
Mr Hague
If I do not get on with this speech, no one will be declaring any interests because time will run out for the debate. When the points of order started, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) was being very kind about the books that I wrote.
That takes me to the point that I was going to make, which I have let the hon. Gentleman’s office know I would make: the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), the shadow Education Secretary, according to the register, earns substantial sums from articles, lecturing and book fees, and those are very good books, on which I congratulate him. Does the Labour party propose to apply this cap to earnings from books? Let me explain the import of that. The only way to ensure that sales from such a book remained under Labour’s cap would be to write an unsuccessful book, of which there are also examples on the Opposition Benches.
By what logic, according to Labour, is it acceptable for a Member to write an unsuccessful book but not a successful one? By what logic is it okay to write an unsuccessful book but not to engage in some other activity no more threatening to the public interest than an unsuccessful book?
Emily Thornberry
That was a good joke, but may I bring the right hon. Gentleman back to the motion, which, whatever debate there may be about what may or may not be the policy of the next Labour Government, is what we ought to be looking at. It is narrowly about paid directorships or consultancies. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if the motion were passed, we would not have the enormous embarrassment of what has happened in the past few days? Surely, on the most minimal change to the status quo, this is a first step. Why are those on the Government Benches against it?
Mr Hague
I am discussing the motion and what it means or does not mean. It is difficult to speculate about what would happen or not happen in the future if we pass a motion, the meaning of which is not clear. In any case, the burden of the motion is one with which we disagree. It was not a joke about books. I was making, through a bit of humour, admittedly, a serious point: the Opposition do not know how they would apply a cap to somebody who writes a book, including a member of the shadow Cabinet, or to a farm.
One of my hon. Friends mentioned a farm. A distinguished Labour Prime Minister, Lord Callaghan, owned a farm. How is someone with a farm meant to restrict their income to a fixed percentage of their salary? Would Lord Callaghan have had to resign from the House every time there was a good harvest and then try to return to it when the crops failed?
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
Is the Leader of the House not aware that that precise system, though much more rigorous, is already applied in Washington, the home of free enterprise?
Mr Hague
I will give way again in a moment, but in the interests of the whole House I must make some progress.
The issue was considered in full by an independent and expert body, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which said that it considered it
“desirable for the House of Commons to contain Members with a wide variety of continuing outside interests. If that were not so, Parliament would be less well-informed and effective than it is now, and might well be more dependent on lobbyists.”
I agree. I am leaving this House in five weeks’ time, as hon. Members know—[Hon. Members: “Shame!”]—and I fear for the future of the House of Commons if rules are adopted that risk it consisting entirely of people who are rich or who are professional politicians throughout their lives. That is the danger of the course that the Opposition suggest.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Everybody has been amused by the points that the right hon. Gentleman has been making, quite rightly, but I do not think the public will be particularly amused. The public’s real concern is not about people with a continuing interest; it is about people who become Members of Parliament and then obtain directorships and consultancies and who are perceived as being in something like a system of outdoor relief for grasping MPs.
Mr Hague
The right hon. Gentleman is trying to make a distinction between different circumstances, as another Member did earlier, but that distinction is not made in the Opposition motion, and the debate is on the motion. That suggests that if he disagrees to some extent with the Opposition’s policy—
Gregory Barker
Does my right hon. Friend agree that he is exposing the fact that this is not a genuine, sincere motion addressing the governance of the House, but a cheap, opportunistic way of expressing the prejudice of Labour Members? They are anti-business, anti-enterprise and anti-aspiration, and they would trash the economy if they ever got their hands on it again.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Is the Leader of the House aware of Government Ministers putting the emoluments from outside directorships into trust so that they escape any scrutiny, and if so, is he content with those arrangements?
Mr Hague
There are very clear rules about all that—rules not only on the declarations of Members of Parliament but on ministerial interests. Those rules are very rigorously observed and enforced, in my experience in government, and I hope that they have been under Governments of all parties. Transparency about ministerial interests and the interests of people who have left office as Ministers has been greatly strengthened in recent years. This is not a static situation; constant improvements have been made.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
If the Leader of the House were to have a change of heart, I am sure that he would be warmly welcomed by the Conservative association in Kensington. Does he agree that if we are concerned to establish, and to give the public confidence in, the independence of MPs in serving the public, then it is not just their earnings that are of relevance but the source of all financial support they have, including that which goes towards their re-election?
Mr Hague
I will try to fit in the hon. Gentleman before I finish.
There are two other revealing aspects of this motion. First, the Opposition make the proposal now, when the issue is in the news, but have done nothing to enforce it in their own party in the meantime. Labour Members—I make no criticism of them for this—are directors of building supply companies and investment companies, and non-executive directors of mining companies and breweries. They are paid as everything from expert advisers to executive mentors, no less. It must be nice to be an executive mentor. Does an executive mentor fall within the definition of “director”?
Ms Eagle
To make it clear again, the parliamentary Labour party will change its rules and its standing orders so that from the start of the next Parliament no Labour MP will have remunerated directorships or consultancies. All our candidates and all our existing Members of Parliament will have to change their arrangements in order to comply with this change of rules. Will the right hon. Gentleman now commit to his party doing the same?
Mr Hague
No, as is very clear from my speech. I have made the point that the Committee on Standards in Public Life made. The hon. Lady has said what the Labour party will do in the next Parliament, but I hope she will admit that she has to deal with the points I have been making about how to define these responsibilities, because they are not dealt with at the moment. There is no clear answer from the Opposition even about what their policy is.
Karl Turner
The Leader of the House has been very generous in giving way. He made a point that he thought was funny—frankly, the electorate would not think it was funny—about the former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) made it clear that Ministers, which would of course include the former Prime Minister, have to put directorships into trust while serving as Ministers. The right hon. Gentleman’s point was not funny, and it was not correct, was it?
Mr Hague
Yes, it was correct. It is not for me to say whether it was funny; others will be the judge. I was making a point about the Opposition motion. If such a motion is so easy to make fun of, it may not have much chance of being a serious policy. The public would not find it funny if we adopted rules that could not be enforced, were confusing or damaged the future of Parliament, which is the central point.
Mr Raab
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. My interests all relate to writing columns for newspapers and suing one of them.
Is it my right hon. Friend’s view that the definition of consultancies would include drawing a six-figure salary for being a BBC guest presenter? It would, first, relate to public money; and secondly, hardly draw in outside experience from beyond the Westminster bubble.
Mr Hague
Whether that would come under the definition of consultancy is another interesting question for the Opposition to consider. They have to define such things if they are to present their policy more clearly. I hope that they will be able to do so the next time they present it.
The final revealing point about the Opposition motion is that it talks about some forms of outside income, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) has just said, it does not address the direct influence on Members of trade union sponsorship and support at elections and between elections. If the Labour party gains more seats at the coming election, it will have to address that issue at the beginning of the next Parliament. For the 106 target seats it has named, it has selected 105 candidates, of whom 83 are union linked, including 49 who are linked to Unite. It is by far the greatest single outside influence on Members of Parliament —securing their selection as candidates, supporting their election as MPs, paying for their election, dictating the policies of their party—yet they are breathtakingly silent on that issue. We would not enhance the reputation of Parliament by adopting a motion put forward in a hurry to grab a headline, but which does not address that fundamentally important issue about our Parliament and democracy.
Mr Speaker
Order. A significant number of Members are seeking to catch my eye. As always, I want to try to accommodate colleagues, so I am afraid that there has to be a five-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.
Sir Tony Baldry
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It will take me five minutes to read out my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. [Laughter.] It is not fair: I must be given at least five minutes to make my speech.
Mr Speaker
I did not say, nobody said and “Erskine May” does not state that a Member has to read out a list. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is trying to be helpful, not least to himself, but I did not say that; I said that an interest needs to be made clear to the House.
We need a time limit because I want to try to accommodate colleagues, the first of whom to contribute is Sir Alan Duncan.
Sir Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
As we approach the general election in May, all of us sit in a House that is browbeaten, diminished and increasingly dysfunctional. This place is supposed to be the pinnacle of our democracy, both in providing the Government and in scrutinising them, but, if I may say so, it is not helped by such undignified squabbling.
The sort of Parliament we end up having in a few years’ time will determine whether politicians can meet the challenges of big government and a dangerous world, and serve the long-term interests of the people who elect us, or whether, with the diminution of our political wisdom and conduct, all we do is oversee the country’s perpetual decline. The composition of Parliament and its rules are crucial to that fate. All rules should be fair and even-handed and should not favour one side over another.
Instead of sinking ever more deeply into petty recrimination, today we should ask what Parliament should be. Politics is about interest, about competing opinions and differing views, and about civilised discourse and making laws with the consent of the people. If we try to sanitise all politics by removing all identifiable interests, all we will do is destroy real politics and reduce Members of Parliament to vacuous functionaries. This House needs people of quality and variety who bring genuine experience that is of greater value than the theoretical study of politics and careers founded only in the student union, the special adviser’s office and the party machine.
Fiona O’Donnell
I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register; I have an income from a rental property in Edinburgh.
Will the right hon. Gentleman dissociate himself from the remarks of the Father of the House today at Prime Minister’s questions, when he asked what kind of person would come to this place if they could not have a second job? There is and always should be a place in this House for people who have never dreamt of earning £67,000 a year.
Sir Alan Duncan
There needs to be a variety of people, including those who think that money matters, and those who feel that they have forgone so much to be here that there is no disgrace in topping up the salary. We should accept that difference, otherwise we are ruling out of this House a body of people who wish to serve in it, but who might not if they were forced to accept only the salary.
Let me chuck away my notes and, in the short time that I have, say what I think. If we sanitise this House, as people are suggesting, we will end up nationalising the entire process of politics. This House of Commons should be where people come together from all corners of the country, and from whatever background, to do whatever they believe is in the interests of the country.
Sir Alan Duncan
I will come back to the hon. Lady. The original purpose of paying people was to ensure that nobody could not afford to come here. That concept has been inverted, so that the salary is the cap on what people can earn. That will stop people wanting to come here who could and should earn more because of what they know and what they might achieve.
This is an ultra-partisan motion. It is designed—let us be absolutely clear—to drive out of this House of Commons as many people on the Government side as possible, because people on the Opposition side think that we earn more and could be directors, and because fewer people on their side do such things. That is the fundamental purpose of the motion. It is partisan and designed to catch a headline for campaigning purposes.
I will give way one more time, and then say what should happen.
Susan Elan Jones
I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for having finally given way. Sixty-seven thousand quid is roughly what a deputy head or a head teacher earns. Is he honestly saying that if they wanted to add to their great experience by holding directorships and did not turn up to teach the children very often, that would be okay?
Sir Alan Duncan
We are entitled to say that politics should not exclude people who could earn more and who wish to look after their family in a certain way or do whatever they do. There should not be a capped, nationalised process.
Let me turn this debate towards more constructive points. The quality of the argument about what an MP should be and what an interest is has been completely destroyed by ill-informed comment and the inevitable pressure to get press headlines. There is a difference between having a conflict of interest, which our rules are designed to avoid, and having an interest, which can be a useful contribution to the politics of the nation. We are in danger of becoming a low-achieving, sparring, shallow Chamber in which there is insufficient experience to address the big issues of the day. Some of the questions and exchanges that we hear in the House are of a lower standard than those in a school debating society.
I urge everyone in the House to go back to the Nolan principles of 1995, in the first report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which explain clearly what an interest is, what the House of Commons should be, why outside interests are a good thing, and how there are differing careers and patterns of life in the House. Some people come here and just want to be a Minister. Sadly, more and more of them push off as soon as they have been a Minister, because they cannot bear to stay here any longer, so they are lost to our deliberations. Some people—it would be better if we had more of them—come here with really good experience and can add to our debates, and they do not want to be a Minister. Why on earth, if they are a good Back Bencher who helps make good law, which, by the way, has become a useless exercise in this House, cannot they earn some extra money and say, “I am serving my country in this way”?
The concept of the full-time career politician does not serve the interests of this country. We should accept that a political career can change over time; someone can be in government, out of government, in opposition, on the Front Bench, and then on the Back Benches. That is what we want. We risk creating a Parliament that people will wish they never had. We are halfway to that already, and if we do not arrest the decline of this House, it is the people who will suffer. If they clamour for what the Opposition are asking for, they and all of the country will regret it.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
The Tories just do not get it. After the great screaming nightmare of the expenses scandal, when our reputation in this country was ruined, sometimes unjustly, we have to try to win it back. I have suggested in books, including one in 1997, that the best way to win the respect of the country is to accept that £67,000 is a full-time wage for which we have to do a full-time job. I have just looked up one Member who spoke earlier and found that he is earning £200,000. He has not said so. The last speaker did not say how much he is earning. We want transparency in this debate.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Would it not be reasonable to suggest that if somebody wants to do a part-time job, or half a job, they should give half their salary back?
Paul Flynn
Entirely reasonable. There are mechanisms available, and I commend them to Members. I made a recommendation on that in 1997.
Sir Alan Duncan
May I say to the hon. Gentleman, since this is an example of the low-level sparring from which we suffer, that the reason I did not declare an interest is that I have not got any?
Paul Flynn
I was referring to the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). If Members do not have an interest, so be it, but the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) had an interest in the past—I remember that he had an interest in his neighbour’s council house a long time ago, of which he has no reason to be proud.
In 1994 we had a disgraceful episode in which Members were caught asking for money for questions, and we have it again now. Can we not accept the shame of what has happened in the past week, when greatly respected, experienced Members have shamed themselves in public and shamed all of us? It shames decent politics, and the only people who will be helped by it are those who are into anti-politics and suggest extremist answers. That will come home to roost in a few weeks’ time, when the respectable parties in the House—the parties based on idealism, as all our main parties are—will be damaged in the poll. We deserve to be damaged, unless we have reforms.
Where will the reforms come from? The Leader of the House said that there had been reforms with regard to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments and the revolving door, but we have had nothing of the sort. It is still possible for any Minister to prostitute their insider knowledge and sell their contacts and experience to the highest bidder. What is to stop them? Not ACOBA—that has not been reformed and is not the Rottweiler it should be. It will say that Members cannot take jobs in areas where they were once Ministers, and cannot do deals while they are Ministers. However, when a contract is up, the Minister will get an indication that if he gives it to firm B, rather than firms C or D, firm B will ensure that he gets a sinecure—a lovely job in retirement. He will get his hacienda in Spain. That is still going on.
The Government have just appointed a new chair of ACOBA who thinks it is reasonable for her to receive £800 a day for a part-time job. People on that committee—the great and the good—are taking those jobs on the basis of what they have gained in public work and in this job. This job should be the pinnacle of their career, but it is not any more; it is a staging post to getting riches later. We have done nothing about double jobs at all. Because of their insiderdom—because they view this issue from the inside—Members have failed to see what the public see from outside: people on the make who come here and use their election and status to make large sums of money.
Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)
What would the hon. Gentleman say to firemen in my constituency who have second jobs, and to policemen in his constituency, many of whom have quite legitimate second jobs that they manage to do outside their public service, publicly funded, well-paid jobs?
Paul Flynn
That is not a serious intervention.
Let us hear the promise of the Prime Minister from 8 February 2010. He said:
“We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.”
They are still buying power and influence. The pathetic lobbying Bill affected just 1% of corporate lobbyists. It was a bit of a nuisance for charities, but we have not had control of lobbyists.
What about honours? We have done more to degrade honours than King Charles I and Lloyd George. The Prime Minister set up a special committee to give honours —21 every year—to MPs. That has never been done before. Most of them are failed MPs, or MPs who are disappointed because they have been sacked. We have further degraded the honours system. We have not made any of the great reforms that we should have made and that we promised in order to win back the trust and confidence of the country, which was lost with the terrible scandal of 2009.
Finally, we make a point when we start our business every day, although it is not published. Let us think what the words mean when we say our prayers:
“May they”—
that is, us—
“never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals”—
there are plenty of those around—
“but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind”.
We have seen a Parliament in which many people have prostituted their high office and the great privilege of being here for their own private greed. It has got to stop.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for calling me to speak in what, according to the House of Commons Library, will be my 650th contribution to proceedings in this Parliament. That puts me well in the top per cent. of all Members of Parliament, including Ministers, for contributions. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which is to be found on page 11. I am a practising barrister, the director of two public companies and three private companies, and a partner in a film partnership.
The resolution tabled by the Leader of the Opposition and others does not seek to ban Members of Parliament from pursuing outside interests as such: the motion is simply to ban certain types of outside interest. May I suggest that there is no logic, either practical or in terms of public policy, in what the Opposition suggest? The motion seeks solely to ban Members of Parliament from being paid company directors or consultants. I am at somewhat of a loss to understand why the Opposition think it appropriate to ban a Member of Parliament from being a director of a limited company, but if that is what they want, why would they consider it appropriate for a Member of Parliament to be a partner in a limited liability partnership? Why should I be banned from being a company director, but allowed to continue to be a partner?
Under the terms of the motion, it would be acceptable for a Member of Parliament to have an outside interest as a farmer, providing that interest was expressed by way of being a partner in a farm partnership, but the same Member of Parliament would be unable to pursue effectively the same activity if, instead of being a partner in a farm partnership, he were a director in a limited liability company undertaking exactly the same commercial activity.
Under the terms of this motion, it would be possible for Members of Parliament to have any second interests if they were self-employed interests. It would be possible for Members of Parliament to continue to be authors, journalists, television commentators, and stockbrokers, providing the stockbroking was done by way of a partnership. The provision in the motion simply to seek to ban Members of Parliament from being company directors is, I suggest, somewhat capricious, and owes little, if anything, to logic. I am afraid it simply reflects the desire of the Leader of the Opposition to jump on any passing bandwagon.
There is a wholly credible, intellectual case for saying that Members of Parliament can hold no outside interests whatever, and there is a wholly credible, intellectual case for saying that Members of Parliament can hold outside interests, subject to rules on transparency and accountability, but what holds no intellectual credibility is to seek to have a policy which bans certain types of outside interests for Members of Parliament and allows others. Moreover, with respect, it is no good people, including many editors and journalists, complaining that the House of Commons is, from their perspective, increasingly occupied by career politicians who have done nothing else and then, almost in the next breath, advocating the removal from the House of Commons those of us who do bring other experience to this House. As the House will recall, the last time that the Committee on Standards in Public Life considered this matter, it concluded that it was beneficial to Parliament for Members of Parliament to be able to have outside interests.
As the register shows, I am a practising barrister, arbitrator and mediator, and I am also a director of a number of companies, public and private. Under the provisions of this motion, if I were standing at the next general election, it would be permissible for me to continue to practise at the Bar, and to practise as a mediator and arbitrator. If the Opposition consider it acceptable for me as a Member of Parliament to continue to be able to practise as a barrister, mediator or arbitrator, their argument cannot possibly be against having outside interests as such. Why would they consider it acceptable for me to continue to practise as a barrister, but not for me to be a director of public companies? It cannot be a regulatory issue. As a barrister, I am of course, in addition to the general law of the land, subject to regulation by the Bar Council and by the Bar Standards Board, but as a company director I am also bound by the law of the land and subject to supervision by several regulatory bodies—the stock exchange, the UK Listing Authority, the Takeover Panel, and numerous others. This motion is simply grandstanding.
Graham Jones
The House would appreciate it if the right hon. Gentleman would explain how much he gets from outside jobs, and how much time he spends on them away from Parliament. It would illuminate the debate for the House.
Sir Tony Baldry
I have looked at the number of contributions made by those who tabled the motion. The deputy leader of the Labour party is down somewhere in the hundreds, as is the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), who will wind up the debate, whereas I have contributed 650 times. If we are to start talking about the effectiveness of Members of Parliament, perhaps Opposition Members should start looking at the beam in their own eye before they look at the mote in their brother’s.
It is for electors to judge the effectiveness of Members. I have always declared my outside interests fully. Indeed, in the last general election, I stated very clearly in my election address that I would continue to pursue my outside interests. I am very proud to have been returned as the Member of Parliament for north Oxfordshire on seven occasions. On the last occasion, my majority was 18,000. The people of north Oxfordshire reposed their trust in me knowing fully, from the day I was first selected, that I was a practising barrister and company director. I have been proud to pursue those professions and occupations while a Member of this House.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which relates to royalties received from works recorded prior to becoming a Member of this House, and on which I work zero hours. There is one recording not in the register: the record by MP4, the cross-party parliamentary group, which has made almost £1 million for charity in the past 10 years. I know you have a certain affection for the recordings of MP4, Mr Speaker, and we greatly appreciate that.
Here we go again. Just when we think that the Westminster establishment could not be held in lower esteem by the public, something comes along to disabuse us of that notion. It is all so familiar: a sting operation by the media using a fake company involving some of our senior Members of Parliament and the lure of access. Underpinning it all is the possibility of cash in the hands of those Members.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
My hon. Friend talks about cash. Does he not find it strange—it seems strange to me—that it is so simple to entrap people in this place with the lure of cash? Members do not even take simple steps to find out if these people are genuine.
Pete Wishart
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) made that very same observation about an almost identical sting prior to the last election, when it was then Labour Cabinet members who were caught up in a rotten affair.
The public observe this House with something approaching bemused bewilderment, concluding that the Westminster Parliament exists as little more than a self-serving institution for its overpaid Members. This Parliament has never been held in such contempt. Never has there been such a profound alienation between those who are governed and those who occupy the corridors of power. There is a massive disconnect between this House and the people of Britain. All that has happened in the past week makes that disconnect even wider. People will observe the comments from Conservative Members with something approaching disbelief. We see that reflected in how the public respond to this House—of course we do. The two major establishment parties can barely get above 60% in the polls. The public are not prepared to accept this anymore.
Graham Jones
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could tell the House how many Scottish National party MSPs who are standing in the general election intend to stand down as MSPs, or will they be dual-hatted?
Pete Wishart
I know one, and yes he will.
This House is able to secure only 60% of popular support. That suggests to me that the people of these islands are looking for something different. They are sick and tired of the antics of this particular House. That is reflected in how they are responding to the way the Westminster establishment parties do their business. They are sick and tired of the self-justification: the special pleading; the bleating; the idea that somehow this House is enriched because Conservative Members can make some extra money; that this House is enriched because they bring outside experience to it; and that we cannot live on £67,000 a year. Tell that to our constituents! That is treble the national average wage. Our constituents are currently suffering austerity and a diminution of their annual income. They are experiencing real poverty and real difficulty, yet this House tells them that right hon. and hon. Members cannot get by on £67,000 a year.
I believe that being a Member of Parliament is a full-time job. In fact, we have got two jobs: we have our responsibilities in this House, and then we have our obligations to our constituents. Becoming a constituency Member of Parliament has changed dramatically in the 14 years that I have been here. It has become much more technical and much more complicated, with a greater amount of different tasks and skills needing to be acquired to serve members of the public efficiently and effectively. The suggestion that this can be combined with a second job with outside earnings is something I believe our constituents would find very difficult to accept.
Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Pete Wishart
I cannot; I have no more time left.
No SNP Member has a second job, a directorship or a place on a company. Our responsibilities here are our sole concern and our only responsibility. SNP Members serve our constituents and ensure that the agenda for the nation is progressed. That is what we do when we come here.
It is only this House among the Parliaments and legislatures of this nation that seems to have this difficulty. It is only at Westminster where there is an issue about paid directorships and second jobs. We certainly do not have such issues in the Scottish Parliament, and I do not believe they have them in the Northern Ireland Assembly or the Welsh Assembly.
I believe that there is something peculiar and particular about this House. It has something to do with the history and the culture, something to do with the sense of entitlement that almost seems to come out of the pores of this place—the idea that people came to this Chamber because it was something for them to do after their main job.
Pete Wishart
I have no time to give way.
That is what we see with this particular House. It is built into the culture and the history. We need a 21st-century institution that is equipped to deal with the Britain we currently serve. It is no good relying on these old ways of doing things; we need to look carefully and clearly at how we conduct our business. What the public are seeing is cash for access and cash for honours. The public are looking at that absurd, ridiculous place down the corridor, with 850 ermine-clad unelected Lords. That is what they are seeing in this rotten democracy.
We have a task to do if we are to ensure that we clean up this House. I will support the Labour motion, but I observe that a number of Labour Members are among the top earners when it comes to outside interests. I would say to the Labour party, “If you are sincere, do it from next week.” I really hope it goes through with this and can maintain it as a policy. We owe it to our constituents to try to ensure that we do better.
We are not part-time Members of Parliament. Looking after our constituents is a full-time job. A second job means a second master, and that second master expects something back in return. Let us make sure that we do this job exclusively on behalf of our constituents. There should be no second jobs, no paid directorships, no outside interests with a financial return. Let us work for our constituents and make them our only priority.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
I declare that I have one source of earnings as the MP for Wells; otherwise, I have nothing to declare. I think the public will be shocked when they find out that MPs declared earnings of £7.4 million for outside work and second jobs last year. Of the 650 Members, 281 declared outside earnings in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Thirty Members earned the equivalent of an MP’s salary, and a dozen earned more than the Prime Minister’s £142,000. A total of 26,600 hours were spent on non-parliamentary duties. I think this is appalling.
I can think of no other job in which someone could rock up, once they had got it, and say, “Thanks very much for the job, but I am only going to do it for three days a week because I have something else on.” This is about money, time and priorities. We absolutely have to move this place on from the 19th century to now. Public expectations are completely different, and a number of Members across the House have explained that workloads have changed. It reflects the fact that so many people have no voice.
Many of us have considerable experience of work and life. I spent 31 years at work before I came here, and I have done loads of voluntary work, as well as raise my family. All that was gained before the election, but I did not forget it all when I came here. People will not forget everything when they arrive. Surely being an MP is a vocation and a public service. It is a full-time job, too.
In my first term as an MP—I have been here nearly five years—I have held more than 650 surgeries, and 23,700 of my constituents have requested help and advice. As I said, those are people without a voice, and they often face the systemic failure of government, whether it be local or national, and they need somebody to speak out for them.
People must make the choice between earning money and public service. I accept that there are some exceptions: for drivers who need to undertake a minimum number of hours, for instance, or doctors who need to engage in continuing professional development. Politics is a brutal business, and I understand that politicians can come to a brutal end at election time, but what is important is that the people do that to a minimum, and do not become bound up in trying to earn vast slugs of money.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
As one who has spent a fair amount of time in a voluntary—or more or less voluntary—capacity as a special constable, may I ask my hon. Friend whether it is the amount of time that people spend out of the job of being an MP that causes her concern, or the money? She cannot have it both ways.
Tessa Munt
Oh, I think I can! I do this job for the money that is paid to me, and I think that that is fine. I know that loads of my constituents would think that it is a perfectly decent salary: indeed, they dream of earning such an amount. This is a vocation. If you want to go and earn money, get out and go and do it.
Mr Burley
May I ask my hon. Friend the same question that I asked the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), and hope for a slightly better answer? Would she ban the firefighters and policemen in her constituency from having second jobs? Surely what is good for MPs is good for anyone who works in the public sector.
Tessa Munt
No. I disagree. I will talk about what I know, and I know about being an MP, and that is exactly what I can talk about. I am not qualified to talk about the other things. There are clearly restrictions in various other cases, but what we have brought to the House today is a discussion about whether people should hold paid directorships or consultancies. I have to say that I do not think the motion goes far enough, but that is because that there are many other forms of employment. People are employees, they are on contracts, they are agency workers, they are partners, they are office holders, they are barristers and advocates and police officers and members of the clergy. I accept that there are all sorts of exceptions. We should consider these matters carefully.
I am entirely prepared to listen to what might be thought to be a way forward, but I have made a pledge, and I think that it is a privilege and an honour to do my job. There is no job description, and it may be time for us to discuss what one should expect, but the fact remains that I pledge my time to those who elect me and those who do not, and this will be my one and only job.
Tessa Munt
That is an utterly ludicrous suggestion. As my hon. Friend probably knows, for three years I was the Business Secretary’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. That was a promotion. It was something within my job. It was something that I did between Monday, when I arrived at the House, and Thursday, when I went back to my constituency.
My staff have calculated that in most weeks I probably work for more than 100 hours, but this is a vocation, so I do not complain about it. That is the way it is, and that is the way I choose it to be. It is absolutely fine to gain promotion in the Government, but we do not need to have a job outside this place to enhance our expertise inside it. I think it completely unreasonable that people should have such vast earnings and such a vast amount of time.
I recognise that I may have a slightly extreme view on this issue, but I do not care, because it is what I believe.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
I speak as a new Member of Parliament and a proud trade unionist. I also went to a school that did not have a debating society, so I have no idea what the standard of debate is compared with the standard of the debating society at whatever school the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) went to.
One thing that has surprised me since I became an MP is the number of people back home who have asked me “Are you still working in the NHS?” I used to work as a health care scientist in the national health service before I was elected. There is a real perception out there that being an MP is not a full-time job, which is why people are asking me that question. The practice among some MPs of taking paid directorships and consultant roles exacerbates the belief that being an MP is something that someone can do in their spare time when they are not flitting around doing their other well-paid part-time jobs. I no longer work in the national health service. There is absolutely no way that I could hold down a responsible job, with people’s lives and health depending on what I did, and fulfil the responsibilities of my new role as an MP. To be perfectly honest, I do not understand how anyone finds the time to do anything outside their role as an MP, although I am prepared to accept that that may reflect the fact that I am new and have a lot to learn, and that a general election is looming.
People in my constituency are baffled by recent assertions that £67,000 a year is not enough for an MP to live on. Figures were recently published showing my constituency was the second-worst constituency in the north-west for the payment of the living wage. The worst area is Blackpool North and Cleveleys, where 42.1% of workers are paid less than the living wage. In my constituency, 39.8% of local workers are paid less than the living wage, with women faring particularly badly. Over half of them—53.9%—are paid less than the living wage, which is £7.85 an hour, which amounts to £314 a week for a 40-hour week, or £16,328 a year before tax. I am sure that the 39.8% of people in Heywood and Middleton who receive less than that—and, indeed, all those people existing on the average wage in the UK—will be absolutely baffled as to why MPs on £67,000 a year need to have a second paid job.
We owe it to our constituents, and to the people who elected us, to do our job as an MP properly and effectively, to make it our only employment, and to concentrate fully on it—not to be distracted by paid roles as consultants and directors, which feeds the impression that being an MP is a part-time job—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Will the hon. Lady sit down for a moment? I will stop the clock. I am getting a bit fed up with Members, including Whips, shouting across the Dispatch Box at Members who are speaking.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Actually, Mr Wishart, I told them off at that point as well, and made them stop, so you could conclude your speech. I was just about to say that that goes for both sides. There are strongly held views: express them strongly when you have the floor, but please do not shout at one another. Liz McInnes.
Liz McInnes
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to end by quoting one of my constituents, Father Paul Daly, who said to me:
“When I vote in May, I will want a full-time MP who does not feel so hard-done by on a mere 67 grand a year plus expenses that they have to go looking for part-time work at a few extra thousand quid a day.
I don’t mind MPs getting rewarded for writing the odd article, but when MPs are earning more outside their parliamentary duties than within them then something is very wrong.”
I think that Father Daly speaks for the majority of people in their perceptions of MPs. That criticism from a member of the clergy brings home to us what people really think of us. This is a moral issue, and it is right that the Church should express its views in that way. We owe it to all our constituents, believers and non-believers alike, to conduct ourselves in an honourable fashion and to concentrate on the role to which we have been elected and which we should be proud to perform.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
I draw attention to my declaration of interests, and let me spell them out, as has been requested. I am a director of a garden centre company and I will even name the other three directors. One is my wife, one is my father and the other is my mother. I am a partner in a farming business, as well. There are three other partners. They are my wife, my father and my mother. I understand the issues that Opposition Members, and Government Members, are trying to address, but the reputation of Members of Parliament is not being enhanced by the situation we find ourselves in.
Front-Bench Members must ask themselves whether the debate is making the situation better or worse. They are assisting the problem, not trying to solve it. In trying to develop rules to trap people or to make—[Hon. Members: “Trap?”] You are trapping me. Let me explain. As a farmer, if I cannot be a paid director, that is quite simple because I can extract myself and make myself an unremunerated director. That would mean that my wife would have to draw twice the salary to maintain the same level of support for the family. That does not affect my interest or whether or not I am influenced. In fact, it could be argued that that is even worse as my family is benefiting from that cash, which gives me that same interest.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
On a related point, as the hon. Gentleman talks about farming interests, does he share my concern that Members in receipt of common agricultural payments do not have to declare that in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, even when they are Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers receiving quite substantial amounts?
Mr Spencer
That is a very good point. I am a partner of an agricultural company that receives subsidies from the EU. I am an unremunerated partner in that company, but how does one extract oneself when one’s immediate family are benefiting? I live in a house at the centre of that farm. There is only one electricity meter for that property, so the farming business pays the electricity bill, in effect paying the electricity bill for the house that I live in. I cannot extract myself from that unless I move house. I have never lived anywhere else. I was born in that house and have lived there for ever, but the rules that the Opposition are trying to create will stop people becoming Members of Parliament. It would be impossible for me to be a Member of Parliament under the rules they are trying to set up. I do not think that that is what they are trying to achieve; I think they are trying to stop influence. Everybody in the House wants to ensure that Opposition Members are not being influenced, and I am sure that that is what they are trying to achieve. The rules they are proposing, however, do not do what they want to achieve. That is a great shame. It brings shame on this House and brings the role of being a Member of Parliament into disrepute.
Mr Burley
On the subject of influencing MPs, does my hon. Friend share my concern about Members of Parliament who are members of trade unions and do not declare that interest, such as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who had to apologise to this House for tabling amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill written for her by the GMB union, of which she was a member?
Mr Spencer
That is a legitimate point and it brings me to my final point about the best way to solve this. Members of Parliament should be allowed to do whatever they want to do, in whatever role they want to do it in and with whatever money they want to earn elsewhere, but that should be wholly in the public domain. The constituents of that Member of Parliament would be able to make a judgment about whether they thought that that was the right or the wrong thing to do. That is the only clear way to solve this issue without trying to draw up rules. There will always be loopholes when we draw up rules that mean that people with unscrupulous motives will be able to get around them, but innocent people who try to do a good job as a Member of Parliament would be trapped by them. That would be a great shame, not only for the House but for those Members who genuinely became a Member of Parliament to try to improve their own communities and assist the area in which they live. It would also be a great shame for people like myself, because I had no ambition to become a Member of Parliament until very late in life. I had had another career and I sort of stumbled into this by working in a community and being pushed forward through the things that I was doing to benefit that community. I think the House benefits a great deal from people who have worked and gained experience elsewhere before coming to this place to assist in making good, logical decisions based on that experience.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I should like to refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am an unremunerated director of a supporters co-operative, and as part of the responsibilities of being the chair of that co-operative, I am an unremunerated director of Heart of Midlothian football club. I am also a director of my own business, which I put into hibernation when I was elected to the House. The total amount of money I receive from all those positions is precisely zero.
I hope that I do not get struck by lightning when I say this, but I actually agree with something that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said. We are not many days away from the end of this Parliament and we have finally agreed on something. I congratulate him on rightly saying that we must restore people’s faith in politics and in this place. The public are demanding that we do just that, and that is why we are having this debate today; it is not because we are jumping on a passing bandwagon.
Before I was elected to the House, I ran my own businesses, but as soon as I left the stage in 2010 after the returning officer had announced that I was the new Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South, I sold one of the businesses and put the other into hibernation. Why? Because it is a tremendous privilege to be in this place, and every Member should give this full-time job 110% of their time. I was still a councillor at the time, and until the by-election took place and I stopped being a councillor, I donated every single penny of that additional salary to local charities in my constituency.
Adam Afriyie
Would the hon. Gentleman take a second job as a Minister or the Chairman of a Select Committee?
Ian Murray
That is a completely ridiculous misnomer from Conservative Members. It is a smokescreen to cover up some of the practices that they anticipate doing in this place. Being a Minister or the Chair of a Select Committee is part of the job of being in this place. It is part of the remit of being a Member of Parliament.
Ian Murray
I will not give way, but I will say more on that point later, because it is being used as a ridiculous smokescreen in this debate, and it is one that the Prime Minister shamefully trumpeted from the Dispatch Box earlier as well.
There are not enough hours in the day to do the job of a Member of Parliament, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you do not need to take my word for it. You can take it from my partner, my friends, my neighbours and my family—from everyone who does not see me from one weekend to the next because I am doing my job in this place. For Lord Heseltine to say that being an MP is “not a full-time job” simply emphasises how out of touch he is now, just as he was when he was in this place, and just how out of touch the Conservatives are on this issue. Any Member who thinks that the job of an MP is not full time is not doing their job properly, and any candidate standing for election on 7 May who thinks that it will not be a full-time job would be better off standing aside and allowing someone else to do it.
Why do I say that? Because since 2010, I have directly helped more than 12,000 of my constituents, held 800 advice sessions and visited or offered to visit 36,500 households. I get up to 700 e-mails a day. We are ingrained in our local communities because that is what Members of Parliament and elected members at all levels—councillors, Members of the Scottish Parliament, MPs and Members of the European Parliament—should be. We should represent our constituents; that is what we are paid for. The overwhelming majority of MPs work their socks off for their constituents, representing them here, doing the work of Parliament and pushing forward the issues that their constituents care about.
Let us look at the Prime Minister’s response to these questions at Prime Minister’s questions today. He could not have been more exposed on this issue if he had turned up in his infamous holiday Speedos. He was asked by the Leader of the Opposition, not once, not twice, not three times, but six times, how many jobs he thinks a Member of Parliament could have when they are in this place, but he refused to answer. What is he frightened of? Why will he not back us to stop this? To say, as some of the—
Ian Murray
I am not giving way. Some Government Members say that these jobs bring additional flavour and experience to this place, but I do not need to have a £250,000 non-executive directorship of a major business to tell me what my constituents want me to bring to the Floor of this House. I know what my constituents want me to bring to the Floor of this House because I ask them—I knock on their doors, I do surgeries, and I put out questionnaires and surveys. That is how we in this House know what the public are thinking, and to think otherwise is just bonkers.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an extremely strong speech. Does he not find it strange, as I do, that when we look through the Register of Members’ Financial Interests we find that a lot of those directorships and consultancies involve giving advice and time out of this place and are not about bringing expertise into it, although that was the argument being made by so many Government Members?
Ian Murray
Absolutely, and that is the key point; we need to get money and lobbying out of politics. When we had the opportunity to put through a strong lobbying Bill, the raison d’être of the Government was to hit the charities which want to tell us to change public policy and not the very lobbyists they have at the heart of Downing street and of No. 10.
Let me just deal with this issue about shadow Ministers and Ministers. Those roles are an integral part of being a Member of Parliament. If Government Members are suggesting that Members of Parliament should not take those roles, they are completely missing the point of what the public are asking us to do. The Prime Minister said exactly the same from—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, if the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) got £5 every time he chuntered in this place, he would not need any outside interests from this place. A better view of the world outside would be to listen to what the public are saying to us. We do not need to have highly paid second or third jobs to tell us that, and that is what the public are telling us to do.
Ian Murray
I hope the right hon. Gentleman does not mind, but I have no time to give way
Let me tell the House who needs second jobs, third jobs and fourth jobs. It is the people who have been failed by this Government: the millions of people on zero-hours contracts, who need more than one job; the millions of people in part-time work who need full-time work—they need more than one job; and the millions of people on short-hours contracts in this country, who have been failed by this Government’s failed austerity programme and the so-called “economic recovery”. Those are the people who need to go out to earn additional money, because they cannot make ends meet from the zero-hours contracts, the short-hours contracts and the part-time work they are currently on, and we should be representing those views in this House.
The motion is not perfect, but the Leader of the Opposition said clearly from the Dispatch Box this afternoon, “Let us agree the principle that this is wrong and let us deal with the issues that are in front of us.” If we do not do that, the public perception of this place will drop even further and it will be to the shame of democracy in this United Kingdom.
Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)
I will try to raise the bar of this debate, as at times it has been remarkably undignified in here this afternoon. I am the only independently practising doctor in the House—I thank the Prime Minister for pointing that out earlier at the Dispatch Box—so I guess that, as somebody who has a publicly declared role outside this Chamber, my contribution should have some value.
The House should know that I was selected as a candidate in Bracknell at an open meeting that anybody on the electoral register could attend. At that meeting I declared that I would continue working as a doctor, so when I was subsequently elected the whole electorate knew that and I do not feel that I am doing anything that my electorate have not supported me in doing. During that election campaign I made a bit of a mistake; I am on the record as saying that I thought Members of Parliament should get paid significantly more. I said it in good faith, because I thought this Chamber, this mother of all Parliaments—the Parliament that should lead in this world, not copy other Parliaments—should have the very best people. It is a statement of fact that the best people tend to get paid a bit more, in terms of what they have done in life and whether or not they have been successful; at least part of it is to do with how much they are paid. But I made a mistake, and after four and a half years I am prepared to accept that in my time here, working on Select Committees, contributing in this Chamber some of the very best contributions, on both sides of the House, have been made by people who continue to do things outside this House. Some of the best contributions in the most difficult debates come from people who are working in the field. Many other contributions are pretty substandard because, invariably, they are scripted by other people, such as those in the Whips Office or in outside lobbying groups. The best contributions are from Members who truly know what they are talking about.
Although I understand the Opposition’s desire to improve the reputation of this Chamber, this is not the right way of doing it. The fundamental challenge that we all face in here is the complete breakdown in trust. The rise of the UK Independence party is to do with that anti-establishment and anti-politics feeling. There is a sense that the bigger parties are not listening any more and are populated by people who are in it for themselves.
How do we address this matter of trust? I reflect back to last week when I worked about 40 hours—it will be declared accordingly—both as a doctor and in my constituency. When my patients came in, they recognised who I was. It was interesting to look in their faces, because when they saw I was a politician, they did not want to trust me. Then they realised that I was their doctor, so they were a bit conflicted. I proceeded to treat them and then they left. I then reflected on what had happened. I was the same human being. I have the same values and principles when I am a doctor as I do when I am a politician, and yet I am not trusted. I think it is because the medical profession is about valued knowledge, professional behaviour, honour and integrity— just read what the General Medical Council says—and our patients trust us. They know that, most of the time, we are trying to do the best for them. How come the same is not true for politicians and how do we address that?
Sir Alan Duncan
Is it not also the case that, as a result of his practice, my hon. Friend is probably the most qualified person to speak in this House about the national health service?
Dr Lee
I am not so sure about that. I am certainly qualified with regard to the regional health care settlement, of which I have had a lot to say in the Thames Valley. The fact that I have up-to-date understanding of what is happening in the local health care economy makes me a more effective representative for my constituents.
Just as an aside, no one has talked about hours. As a junior doctor, I have done weeks of 100 hours or more—it is pretty harsh when that happens—so I know all about working hard. For most people, 40 hours a week is what they call their full-time job. I suspect that most people in this House do more than that on politics. I know that my family and friends think that I have aged quite markedly in the past four and a half years while doing this role. At no time has the fact that I have done additional work in medical practice impacted on my ability to be a politician. In fact, I think it has improved it.
The reason why trust matters—it matters for all parties—is that it is only with trust that we get to govern effectively. When I look at the challenges we face, I see ageing; I see Britain’s role in the world diminishing because we do not know what it should be. I think to myself that this country needs good government, of whatever political persuasion—
Madam Deputy Speaker
You keep going. If you have another minute, that will be fair.
Dr Lee
To return to my original point about salary, the reason I have changed my mind is that I think business, the law and trade union experience, for example, are all valuable in this Chamber. If people are working in those areas, I think that they should be paid for it.
The central thrust of my argument is that we face massive challenges as a country, and we do not talk about them here very often. There are not many debates about access to energy and food, ageing, extremism and the like. When we come to deal with those problems properly, we will need to be trusted as individuals, because otherwise the public will not follow us. I do not think that the motion addresses that problem at all. Each of us has a responsibility to behave honourably and with integrity in all that we do. I always have done so in this House, and I will continue to do so irrespective of regulations that are passed either now or in future.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. There appears to be something wrong with the clock, and I hasten to add that it was not the Government Deputy Chief Whip who turned it off. I hope that it will stick to five minutes this time, but if not I will help Members by saying how much longer they have. The next speaker is John Hemming, and we are still on a five-minute time limit.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It contains an entry for JHC, which stands for John Hemming & Co., a company I founded in 1983. It currently employs about 260 staff and has a turnover of £20 million. I have declared in the register an income of around £180,000 from that company. I attend a meeting once a month and chair the board meeting. I am a full-time Member of Parliament. I spend five full days during the week and two half days at the weekend on political business. Oddly enough, the motion is so badly drafted that it would not affect me, because the £180,000 I receive is from a partnership, and the motion does not refer to partnerships. Obviously, there is a lot of confusion about equity interest and payment per hour. I spend under four hours a month on the work set out in my declaration of interests.
What do I do? Well, today I met the Latvian Justice Minister, who is concerned about what is happening in the family courts in England as it affects Latvian citizens. I have attended two Select Committee meetings today. I actually sit on five Select Committees, and I probably attend more Delegated Legislation Committees than any other Member of Parliament. Therefore, when it comes to parliamentary activity, I can claim to be as busy in Parliament as one can be. Indeed, one of my colleagues said that he did not think that I had a second job because he always sees me here, and I am here a lot.
Fiona O'Donnell
May I ask why the hon. Gentleman decided to donate to charity his income from taking part in ComRes consultations but not to donate income from his other employment?
John Hemming
The problem with that question is that the hon. Lady has made an assumption that I do not make other donations to charity. I do make other donations, but they are not set out in my entry in the register. I am sorry, but that claim is basically wrong.
I do a vast amount of casework. I have my advice bureau on Saturdays, and the maximum number I have dealt with is 38 groups of people. Admittedly, that took a little longer than normal, but I see everybody who turns up at my office on a Saturday without an appointment—many colleagues who claim to be full-time Members of Parliament require appointments, but I do not. I have been a full-time politician since 2004, when I was deputy leader of Birmingham city council, which is also a full-time job. From a casework point of view, having dealt with about 30,000 cases of varying complexity since then, I am a full-time MP. I run campaigns about secret imprisonment, term-time absence, parents being prosecuted because their children are ill and dealing with people who leave this country because they are persecuted by the state. That is part of my job as a full-time MP.
I am also a pianist, as is well known. I play the piano at the party conference and later in March I have a gig in my constituency in Birmingham for Macmillan Cancer Support, which is sold out. Admittedly, that will all go to charity. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) knows, I play jazz music in various places for charitable purposes. This year we are not raising money jointly for Macmillan at the Palace of Varieties show, but these things still go on.
I have additional business costs because I am an MP, but where is the conflict of interest? There is a conflict of interest for Ministers, because if they vote against the Government they are fined by losing their ministerial salary. That is why Ministers are called the payroll—they are paid extra money by the Government in order to back the Government and vote with the Government, whether they agree with them or not. So it is very clear, with our system of failed separation of powers, that a conflict of interest arises from the second job of being a Minister.
How do my constituents benefit from me? I have a little bit more money, that is true, so I pay beyond parliamentary expenses for a benefits adviser who comes to my office to give specialist benefits advice. I was able to take legal action against the city council to try to get it to clean up the streets, which was good in that it got the council to clean up the streets, but bad in that I was ordered to pay costs against the council. That is being appealed through the courts.
Since 2009 I have claimed no second home expenses and I am the most cost-effective Member of Parliament in Birmingham. I use saver return tickets to get to the House of Commons. That keeps my travel costs low so, although I go between London and Birmingham every week because I live in Birmingham, I am by a long way the cheapest MP in Birmingham in terms of personal expenses.
I deliver for my constituents. I deliver more widely on campaign issues. What is the problem with me spending four hours a month continuing to have an interest in the business that I founded more than 30 years ago, which pays a large amount of tax and provides jobs for 260-plus people?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am taking the time limit down to three minutes as interventions have slowed us down. Dr Lee, you got nine minutes. I do not know how that happened, with the clocks going wrong. It was not your fault. The time limit is three minutes from now.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I shall speak as quickly as I can. I shall not go through a litany of my attributes, how many times I have spoken or how many contributions I have made, but it must be a considerable number.
I take the opportunity to correct the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), who said his entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests was on page 11. It is actually on pages 11, 12 and 13. Mine is on page 205 and it consists of three letters. Guess what they are. [Hon. Members: “Nil.”] Correct—nil.
We are here because once again Parliament has been brought into disrepute by the actions of, in this case, two former Foreign Secretaries. It is disgraceful. I am disappointed by contributions from Government Members who say how disappointed they are that the Opposition are raising these concerns and that that demeans Parliament. Surely to goodness our electorate want us to tidy up Parliament and stop the conflict of interest.
The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley), who is no longer in his place, was going on about the trade unions funding the Labour party. This might be an incredible revelation, but it is the labour and trade union movement, and many of us are proud that millions of workers pay money to a political party, not for personal financial gain, but to support their collective endeavour. Surely there is a world of difference between the narrow financial interests of somebody who represents an energy, private health or outsourcing company, from which they can clearly derive a narrow sectional interest, and someone who represents the collective interests of millions of workers, be they in the health service, the coal mines or the shipyards.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that when he talks about the contributions paid by trade union members through a democratic process, that is done under rules and legislation that were drawn up mainly by the Conservatives, so the rules are their rules, which trade union members abide by to pay money to the party that they choose to support?
Grahame M. Morris
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Every attempt is being made to try to cut the link between organised labour and the Labour party, and that is shameful. I find the attacks that are made on trade unions under the guise of whatever flag is waved on the Government Benches appalling and disgraceful.
I do speak to some Government Members privately, and I think there is a lot of concern about MPs with second jobs. May I appeal to their self-interest? I think I am reasonably hard-working, although people might doubt the quality and content of what I am saying on occasion. Does it not strike Members as odd or problematic when their colleagues are away being barristers or consultants? I have looked at the register, and some of them are getting £1,000 an hour. That means that a greater work load falls on the Back-Bench Members who are staying behind here, covering for absent colleagues who are also getting £67,000 a year for being MPs. I think that is a disgrace, personally, and it should be stopped.
There is an opportunity for Members to support this motion and make a statement. The Leader of the House said that there are faults with the motion, but there is a difference between a general rule and a general principle. We can support the general principle here today, and I urge all Members to do so.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I have no relevant interest to declare, which makes me feel like a bit of a poor relation in this debate. I find being a Member of Parliament a full-time job, and with a salary that is some three times the national average, I hardly think we are poverty-stricken in this place.
It is a shame that at the beginning of the debate things instantly degenerated into party political point scoring, points of order, procedural manoeuvring and personal accusations. Our constituents really expect better. Later contributions, including those of my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) and the hon. Members for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), for Bracknell (Dr Lee) and for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), were much more measured, and that is to be welcomed.
The Government amendment is good as far as it goes, but for me it implies too much acceptance of the status quo, and I do not think the status quo is acceptable. I cannot, though, support the Labour motion, which is far too simplistic. Reference has already been made to the fact that it excludes partnerships, farmers, broadcasters, journalists, and writers like the Leader of the House. I am very impressed that he managed to find time to write an acclaimed biography of Pitt. I have not had time to read it, so how on earth he found time to write it, I do not know.
My background was in business and in the charity sector. My new Conservative opponent is a barrister in London chambers. If the people of Cheltenham were so rash as to elect him in May, he would be completely unaffected by what is proposed in this motion. He would be able to continue earning very large fees as a barrister, whereas I would be ruled out of becoming a director in a business. I do not understand what is so special about paid directorships. The motion would prevent, for instance, the retention of a directorship in a small local family business, even if it took hardly any time from the Member’s parliamentary business, but allow unpaid directorships that might carry with them significant equity shareholdings that could result in a significant increase in wealth, if not technically in income. I am afraid that this looks like a well-intentioned motion that was written in a hurry and, I venture to say, by a party with a beginner’s knowledge of business.
The key issues that need to be addressed are conflicts of interest and the time that we devote to parliamentary business. They must be addressed in a way that is not the subject of silly party political point scoring—so it will have to take place after the election—and without our being seen once again to mark our own homework. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) suggested the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for the role. An alternative would be the Standards Committee, but with increased representation from lay members who could look at this with a strong external voice. That would command the confidence of the public and the electorate, and we certainly need that confidence.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
The English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said:
“In politics, what begins in fear…ends in folly.”
My fear is that in this debate—not just the debate in the House today, but more generally—that is where we will end up.
The motion is obviously flawed. Why exclude just business consultancies and directorships? Why exclude that one area of experience from outside this place? It is very important to have business experience in the House of Commons, whether in considering issues of business red tape, business taxation, jobs growth or even the minimum wage, which is very close to the hearts of Opposition Members. There is the whole issue of whether increasing the minimum wage would result in more unemployment. They take that very seriously, but it is a subject on which we want to hear from employers and people with experience of running or taking part in businesses. We need this place to have experience from a whole range of outside professions and sectors. Why should business be excluded?
If this debate was really about the amount MPs earn outside that role, we could have a cap at the amount earned for a Government job. A Government job is of course a second job, and it is ludicrous to keep up the farcical pretence that it is anything else. If the debate was about hours, they are already declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. If it was really about lobbying, we could have a sensible debate. For example, it would be reasonable to place a bar on an MP lobbying the Government for a business from which they draw an income. That would deal with the point about the conflict of interests. However, we have no such focused, sensible debate; the motion seems to be about political point scoring.
I want to talk about some of the stepping-stones to rebuilding trust in politics and in Parliament. There is no silver bullet, but I would like more open primaries—I was selected by open primary, which had a huge impact on me—which make it easier for people with experience from outside politics to come into Parliament.
Dr Phillip Lee
My hon. Friend and I share the experience of open primaries. It struck me that the majority of the people in the room at my open primary—half of them were not Conservative members—just wanted a really good Member of Parliament, who had integrity, a sense of honour and a sense of duty, and wanted to serve the constituency. They were very happy that I had an outside job, because they wanted someone with experience of the real world. Did he have the same experience?
Mr Raab
I had exactly the same experience. Of course, in an open primary, the community can ask someone specifically how they would do the job.
We should attract the brightest, the best and the most talented people to this place. It is no good referring to the median wage, or to what people earn on average. I understand why that is attractive and alluring in a superficial political way, but this place should be a cradle of democracy that attracts people with huge expertise and experience.
I would like MPs to be paid at a similar level to a secondary head teacher, an assistant chief constable or a partner in a GPs’ surgery. I would not increase our salary, or accept an increase, at a time when we are imposing a freeze or a 1% cap on the rest of the public sector, but MPs’ pay does need to be readdressed or reset to make sure that this place has the expertise and experience to do its job. We should cut the number of MPs; that would be another important stepping stone. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) about the right of recall, which would be not a panacea, but a stepping-stone.
Above all, Parliament needs to be a bulwark against the Executive. It needs to ventilate debate and give voice to the convictions of MPs as the representatives of their constituents. I would like members of Public Bill Committees to be elected in the same way as those of Select Committees, and I would like Parliament to control its own business. Those sensible things would help to restore public trust in politics.
It is possible to restore public trust in politics. Ipsos MORI has shown that mistrust of politicians sank to its lowest level in 2009, but crept back up 5 percentage points since, before dipping again. That shows that the public respond to what we do, how we hold ourselves and the job we do. If we want to restore public trust, it must be done in a sensible way, not by scoring cheap political points, as in the motion.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
This is a tricky debate for MPs, because each individual MP will be put in the media spotlight, but there is something more pernicious behind the motion than just its opportunistic nature. One or two fallacies have been peddled. One is that being an MP is a job with a salary; it actually means holding an office that has duties and responsibilities, but is otherwise not that clearly defined. I make that point because the primary function of a Member of Parliament is to hold the Executive—or, in the past, the monarch—to account. The idea that Back-Bench MPs are not getting a second job or performing a different function when they become Ministers or Opposition Front Benchers is completely false. Most MPs will, during their career here, have two jobs at a minimum. We must also remember that there are Select Committee Chairs.
We keep talking about £67,000 as if it is extraordinary. We must bear it in mind that when Lloyd George introduced the Members’ allowance in 1911, it was set at £400, which was six to eight times the national average income. I am not proposing that we go back to that level, but I want to paraphrase what he said at the time. He said that it was not a payment for services rendered, it was not a payment for a job, it was not remuneration, it was not to be considered a salary, but it was merely an allowance that recognised that there were costs associated with being here and with being a Member of Parliament. It was fantastic for the Labour party at the time, because the Osborne judgment had meant that less well-off people were unable to make it here.
The point that I want to make in my last 60 seconds is that the motion would lead to a Parliament in which the party leaders had ever more power, because by being able to hand out, through patronage, larger salaries for Front-Bench positions, they would control the way the Back Benchers worked. We are here to hold the Government and Front Benchers to account. The motion would lead to a Parliament stuffed full of professional politicians and the independently wealthy with unearned income, inherited homes, wealthy families and trust funds. If we want a citizens’ Parliament in which Back Benchers hold the Government to account without fear or favour, we must reject the motion entirely. Be in no doubt: the motion would extend the power of political party leaders and the Government, and deliver a Parliament full of Back-Bench MPs who were either independently wealthy or partisan political drones.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
This has been an interesting debate, although it has not always been of the highest quality. A number of contributions stay in my mind, but I will not have a chance to deal with them all.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) pointed out that £67,000 is a full-time salary and that this is a full-time job. That was a recurring theme. I remind those who say it is not that much that we are in the top decile. Nine out of 10 people earn less than us. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) reminded the House that almost four out of 10 people in her constituency earn less than the living wage.
My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), who I am sure is on his way back to the Chamber, reminded the House that there are Members of Parliament who are earning £1,000 an hour in addition to their salary. These are staggering amounts of money. The hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) used extravagant but accurate language to describe the horror that many people will feel when they discover how much money is earned by some Members of Parliament.
There were a number of interesting speeches by Government Members, which all boiled down to three arguments. I will deal with those quickly before getting to the point of our motion. There were the loud-and-prouders or topper-uppers, who were in favour of earning more because they felt that, as a result of what they did, they were entitled to a larger salary. They felt that £67,000 was not enough. I will come to that argument in a moment or two.
The Leader of the House said that our proposal was just too complicated and difficult to achieve. I reminded him that it has been done in Washington. In fact, Washington has gone much further than this relatively modest proposal. I am not saying that we should model everything we do on Washington, but it is interesting that the home of free enterprise and buccaneer capitalism has been able to regulate its elected members when the Government suggest that we cannot.
The third argument was that it helps the House to have the experience of people who do things outside. Of course it does. We all do things outside. The issue is remuneration. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) reminded us that he previously had two businesses, and he did the right thing—he closed one down and put the other into hibernation, so that there could be no conflict of interest. The central question is one of remuneration.
Jon Trickett
No, I do not have time.
The central issue that our motion is intended to address is the crisis of legitimacy that the British governing elite is experiencing. We encounter cynicism wherever we go, and in the end it will imperil the very foundations of our democracy unless we somehow regain the trust and respect of the British people. The question is, can we respond to a new zeitgeist that is everywhere in our country—one that is more democratic, egalitarian, non-deferential and occasionally even unruly? It is right that it should have all those attributes in the second decade of a democratic century.
Jon Trickett
No, I am not going to take any interventions.
If we do not respond to the current mood in the country, we will be lost as a House of Commons. I do not for one minute think that most voters imagine that their elected representatives are somehow superhuman and never make mistakes, and the Leader of the House rightly paid tribute to the two Members who have got themselves into trouble this week. I echo much of what he said. However, voters will judge us on how we respond to our mistakes. We need to show that we have reflected on any errors that we have made and learned the lessons, and that if necessary we will change the rules.
Jon Trickett
No, I am not going to take any interventions, because I do not have time.
We need to show that we have learned the lessons and changed the rules, to prevent any repetition of those errors in the future. The Opposition contend that it is a mistake for the House to continue with a set of rules on second jobs that were designed for another era. There simply is not time to spell out all the arguments for our proposition, but I will make two.
First, in an era when Victorian deference and hypocrisy have long ended, and rightly so, it is no longer acceptable for one set of rules to apply to the governing class and another to the rest of the country. That is how it will seem to millions of people if we continue to have a permissive policy on second jobs. After all, there are millions of people—thousands in every one of our constituencies—who work hard and play by the rules, yet are living in poverty. There are millions more who find it hard to pay their bills at the end of the month. After all, the average working person has lost £1,600 a year in salary since this Government were elected. When the people we represent hear the argument, which we have heard today, that an MP cannot live on £67,000 a year—plus an additional £14,000 for a Chair of a Select Committee, incidentally—they will inevitably ask themselves, “What kind of planet do these people live on?”
What about people who are on exploitative zero-hours contracts, who receive no guarantee that they will have a single hour’s work today, tomorrow, this week, next week or next month? Their contracts also prevent them from taking second jobs. How can we explain to them the idea that we should have second jobs? Then there are 1.9 million people who are out of work. How will the Government parties explain to the people in their constituencies who have no job that some of them have six jobs? It is simply impossible to imagine how they can justify it.
Jon Trickett
No. The right hon. Gentleman has had his chance and made his speech.
I said that I would develop two arguments. The second relates to who we are here to serve, and it is critical. Every hon. Member, when they first become a Member of the House, swears an oath of loyalty to the country and is required to serve their constituents to the exclusion of all other interests. However, if someone is a remunerated director or a consultant, they have a legal duty to the body corporate that employs them always to act in the financial interests of that corporation. The question that therefore arises in the minds of interested observers is how any hon. Member can reconcile those dual loyalties to the corporation and to the country.
I have previously given the House the example of a paid director of a tobacco company who is also an MP. If a matter of public health concerning restrictions of tobacco sales comes before the House, the perception will arrive in people’s minds that that hon. Member is balancing two interests—those of the person who pays the contract for the directorship, and wider public health. To be blunt, many electors will come to the widely held view that is summarised in a two-word Yorkshire phrase: money talks. The question is not simply about whether an MP has sufficient time to do a second job—although how they find the time is a good question—but about whether there is a conflict between their duty exclusively to serve the public and their employment in the service of a private interest.
The best way to resolve a problem is usually the simplest. We think that the simplest way is to impose restrictions on second jobs, and that is what today’s motion is about. For those reasons, and for many others outlined today, it is time for the House to move on. The Government amendment takes us no further; it is simply an elegant reformulation of the status quo and as such it will not do. Even at this late stage it is possible for Government Members to come through the Lobby, vote with Labour and begin to clean up politics, and I urge them to do so.
Let it be known that if the House rejects the motion today, the Labour party will introduce a new standing order for our MPs to cover these matters in the new Parliament, which is now only a few weeks away. Under those circumstances, let other parties do as they will. The people of the country will judge them.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)
I had to fight the temptation to start and finish my speech by saying, “I refer the House to my speech from 17 July 2013, column 1165”, when the Opposition tabled the very same motion. As they have clearly not attempted to address any of the issues raised in that debate—the deficiencies of which were pointed out by some Labour Members and have been pointed out again by the Leader of the House today, and the motion was rightly rejected—I think I could quite legitimately have dusted down the same speech.
The last debate was a car crash of the most epic proportions after which many expected a Bennett-style apology from the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett). He said today—I think he has repeated some of the same errors—that this debate was about second jobs, but it is clear that he has not read his own motion which makes no reference to second jobs. We all know why Labour has chosen to re-run this debate. It heard that bell ringing on the bandwagon, started salivating at the prospect of some political nourishment, and leapt on it.
I do not for one moment suggest that the actions of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) should not be investigated—they should, and they were right to refer themselves to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The code of conduct is clear in stating what is and is not acceptable, and I am sure that the commissioner will investigate those cases thoroughly to see whether the rules have been observed or broken.
If this was a genuine attempt by Labour to address in a cross-party way public concerns about trust in MPs and their outside interests, the Leader of the Opposition needed to do much more than his half-hearted effort at Prime Minister’s questions to engage with the other parties. Before getting on their high horse, Labour Members should consider how many on their Benches are effectively in the pocket of the unions, taking their money and giving their questions and speeches in the House in return. Will Labour seek to clamp down on that?
What about party funding? There is a wider issue about too much money sloshing around in politics. That is why we have always argued that there should be limits on donations because the more we can get big money out of politics, the better. What about political reform? Surely it is not a coincidence that the worst expenses abuses involved MPs in safe seats. The more genuine competition that all MPs face, the more likely high standards are to be maintained. What are effectively jobs for life in safe seats clearly risk breeding a certain kind of culture.
Surely this debate is not about forcing MPs to stop practising as lawyers or doctors, or to drop an interest in a family business. The scandals arise when parliamentarians use their privileged positions and contacts to try to earn huge amounts of money by lobbying for business. If parties are serious about cleaning up politics, they should ditch the rhetoric and work on a cross-party basis to end those cash for access cases once and for all.
More positively, it is clear that the House is agreed that it is the responsibility of all of us to uphold the highest standards and that the vast majority of Members do so. Our rules against paid advocacy are essential, and breaches of them should be punished. Efforts to ensure maximum transparency and accountability must always be maintained. The Government have a strong record and we will maintain that record. It has been evident from the debate, however, that if there is a problem to be solved, the motion from the Opposition does nothing to provide a solution.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) that we do not want vacuous functionaries in this place and that we want a diversity of Members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) rightly highlighted the partnership issue. If the Opposition were serious about addressing directorships and consultancies, why miss out the whole issue of partnerships? My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) sensibly explained that it would be easy for directors to avoid the Opposition’s proposals by becoming unpaid directors. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) rightly highlighted the anti-politics movement that is abroad at present, and said that we each have a duty to act responsibly in this place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) also touched on the issue of partnerships, and I am very pleased that he has picked up the baton from me as the Member who deals with the most delegated legislation. I commiserate with my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) on being the poor relation in terms of entries on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I have one unpaid directorship as a director of a local environmental charity, EcoLocal. I made it clear in my election campaign back in 1997 that I would not take any paid directorships or consultancies. I went into the campaign on that basis and my Conservative opponent made it clear that he would continue to hold his directorships. A choice was therefore presented to the electorate and that is what they need. The electorate should be able to choose. If Members want to maintain an interest and they make that clear, it is up to the electorate to decide whether they accept that. Saying that I would not take any outside work did not do me any harm, and I suspect that one of the reasons I won the seat was that my opponent said that he would maintain his paid directorships and consultancies. But that is a decision for the electorate to make, not any of the parties.
My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) was very brave in sticking his head above the parapet on MPs’ pay. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) made an interesting point, which no one else picked up on, about the increased patronage that would result from the changes that have been proposed, by putting power in the hands of the party leaders.
The House will have noticed the contrast in approaches. The Opposition are trying to boost their green credentials by recycling this debate from 20 months ago. How have they used the time since that motion was defeated? They have no new ideas, no clarity and no substance. In contrast, the Government are committed to promoting transparency in terms of Members’ relations with the public and the political system as a whole. We have taken measures including a statutory register of consultant lobbyists; legislating for the recall of Members of Parliament; strengthening the rules governing business appointments for Ministers on leaving office; and proactively publishing details of Ministers’ meetings with external organisations, and of Ministers’ and officials’ meetings with senior media executives. Those measures will bring greater accountability and transparency to our democracy. That needs constant effort and reflection—
Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
Business without Debate
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 4 to 11 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Representation of the People, Scotland
That the draft Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2015, which ere laid before this House on 7 January, be approved.
Representation of the People
That the draft European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2015, which were laid before this House on 6 January, be approved.
That the draft Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2015, which were laid before this House on 8 January, be approved.
Road Traffic
That the Electrically Assisted Pedal Cycles (Amendment) Regulations 2015, (S.I., 2015, No. 24), dated 12 January 2015, a copy of which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.
Public Bodies
That the draft Public Bodies (Abolition of the Library Advisory Council for England) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 4 November 2014, be approved.
Social Security
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating and National Insurance Funds Payments) Order 2015, which was laid before this House on 19 January, be approved.
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds) (Amendment) Regulations 2015, which were laid before this House on 19 January, be approved.
That the draft Employment Allowance (Care and Support Workers) Regulations 2015, which were laid before this House on 19 January, be approved. —(Mel Stride.)
Question agreed to.
Changes to Health Service Budgets
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I wish to present a petition on changes to health service budgets in my constituency and in Wakefield district more generally. It is now quite clear that the Government intend further to cut NHS funding across the district. Local GPs surgeries are already struggling and these cuts will lead to the closure of small practices and job losses among doctors, nurses and other practitioners. Obviously, this is causing great alarm among my constituents, who are living in one of the most health-deprived areas in the country. This is why I am presenting a petition today signed by more than 1,460 individuals in my area.
The petition states:
“The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to reconsider the proposal to make these cuts to health service budgets in the Hemsworth area.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The Petition of residents of the Hemsworth constituency,
Declares that the Petitioners are concerned about cuts to health service budgets in the local area, particularly the proposed £3.8 million cuts from budgets for GPs; further that these cuts will affect all Practices funded through a Personal Medical Services (PMS) contract and will see £3.8million lost from this area over a three year period, starting in April 2015; further that local GP surgeries are already struggling and these cuts could lead to small practices closing and job losses; and further that a local petition on this matter has been signed by 1,464 individuals.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to reconsider the proposal to make these cuts to health service budgets in the Hemsworth area.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.]
[P001438]
Childhood Cancers
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
Skye was born on 5 November 2008. He was a happy, healthy young boy with a wonderful sense of humour who loved his younger brother, Jesse. In July 2013, he became unwell with nausea and vomiting and after many visits to the GP and the failure of medication to help, he was referred to the John Radcliffe in Oxford where he had a CT scan and was diagnosed with a brain tumour. That was 27 August 2013.
Skye was operated on less than a week later and tissue analysis identified the tumour as a grade IV metastatic medulloblastoma, the most commonly occurring paediatric brain tumour. It is an aggressive form of primitive neuroectodermal tumour, which originates in the cerebellum, the part of the brain which controls movement and co-ordination. Although Skye’s tumour had been caught early, it had already metastasised throughout the brain and spinal cord. Surgery was quickly followed by what is known as the Milan protocol: four cycles of chemotherapy over 11 weeks, and a further five weeks of hyper-fractionated radiotherapy. After a four-week period of recovery, Skye had high-dose chemotherapy that confined him to hospital for seven and a half weeks.
He then had four weeks rest at home, and was due to head back to hospital on 14 May 2014 for another round of high-dose thiotepa, but a urinary tract infection delayed the treatment until 28 May, which in hindsight was fortunate. Instead of getting stronger, it became apparent that Skye was getting weaker and an emergency MRI scan on 20 May revealed widespread white matter lesions within his brain and spinal cord, which caused a flurry of correspondence between consultants across the UK and abroad. He was quickly started on high-dose steroids to combat the inflammation.
It was initially diagnosed as radionecrosis, which had been brought on by the combination of therapies that he had had to endure. It was later confirmed as radio-chemo neurotoxicity. His parents were told that that was highly unusual and very rare. We now know that a number of other children have also developed severe neurological side effects and the Milan protocol was quickly withdrawn from use in the UK. He was in a state of paraplegia, with double incontinence, and very poor use of his upper limbs and hands. Skye sadly died at home on 29 August 2014.
I did not meet Skye and I only met his parents some time after his death. They are in the Gallery tonight and have demonstrated to me the most extraordinary bravery in the face of losing their child in this most distressing of ways. They have set up Blue Skye Thinking, a charity that supports research so that all children diagnosed with brain tumours will have a better chance of survival and a better quality of life post-treatment. They continue to support many other parents whose children are suffering from cancer today.
I have taken some time to explain Skye’s story in detail this evening because it illustrates only too well some of the things that are working in childhood cancer treatment at the moment and some of the things that need improvement. The overall story of childhood cancer treatment over the past 30 years is a positive one. Eight in 10 children with cancer survive five years or more, compared with just three in 10 in the 1960s. Short-term survival is also high: fewer than 10% of children die within a year of diagnosis and only 2% die within 30 days.
I congratulate the Government on that. Ministers have demonstrated a clear commitment to fighting cancer and the work and money that has been put into the system to improve cancer survival rates are bearing fruit and proving that the money is being well spent. However, we should not allow these headline statistics, encouraging though they are, to blind us to the fact that, rare though childhood cancer is, it remains the leading cause of death in children and teenagers in the United Kingdom. Childhood cancers account for just 1% of cancer diagnoses in the UK. For research purposes that is a small cohort, but 700 children and young people are diagnosed with a brain tumour every year.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Lady for bringing this matter to the House today, and for allowing me to intervene. Cancer Research UK has given me some figures today showing that 60 people are diagnosed with cancer each day in Northern Ireland. When Josh Martin, a young boy at secondary school, went into hospital to have his appendix removed, he was found to have progressive cancer. His family started the Pray for Josh campaign, which is being supported by his family and by the Churches. It has not only given great comfort to the family but helped to highlight the scourge of cancer and the fact that funding for drugs and help for families are very important. One of the organisations that can help is Macmillan Cancer Support. Does the hon. Lady agree that the support of such organisations can be important for families at times like these?
Nicola Blackwood
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that this is about not just Government funding but the way in which funds are given, and charities in particular play an important part. The fundraising that they do through individuals is vital.
As I was saying, 700 children and young people are diagnosed with a brain tumour every year, and that makes it the most common form of cancer affecting children and young people. It is also the most lethal. Brain tumours kill more children and young people than any other cancer—around 160 children a year—but despite being responsible for more than a third of childhood cancer deaths, brain tumours receive only 6% of childhood cancer funding. That funding matters because children’s cancers are biologically very different from adult cancers and treating them effectively requires specifically tailored research and targeted treatment regimes. At the moment, only about 50% of childhood cancers are part of a clinical trial; the remainder are treated using standard treatment guidelines. As Sally and Andrew Hall discovered, that can have serious consequences.
Cancer treatment is harsh at the best of times, and recent studies show that while many survivors of children’s cancers go on to live healthy lives, others face long-term disability and reduced immunity. Radiotherapy, the gold standard in terms of its efficacy in treating cancer, can also have damaging long-term consequences for the developing child. This is particularly true of childhood brain tumour survivors, 60% of whom are left with a life-altering disability. In a few cases, the side effects can be so severe as to be fatal. That is what happened in Skye’s case.
The Milan protocol, under which Skye was treated, was a standard treatment guideline, because as with about 50% of other childhood cancers there is no clinical trial available. It has become clear that there is currently no formal infrastructure in place to collect, record and share data, particularly on adverse effects of treatment, about standard treatment guidelines. I understand that before 2008 the responsibility for collecting and sharing data for clinical trials and for standard treatments fell under the remit of the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group. Subsequently, clinical trials monitoring was tightened, and the CCLG’s “Guide to Clinical Trials” states:
“Clinical trials are very closely monitored by a number of different individuals and organisations. This will include the Chief Investigator…the working group…and relevant staff within the clinical trials unit. An Independent Data Monitoring Committee may also be established to oversee the conduct of the trial. At a national level, there will be an ethics committee and the national regulatory body. If there are any concerns about the conduct of the trial or the results, a trial may be stopped early.”
By contrast, in a letter responding to my concerns about the issue, the National Cancer Intelligence Network, told me that
“all of us in the field accept that (adverse effects in Standard Treatments) is something that should, under ideal circumstances, be a part of the data that we routinely collect. Such data are, however very much more difficult to collect than might be imagined and adverse effects were never part of what the CCRG (Childhood Cancer Research Group) or the CCLG themselves collected outside of a clinical trial. There are no nationally agreed datasets relating to adverse effects and few clinicians systematically collect and collate data of this sort...but it is clearly something that we in the NCIN should be considering.”
I am grateful that the NCIN has recognised that these data should be collected and collated, but I do not think that considering doing it is a sufficiently robust or urgent response to the problem, given the gravity of the consequences if a standard treatment goes wrong.
Clearly, in an ideal world all childhood cancers would be the subject of a full clinical trial and new targeted therapies being developed to reduce the long-term risks, but all of us know the challenges associated with research into childhood cancers, where cohorts of rarer cancers can be incredibly small and the ethical issues are more complex, making recruiting participants more difficult. Obviously, I am going to urge the Government to do whatever they can to fund and encourage more research into childhood cancers. I am going to ask the Minister to consider whether having only 6% of childhood cancer funding going to the biggest killer in childhood cancer represents getting the balance right, and I am going to ask her to maintain investment in the Health Research Authority programme to streamline the regulation and governance processes for clinical research in the NHS.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
May I say that, as a cancer sufferer, I welcome my hon. Friend’s courage in bringing this debate? May I pay tribute and offer my sorrow to these parents? May I also say that our Front-Bench team need to take on board the problems? I have seen parents, week in, week out in Northampton general hospital, and I know the case she is making is a real and heartfelt one. I hope that we will get good words from the Minister.
Nicola Blackwood
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and his support. I wish to emphasise the need for investment in the HRA streamlining programme, because I believe it will have a significant impact on reducing the resource and time required to set up trials across multiple sites in the UK, and that can only be good for research into childhood cancers, as it will be for research into all cancers.
I particularly want to focus today on the complete absence of data collection, recording and sharing on standard treatments of childhood cancers in the UK. I am very disappointed that having written to the life sciences Minister about this issue in early December I have yet to receive a substantive response. This issue could not be more serious for the treatment and long-term outcomes of children with cancers, especially brain tumours. Consultants around the country who work with incredible dedication to save the lives of their young patients struggle with their inability to quickly access information about the potential adverse effects of very tough treatment regimes, and it is a problem that we must try to fix. The architecture for collecting the information—the NCIN and the CCRG—is in place, but the lack of a formal data collection requirement and of a single responsible body can have devastating consequences for families.
When Skye’s consultant noticed there was an unexpected problem with Skye—the severe white matter damage shown on the MRI scan—she immediately tried to see whether any other clinicians had experienced similar issues. This was important in order to ascertain what other symptoms to look out for, what other treatments could be tried and what other outcomes they had had. Despite the fact that we now know that other children had been suffering in a similar way and that different treatments had been tried, she could not easily obtain this information; it was a matter of phoning around individual colleagues in an ad-hoc way to ask them one by one, and all this took place while Skye deteriorated. Time in such situations is of the essence so this is an unacceptable situation and it cannot be allowed to continue. Had there been a system in place to monitor adverse effects, things might have been different.
In so many ways, we are making tremendous strides in tackling cancer in the UK, including childhood cancer, but the complete absence of monitoring for adverse effects of standard treatments of childhood cancers can lead to life-long disability and death. I hope the Minister will take this away and take urgent action to rectify the situation. I also hope she will arrange for myself and Sally and Andrew Hall to meet the appropriate representatives from her Department to address this issue, once and for all. If details of those adverse effects are properly collected, recorded and shared, we might be able to avoid those consequences in more cases, increase childhood cancer survival rates and improve the quality of life for survivors even more.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
I apologise in advance for my cold and for possibly not bringing the healthiest of tones to the Dispatch Box tonight. I do not want that to detract from the excellent and typically sensitive way in which my hon. Friend raised this debate. I also commend Skye’s family for their work. They have shown enormous courage, as have so many other children and families who are affected by this terrible disease. Many of us, both constituency Members and Ministers, meet other such families and stand in awe of their courage in bringing these issues to the fore. The work of the charity set up by Skye’s family, Blue Skye Thinking, highlights some of the key issues, including the importance of research into and the treatment of childhood brain tumours.
I will make a few general points, but I hope to speak to some of my hon. Friend’s specific asks as well. On those that I cannot respond to—as she knows this is a complex situation—I undertake to ensure that responses are provided.
Improving cancer outcomes, including for children, is a major priority of this Government, as Members who have been at recent debates on cancer will know. The annual report on our cancer outcomes strategy in December showed that we are on track to save a projected 12,000 more lives a year by 2015, which is more than double our ambition of 5,000 lives. As my hon. Friend said, the strategy is bearing fruit.
Further to that, we were delighted that, on Sunday 11 January, NHS England announced a new independent cancer taskforce to develop a five-year action plan for cancer services that will improve survival rates and save thousands of lives.
That taskforce has been set up to produce a new cross-system national cancer strategy to take us through the next five years to 2020, building on NHS England’s vision for improving outcomes set out in the five-year forward view. The taskforce is formed in partnership with the wider cancer community and other health system leaders and is chaired by Dr Harpal Kumar, chief executive officer of Cancer Research UK. It aims to cover the whole cancer pathway, from prevention to end-of-life care, including improving outcomes for children and young people with cancer. The taskforce will produce a statement of intent by March 2015 with the new five-year cancer strategy to be published in the summer. We did ascertain during a recent Back-Bench business debate on cancer that the taskforce had asked the leading all-party groups on cancer to submit evidence. That might be something that other parliamentarians wish to do.
My hon. Friend mentioned issues around diagnosis. In cancer debates, we always talk about the importance of tackling late diagnosis. To increase the awareness of a number of childhood cancers among GPs, the Department funded BMJ Learning in 2012 to provide an electronic tool for GPs through a two-part module on diagnosing osteosarcoma—a type of bone cancer—and brain tumours in children and young people. That module helps GPs to understand osteosarcoma and types of brain tumour in children and young people and their common presentations, and to recognise when patients need that urgent referral. Those modules were developed with help and contributions from various charities including the Brain Tumour Charity, the Teenage Cancer Trust and CLIC Sargent.
As part of the recent taskforce announcement, NHS England also launched a major early diagnosis programme, working with Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support to test new approaches to identifying cancer more quickly. They will be familiar to those who ask whether the system can do better. They include: offering patients the option to self-refer for diagnostic tests; lowering the threshold for GP referrals; creating a pathway for vague symptoms; and setting up multi-disciplinary diagnostic centres so that patients can have several tests done at the same place on the same day. For parents with children, that is a welcome development. We want to reduce the stress of multiple journeys into health care settings.
NHS England’s aim is to evaluate these innovative initiatives across more than 60 centres around England, collecting evidence with a view to implementation in 2016-17. My hon. Friend will also want to know that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is updating its current referral guidelines for suspected cancer, with a final version due in May to continue to help GPs to identify and refer patients promptly, including children and young people with symptoms that could be cancer.
Obviously, once diagnosed, it is critical that children and young people receive the most appropriate treatment. The NICE improving outcomes guidance for children and young people serves to assist the NHS trusts in planning, commissioning and organising services for children and young people with cancer. It recommends, among other things, that all care must be provided in age-appropriate facilities. NICE also published a quality standard for children and young people with cancer in February 2014.
Over the past four decades there have been major advances in the development of successful treatment strategies for childhood cancers, as my hon. Friend generously acknowledged. Much of that has been due to the use of standardised protocols in clinical trials and specialisation of care, as evidenced in the neuroblastoma trials run at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital, for example.
Although outcomes for children with brain tumours are often poor, medulloblastoma has an outcome of disease-free survival of around 80%, as my hon. Friend said. That is achieved through timely sequences of surgery, radiotherapy to the whole brain and spine—to mitigate the tendency for the tumour to spread to the central nervous system—and adjuvant chemotherapy. That treatment protocol is standard throughout Europe and America and has been developed and refined as a result of clinical trials carried out throughout the UK, Europe and America over recent decades.
It is obviously vital for children with cancer to have the most appropriate treatment, so it is very sad to hear that Skye’s treatment did not succeed. My hon. Friend referred to the Milan protocol. I can confirm that it was suspended by the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group in May 2014 due to indications that in some instances, as in this tragic case, it resulted in neurotoxicity. NHS England has recently set up a children, teenagers and young adults group, reporting to the independent cancer taskforce, which will look to address those issues, particularly single-arm studies such as the Milan protocol, because although the way they are set up is innovative, they do not recruit high enough numbers to qualify for a randomised control trial, as my hon. Friend mentioned. NHS England is currently drafting terms of reference for the group. I will certainly ensure that, in so doing, it is aware of this debate and of the concerns she has raised. The major children and young people cancer charities have agreed to participate, and the first meeting will take place in the near future.
My hon. Friend mentioned the routine collection of side effects data from single- arm trials. I understand—this was mentioned in the letters she received—that at present these data are not routinely collected, but obviously ideally they would be. I am advised that there are problems in being able to collect the data, although the National Cancer Intelligence Network is continually working to improve the range and quality of the data it collects and analyses. I hear her challenge to say, “That is not good enough”, because she wants it actually to happen, rather than just to be worked on. As she said, she was advised that adverse effects data were not originally part of what the Childhood Cancer Research Group or the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group themselves collected outside a clinical trial. Of course, there is added complexity when considering the sharing of adverse reaction data on an international level, as I am sure Members appreciate.
I have asked my officials to discuss those issues with Public Health England and the National Cancer Intelligence Network to consider how those data might be collected, and I will ask to be updated on that work so that I can fully understand what the barriers might be. Clearly, without knowing exactly what those are it is very difficult to know whether they are essentially clinical, administrative or the result of something else. I know that it is important to my hon. Friend to understand that, so I will ask for that work to be undertaken.
I am also really sorry that my hon. Friend did not receive a substantive reply from my ministerial colleague, which was not good enough—there was clearly a mix-up on that front. As she said, Dr Michael Peake, the National Cancer Intelligence Network’s clinical lead, who wrote to her, is happy to meet her and Mr and Mrs Hall to discuss in detail how these issues might be addressed, which I hope will be of help. Clearly that would feed into the work that I have asked to be done to understand what the barriers to making progress are.
My hon. Friend spoke about the vital issue of research, so let me give her an update. Research is critical to improving outcomes. The Government and the charities work closely together on childhood cancer research through the National Cancer Research Institute. The national cancer research initiative’s children’s cancer and leukaemia clinical studies group interacts with clinical research networks, funders and researchers to develop studies aimed at improving outcomes.
The National Institute for Health Research clinical research network is currently recruiting patients to a study assessing quality of life in paediatric, teenage and young adult patients treated for medulloblastoma. A study looking at treatment for children with neuroblastoma has recently been approved for funding through the health innovation challenge fund, which is jointly supported by the Department and the Wellcome Trust.
In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important and sensitive issue to the House tonight. I reiterate the respect and admiration in which we all hold the parents and families of children who have died in these tragic circumstances, and their intention to take from their personal and family tragedy the desire to do better for other people’s children and to try and ensure that we learn those lessons. That intention is shared by all hon. Members in all parts of the House and by the Government. I thank them, through my hon. Friend, for doing that.
The new independent cancer taskforce, in partnership with the cancer charities and health system leaders, is leading the way towards making a real difference. With the ground-breaking research that I mentioned, we can look forward to cancer outcomes that are among the best in the world, and in particular to improved cancer outcomes for those precious children.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Justice
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
25. As well as taking prisoners from Merseyside, HMP Altcourse takes prisoners from Cheshire and north Wales. What will be the impact of the new super-prison at Wrexham on prisoner capacity in Cheshire, north Wales and Merseyside?
Andrew Selous
We need more adult male capacity so we are taking the right course of action by building the new prison in north Wales. There are currently no prisons in north Wales, and the new prison will enable us to house all Welsh prisoners within Wales, which we have not been able to do before. We will keep prisoners as close to their home areas as far as possible.
[Official Report, 3 February 2015, Vol. 592, c. 115.]
Letter of correction from Andrew Selous:
An error has been identified in the oral answer given to the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) during Questions to the Secretary of State for Justice.
The correct response should have been:
Andrew Selous
We need more adult male capacity so we are taking the right course of action by building the new prison in north Wales. There are currently no prisons in north Wales, and the new prison will enable us to house the vast majority of Welsh prisoners within Wales, which we have not been able to do before. We will keep prisoners as close to their home areas as far as possible.
Westminster Hall
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Careers Advice (14 to 19-Year-Olds)
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I appreciate the opportunity to debate what I and obviously the many others present in the Chamber consider a tremendously important issue. I chair the all-party group on further education, skills and lifelong learning, and believe that reforms and further improvements to careers advice for 14 to 19-year-olds are still needed. The matter is an important one, which will clearly shape future job sectors and markets in the UK for better or worse.
Many of us will have memories of the careers advice that we received. I am sure that today it is better than it was in my day, but it is an issue that comes up pretty consistently—only yesterday I was talking to some young people when I had a visit from my local college, Sussex Downs. Careers advice is one of those issues that MPs who have employed or hired people, or been hired, know is crucial. Yet we have known for a long while that it has not been as good as many of us think it should be. It is a profoundly important issue, particularly as we are clearly in an ever-more globally competitive society.
Good and appropriate careers advice is crucial and we are not where we should be yet. There have been pluses in the past decade, but I profoundly believe that there have also been weaknesses. As I shall explain, some of what the Government have done has improved things, but there is a need to go further. As we are approaching the general election I am waiting to hear also from our Opposition Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), whom I am delighted to see here. There are many colleagues in the Chamber and they will make suggestions, and this is an opportunity for both the Front Benchers to consider them and come up with further improvements to careers advice after the election.
We all understand that our children deserve comprehensive and fully informed careers advice, so that pupils can make informed decisions. That is more complicated now than in my day because there are many more jobs. Swathes of career opportunities exist now that did not when I was young; but that brings its own complexities. If young people are not informed properly and intelligently about the wide range of jobs, how can they make an informed choice? They cannot, and that is a terrible waste.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that young people be given access to the kinds of businesses they might be interested in, and that that applies particularly to engineering? Then, they can get the taste for it and choose the right subjects to study in due course.
Stephen Lloyd
I entirely agree. Engineering is a good example, not least from a gender perspective. I still find it astonishing that even in my constituency, despite the number of engineering firms there—particularly to do with pumps, curiously enough—applications are rarely received from young women in Eastbourne. That is simply because they are not told about the opportunity.
Clearly, more needs to be done for children aged 14 to 19 so that they are better aware of the choices available after secondary school and, subsequently, sixth form or college. At the moment, according to recent research compiled by the Association of Colleges, 63% of young people can name A-levels as a post-GCSE qualification; but few could name the other choices. I find it profoundly frustrating—as I have spent the past four and three-quarter years going on about it—that, for example, only 7% of pupils could name apprenticeships as such an alternative qualification to A-levels. That is ludicrous.
Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that Ministers should prioritise the introduction later this year of the proposed new UCAS-style one-stop shop for young people who do not want to go to university—a system to prevent their entering the category of “not in education, employment or training”?
Stephen Lloyd
I completely agree. Such initiatives can be a game changer for many young people and improve their understanding of the length and breadth of the opportunities open to them.
To return to apprenticeships, I repeat that the research showed only 7% could name them as an alternative qualification. The challenge is that the vast bulk of teachers will obviously have gone to university. They are graduates who have become teachers. They are skilled in that area and can talk about university and the advantages of a degree. For obvious reasons they are not skilled-up in the matter of apprenticeships. They often know little about them unless they are told.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I hear from young people in universities and further education colleges in Northern Ireland that they believe careers officers—not all of them, but a lot of them—are ill-equipped to do the job. We need to address that. Another comment is that we need a closer working relationship with industry and young people. It is said that the attitude of young people coming out of education to go into work is not what it should be. If there could be day release with companies, for example, at an early stage—from 14 onwards—it would make a difference.
Stephen Lloyd
I concur very much with that intervention.
There is an issue to do with careers advice that I find extraordinary. We all understand the importance of good careers advice and careers officers, and I have always found it slightly odd that Governments of either side have never made a song and dance about them, or applauded or provided incentives or reward programmes for very successful careers officers. A really good careers officer can play one of the most significant of roles in a young person’s career or future. Yet I have never seen in the paper a picture of Jane Smith or John Doe as the best careers officer in the south-west, rewarded by the Prince of Wales. I hope hon. Members see what I mean; the role should be much more of a career. We should get the best people, who should be rewarded. They should be financially rewarded even better than they are, but more importantly there should be a sense that it is desirable for talented and able people to become careers officers. If we could get to that situation, it would make a difference.
Neil Carmichael
To move away from that theme slightly, does my hon. Friend agree that university technical colleges provide a good launch pad for careers? Getting that training, in engineering, for instance, with the support and involvement of businesses, is in itself a useful careers advice process.
Stephen Lloyd
Yes, I agree, with one caveat. The principle of UTCs is good, but I would like them to be clear about working closely with further education in their area. For decades, one of this country’s challenges with the issue has been that changes and improvements have often been fragmented. UTCs are a good example of that. I admire Lord Baker’s good work on them, but some of them already appear to be acting in silos without the local FE colleges and other training groups, and that is a mistake. I take on board my hon. Friend’s intervention, but, because he has good links with the UTCs, I ask to him to remind them to work closely in partnership with others.
Partnership was mentioned, which is crucial in careers. When partnership works, we can get young people into the right jobs and give them the right opportunities to understand what is available out there across the piece with FEs, UTCs, business and schools. That gets a successful outcome, but with fragmentation in silos we do not get that.
As MPs we are often told, and we recognise, that there is a growing skills gap in the workplace. A recent piece, I think in the Financial Times, highlighted that again and we know that is a problem and a challenge. When it comes to universities, everyone holds the same qualifications after graduating and a high proportion of young people compete furiously for the same jobs, while other sectors such as engineering, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) talked about earlier, struggle desperately to entice and recruit people into their profession.
My whole background was in business before I entered politics and I am convinced that, nine times out of 10, the problem is ignorance: young people simply do not know about the wide range of different opportunities and jobs. There are many ways to deal with that, but they come back to why I am holding this debate: clearly, the most important professional in that regard is the careers adviser.
Young people are often misled—that is a tough word, but it is true—to believe that the only, or superior, way into a job is to take A-levels and go on to university. After the general election, I was the first MP to launch “100 apprenticeships in 100 days,” because I had a plan. It was terribly successful in Eastbourne and we have had more than 3,500 apprenticeships since, but more importantly, that galvanised the whole town around apprenticeships. Businesses large and small all got involved and the success rate has been tremendous.
I was at Dominic Hill accountancy only last week, a small company of 10 or 11 people that has three apprentices. One started four years ago and she now has the Association of Consulting Actuaries qualification. Another is two years into his Association of Chartered Certified Accountants qualification, and the brand-new one started on his ACA apprenticeship three weeks ago. When those individuals qualify as accountants—one already has—they will not be loaded with tuition fee debt. They all have jobs and I am pretty darn sure that, after they have qualified, they will stay at Dominic Hill because it is a good company, but, because their accountancy qualifications are portable, they can go anywhere. Therefore, the conversion rate is not 90% or 80%, but 100%.
I had a meeting the other day with the chief executive of AIG, the big insurance company, which is now providing apprenticeships in insurance broking and underwriting, but the vast majority of people still do not know that. The key individuals who would have that information and be able to feed that on to young people in schools and colleges are the careers advisers. Therefore, they are an absolute game changer.
I appreciate that the coalition Government have tried to address these problems, and that is laudable. The Education Act 2011 put schools under a statutory duty to provide independent careers guidance to pupils since its implementation in 2012. I also welcomed the announcement in last year’s autumn statement about the £20 million to be given to improve careers advice, and I applauded the Department for Education’s announcement in December that a careers and enterprise company is to be created to work with employers to inspire and educate pupils. That highlights the Government’s recognition that more needs to be done to improve careers guidance. We are heading in a positive direction.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. One school in Pendle that has really embraced providing impartial careers advice is Marsden Heights community college. It set up a job junction that opens on Monday and Thursday lunchtimes every week, and students employed in the dream team deliver careers advice, including discussions of the current apprenticeship vacancies in Pendle, with their fellow students. Will he congratulate schools such as Marsden Heights that have listened to what the Government have asked them to do and used their initiative to go much further in providing impartial careers advice to students?
Stephen Lloyd
I do applaud that; that is a really good example of partnership working locally and of a school being proactive. The colleges play a key role—I am the chair of the all-party group for further education, skills and lifelong learning—but schools are crucial. I work closely with schools in Eastbourne and Willingdon in my constituency, so I would be interested in getting some more detail from my hon. Friend to downstream that locally.
I still retain some concerns about the Government’s announcements. Will the Minister shed any further light on what the £20 million will be spent on specifically? What will the remit be for informing young people about the range of apprenticeships in the programme? Will the company work with the FE sector as well? I wait to hear from him on that.
I also note that the Secretary of State for Education took part in a session run by the Select Committee on Education that looked into the state of careers advice. We await the Committee’s report and I look forward to seeing that. More still needs to be done to highlight pathways into vocational or academic education and training.
Neil Carmichael
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way for a third time. This time I want to talk about destinations from schools and colleges into workplaces and further and higher education. Does he agree that a better way of measuring the performance of schools is destinations, which would in turn stimulate more involvement in schools in promoting the right kinds of careers?
Stephen Lloyd
My hon. Friend has intervened frequently, but with very good points. I concur totally with him. I had a discussion with the head of Cavendish school a few months ago—he is a good guy at a really good school. He said, “Stephen, if I get my brightest youngsters really focused towards A-levels and university, I get a gold star from Ofsted,”—I am paraphrasing a wee bit—“but if I start pointing my brightest and youngest towards apprenticeships, I really don’t.” That is really important. He said, “But I do that anyway.” He is from the north, so he profoundly believes in apprenticeships even though he is in Eastbourne, but that was such an important point.
The Government have to find a way to ensure that the right outcomes for our young people are properly incentivised. Without that, we rely on individual heads and teachers to be brilliant and that is not good enough. I want our teachers to be brilliant, but I have been in business long enough to know that we need processes that underpin the teachers. Funnily enough, the next line of my speech is: how are schools to be incentivised to improve their careers advice provision? I look forward to hearing answers to that from both the Minister and the shadow Minister.
The Association of Colleges recently released a report titled “Careers Guidance: Guaranteed,” which uncovered some figures. They are not rocket science or surprising to the people here—otherwise, they would not be here—but 70% of young people turn to parents for careers advice and 57% turn to teachers. That is completely logical but mad, because, with the best will in the world, parents know only about their specific area unless they are careers professionals or they have a passionate interest in discovering about all of the extra 750 careers options that we seem to have today, compared with in my youth.
I have already explained about teachers. Great though they are, the challenge for teachers is that unless they have been trained, they will only know about their specific experience. We cannot change the fact that kids will go to their parents or teachers; it is logical. Whom do they trust most? They trust their parents. However, we need systematically and profoundly to improve the situation, and to pour focus and resource into improving the careers advice of teachers and improving the careers knowledge of parents, for example, through open days—I run apprenticeship initiatives constantly—so even parents know about the different careers. If we do not do that, in 10 years’ time we will be in exactly the same boat. We will be saying, “We are doing our best with careers advice. It’s not too bad, but—”. Thirty-five years ago, when I was starting out on my business career, the phrase could have been, “Careers advice is not too bad, but—”. Broadly speaking, that is still the case and it has to change. I look forward to the Minister and shadow Minister giving me an update on their proposals.
Recent research carried out by the Local Government Association shows that the drop-out rates cost the country over half a billion pounds. That does not surprise me at all. It will always happen a bit, but I am sure that a lot of that is related to poor advice.
I pay tribute to the National Union of Students, which has been very active and supportive on the issue. It is working closely with me on a separate apprenticeship initiative. It says that because the job market is so competitive these days, it is more important than ever for quality advice to be provided to 14 to 19-year-olds, as I am sure hon. Members would agree.
In my constituency, the unemployment claimant rate has dropped to 2.8%. A lot of the reason why is not just the national economy and the push we are doing locally, but the apprenticeship initiative that has been so successful in Eastbourne. The youth unemployment figure is now 325, which is almost 35% lower than at the height of the recession.
My hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) talked about a school hub. I would like to share something we are doing in Eastbourne with the Chamber and the Minister, because it is another example of partnership and working together that is very successful. We have the Eastbourne jobs hub, which is slightly similar to my hon. Friend’s example, although not just from a school perspective. It has partners, including Sussex Downs college, Eastbourne borough council, the county council, the chamber of commerce—it is really important to get business right in the tent. We also have a dedicated manager, and I have match funding from each of the different groups, which means that even in a difficult economic climate, the funds can be provided to run it. There are also volunteers supporting the dedicated manager. I opened the hub myself about nine months ago. It is in the library, because having something like that in a central location is really important. It is all about careers advice, recruitment and helping to guide people into different job opportunities, and it is a really successful scheme.
For me, the key thing about schools, which is why I was interested in my hon. Friend’s intervention, is that that sort of scheme needs to be done much more in schools. It is a very good way of bringing businesses into the tent. A lot of companies, small and large, really enjoy going into schools, as long as there is a structure and they know what they are supposed to do. Equally, colleges can support schools on that, because my view is that young people need to start being informed about options around the age of 14, as they do in Germany. From a young age, kids begin to learn more about the different professions and different vocational and training opportunities that are available.
David Simpson
I want to mention a difficulty that is raised when we speak to industry in Northern Ireland. The hon. Gentleman has spoken about apprenticeships; what more can we do to incentivise, if that is the right word, young people to stay the course? If 10 or 15 young people start an apprenticeship in whatever career it may be, perhaps only four will finish it.
Stephen Lloyd
That is very important. To my mind, there are a number of things to consider. We must ensure that the Government of the day, locally, regionally or nationally, focus on that area and applaud success. Nothing is truer in life than that success follows success. I would like to see more and more young people who have been through the process, either as apprentices or at university, as ambassadors going into schools and working with local companies.
I was talking to a constituent the other day about long-term youth unemployment, the challenges of NEETs and so on. As a constituent of mine, he knows that is something I am very focused on—it is one of things that got me back into politics, as it happens. I told him that there is no point in me, a middle-aged, posh bloke in a suit, going in and talking about apprenticeships—it just doesn’t work! Although I profoundly believe what I say, and a lot of young people in Eastbourne know me, so they know I am absolutely passionate about the issue, they would listen so much more to a 19 or 20-year-old who had been through the process and was really fired up. People hear so much better those who look like them and sound like them. That is something I would like to see much more of.
Improved access to careers hubs, where colleges, schools, universities, Jobcentre Plus, and local authorities come together—many of us have such hubs in our constituencies—is a very good way of working and lifting morale and energy locally. I urge the Government to keep making progress on that, and I look forward to hearing the views of both Front Benchers.
However, as good and necessary as hubs are—I use them a lot, as do many of my colleagues—I am convinced that one good, trained careers officer who is passionate about what they do can change the world of career opportunities for young people more than anything. A careers officer who offers a real career path, and who is incentivised to find people jobs or good solid training, can change people’s lives. One day, if I am still an MP in x number of years—
Stephen Lloyd
Who knows? I am an optimist. I am a Liberal. I would love to find that we hear more about careers officers who have transformed people’s lives. All of us here probably know one or two teachers who have done that, who have changed our lives in some way—I certainly do. I would love to be able to say in this Chamber, the House or at an awards presentation that people are talking about careers officers who have changed their lives, as they indeed can. A careers officer who has tremendous passion for their task and a comprehensive knowledge of the range of different opportunities can be a game-changer. It is our fault that that has not happened—we are the MPs; we are the Government—and it is about time we stepped up to the challenge. On that note, I look forward to hearing my colleagues’ contributions.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), who did well to secure this debate at an opportune time. Indeed, what better time could there be for game changing in relation to careers information, advice and guidance? Of all the things that need addressing urgently in the education landscape, this is it. I know that because the Humber local enterprise partnership asked me back in 2013 to chair a skills commission for it, and we interviewed businesses across the Humber. What they said—this was business people speaking to us, working on behalf of the LEP in the Humber—was that there was a universal need for better careers information, advice and guidance. I know from my lifetime in education that careers advice is more broken now than it has ever been, but it was interesting to hear that message coming from the business sector.
The hon. Gentleman is right in his analysis that we are in an education landscape that is more fragmented than ever, with free schools, UTCs and other things. In that fragmented landscape, created by the current Government, we need more than ever someone who holds the ring for young people and for UK plc and who is a resource of information, advice and guidance in an independent way.
The changes made in 2012 have upskittled what was there and made things much worse. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that employers are willing to get involved—by crikey they are! People working in education are also willing to get involved. There is great good will on both sides, but this will not happen until there is some resource in the middle. That is what has been taken out, what is missing. It will not happen unless there is some resource in the middle—careers advice or whatever we want to call it—that makes it happen, because people are looking at their bottom lines. The hon. Gentleman talked about the bottom line of accountability, in terms of results, Ofsted and all that, in the education sector. The bottom line of accountability for businesses is literally the bottom line of their profit and loss account. Unless we have something that will put those things together and we resource it properly, that will not happen, despite the good will on both sides, so it is crucial.
The National Union of Students captures the position in its statement that the provision of impartial, quality careers information, advice and guidance is of fundamental importance to individuals and society. It is a win-win situation. Why are we not investing in that? Why have we dismantled it?
As a result of the report produced by the Humber LEP, “Lifting the Lid: The Humber Skills Challenge 2013”, there have been good initiatives in the Humber area. There is the gold standard recognition for those parts of the Humber that are seeking to produce high-quality careers information, advice and guidance. That approach is bearing dividends. Also, as Anne Tyrrell, the principal of North Lindsey college, points out, the work that has been done on the Humber-wide portal for careers, Bridging the Gap, where information can be accessed, is making some difference. There is other good practice—for example, the work that Baysgarth school is doing with John Leggott college. Institutions are working together to make the provision of information, advice and guidance better. However, those initiatives are undertaken within a busy day, without being properly resourced from the centre.
Let us examine a few statistics from the University and College Union, to add to statistics that we have already had. Just 39% of learners surveyed said that they had spoken to a careers adviser. Less than half, 46%, of young people say that they have received group advice from a teacher at their school. Fewer still, 39%, said that they had had a talk from a local careers officer or careers adviser, and only 10% had spoken to a business professional. Those statistics paint the picture of where we are at the moment, and it is not good enough for our young people or our society.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one issue that we urgently need to address is the knowledge base of teachers themselves as to the industrial and commercial basis of their own hinterland? If some training days were devoted to acquiring knowledge of what is going on in their own territories—the industries, the commerce and the job opportunities available for the pupils they teach—surely that would pay dividends in terms of the destinations that our young people reach when they qualify.
Nic Dakin
It absolutely would and does. Schools, colleges, teachers and support staff up and down the land have undertaken that sort of activity and will recognise that it benefits them and the young people they teach or support. However, it needs to be resourced. If a teacher is going on a week’s placement in industry, someone else needs to be in front of the kids, teaching them. A cost is involved—this is not a nil-sum game. There are things to be gained and to benefit from, but resource is needed to make it happen. Good words and fine language do not make it happen. It needs to be properly resourced.
I was therefore pleased when the new Secretary of State for Education, surveying the landscape of wreckage and chaos that she had inherited from her predecessor, identified careers information, advice and guidance as one of the things that needed fixing. I felt that in her announcement on 10 December, she was making heavy weather of what needed to be done, but at least she was recognising that something needed to be there and she talked about a new careers and enterprise company being set up. I would be grateful if the Minister, in answering the debate, could update us on progress on that, because it has all gone rather quiet. What are the main priorities on which Government expect the careers company to focus? How will Government know whether the careers company is successful? What are the desired outcomes? What are the measures? What role will local enterprise partnerships have in relation to the careers company? LEPs are well placed to do the job of bringing education and the world of work together in a locality and making things happen. Properly resourced, they are absolutely in the right place to make that happen, so I would like to know how the new company will work with people on the ground so that things change for the better and we do not just see a lot of money going into the pockets of consultants and others without reaching and affecting young people on the ground.
I want to draw attention to the excellent Association of Colleges campaign “Careers Guidance: Guaranteed” to which the hon. Member for Eastbourne has already alluded. It does what it says on the tin. If we can guarantee careers guidance in a proper way for our young people, everyone will be a winner. The campaign that the AOC has been running is one that I hope everyone could sign up to. It talks about
“improved access in a locality where colleges, schools, universities, Jobcentre Plus and local authorities come together led by the LEP to form a clearly signposted careers hub. This would provide a single point of information”.
Alongside explanations of the benefits of an academic education and progression to university, those career hubs should provide young people with an opportunity to try their hand at various vocational options. They would provide that practical experience, but also provide other opportunities.
The hon. Gentleman talked about using ambassadors. I know that schools and colleges use ambassadors well, but, again, resource is needed to manage that, to make it happen, to draw people in, to lubricate the wheels. A careers information hub based within the LEP would deliver that. Together with all that, says the AOC,
“careers education needs to be introduced and embedded into the curriculum. This would give children and young people the right grounding to make informed decisions and the right choice for them. This education should include understanding different types of businesses, how stereotyping affects career decisions, the qualities needed to enhance employability and looking systematically at the choices available and what is required…for particular jobs. It should complement visits from local businesses and work experience placements.”
I shall end as I began. This issue is crucial. It is crucial to the young people in our schools and colleges, to their individual futures, but it is also crucial to UK plc; it is crucial to all of us. Let us game change, get it right and put things in place for a better future for us and for them.
Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
Order. I hope to start the wind-ups at 10.40 am. There are four Members seeking to catch my eye, so I appeal to hon. Members to limit their remarks to about seven or eight minutes. I am not imposing a time limit, as such, but if we all discipline ourselves, everyone will be able to get in.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I congratulate my coalition colleague the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on securing the debate.
The report by the Association of Colleges and the statistics that it has published are interesting. During the past four and three quarter years working in South Derbyshire, I have made it a key priority to put businesses together with schools and the further education college. That was helped by the fact that I opened our further education college—until 2011, we did not have one, but we now have a good working relationship. I have also integrated the needs of businesses with future opportunities for young people by setting up a business breakfast club. I have teachers, heads and representatives from the colleges coming to my business breakfast club, because I want them to learn about what business wants pupils to learn at their schools, so that those pupils are—a phrase that I often use—oven-ready for work. That, apparently, is a novel concept. I cannot imagine why, because we had careers advice when I was at Grey Coat Hospital school, although it was not suggested that I become an MP. Fortunately, other people have sensibly suggested that their children should go there.
Many things are possible for the future. In my patch in South Derbyshire, where we have so much manufacturing, the importance of science, technology, engineering and maths links in terribly well with my manufacturing companies. They want to get involved with schools, because they want to urge them to encourage their pupils, particularly the girls, to take up those subjects and make those decisions early on at the age of 14 or 15, or 16 to 18. The whole mixture displays a can-do attitude.
I am disappointed by the statistics from the AOC. I understand why it felt that it needed to do that survey, because it highlights where we can do better. I have always tried to ensure that in the sunny uplands of South Derbyshire, we are not only a can-do area but a can-do-better area. When, for example, I get the Institute of Physics to give a presentation in schools, I do not encourage them simply to aim it at 17 to 18-year-olds, because they have more or less made their decisions about where they want to go; I try to aim such presentations at 14 and 15-year-olds, because I think that that is the key.
William Allitt school, which is in my constituency and which does not have a sixth form, is a finalist in the national science and engineering competition at the big bang fair, a massive engineering exhibition that goes on for three days in the national exhibition centre in Birmingham. It is tremendous that the school has become specialist in maths. It has sent kids over to Russia for a two-week space course. I think it is absolutely brilliant that kids in my area have such opportunities, and that they are truly reaching for the stars.
I finish by saying that careers advice is incredibly important. The announcement made by the Education Secretary in December gives us hope that there will be real changes and that careers advice will be improved. I congratulate my coalition colleague the hon. Member for Eastbourne on coming up with the brilliant idea that we need to have gold stars for careers advisers. People need careers advisers to give them the advice that enables them to say, “I could be a nurse or I could be a bank manager, but I actually want to be an engineer.”
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
The hon. Lady has outlined some excellent best practice in schools. She mentioned “can do” and “can do better”, but the difficulty is whether schools want to do those things, as they clearly do in the case of her schools, rather than having to do them. The problem is schools not having to do those things when it comes to the assessment of their own performance.
Heather Wheeler
That is an incredibly important point. As has been mentioned, it is hardly surprising that teachers give recommendations to their pupils about going to university, because that is the route that those teachers came through. However, there are many young people who really want to go into apprenticeships. An interesting apprenticeship that has absolutely taken off is the accountancy apprenticeship, which is almost like going back to the old days of articled clerks. That is, in effect, what I did. I studied for my professional exams as an insurance broker through day release and evening classes. It was a great career. I spent 10 years in the City and thoroughly enjoyed it, living by the important moral principles of “My word is my bond” and “You don’t lie to people”. If someone can take those principles on to elsewhere in their career, that is great. Teachers perhaps are not the best people to provide such advice, but I applaud the initiatives that my schools are taking to talk to businesses and take on this new, über power-charged careers service for the future.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Williams. I thank the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) for securing this excellent and important debate.
I come at the matter from two perspectives. My key priority is the people of Hartlepool. There is huge potential in my constituency. We have a nuclear power station providing well-paid jobs, and there is the prospect of an additional power station in the next 10, 15 or 20 years. We have got Nissan up the road. We have got Hitachi in Newton Aycliffe. We have the largest concentration of chemical engineering anywhere in western Europe, and we have the potential for carbon capture and storage. There is massive opportunity in my local economy, and yet the Office for National Statistics report from last year on young people in the labour market shows that Hartlepool, alongside Wolverhampton, has the largest number of young people unemployed and outside education or training anywhere in England and Wales. Why is that the case? Why is there such a mismatch between potential, skill shortages and the level of youth unemployment? Careers advice has a role to play in making sure that we address that mismatch.
My second consideration is that for the last 11 months of the previous Labour Government, I was the Minister in charge of 14-to-19 reform and apprenticeships, and I had responsibility for information, advice and guidance. I was conscious that in far too many cases, careers advice was seen as a secondary activity—often even a nuisance—that took time and attention away from the core business of learning. Careers advice was often delivered as a one-off event in a single afternoon. I was keen to see a new approach, which was the purpose of the new strategy for information, advice and guidance published in October 2009. I am not suggesting that there was ever a golden age for careers guidance, but as a Minister I was keen to push it up the agenda.
As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), the provision of careers advice to young people under this Government has got markedly worse. Reductions in funding and personnel, increases in fragmentation in the school system and organisational change, such as the dismantling of Connexions, have meant that young people often face real barriers to navigating what is on offer. Good careers advice can also be an important tool of effective social mobility. A young person should get good careers advice regardless of where they live, their background, who their parents are or who they know. That is often not the case, however, and it is a question of who they know and their connections when it comes to getting into a good career or profession.
The CBI has said that 93% young of people are not getting the careers information that they need, but good careers information, advice and guidance are needed more than ever, because the certainties of the past have gone. In my patch, my grandfather’s generation could leave school at the age of 15 on Friday and be working in the steelworks or the shipyard the following Monday, and they would stay there for 40 years. That certainty and that clear route have gone for ever. The futurist Thomas Frey has said that 60% of the best jobs in the next decade have not even been invented yet. At the same time, technology threatens a third of all UK jobs over the next 20 years, especially at the low-skilled end of the employment market. As Andreas Schleicher of the OECD has said,
“because of rapid economic and social change, schools have to prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, technologies that have not yet been invented and problems that we don’t yet know will arise.”
In those circumstances, there needs to be much greater alignment between education policy and business and industrial policy, with effective careers advice and meaningful engagement between businesses and schools acting as the bridge, but the Government have to help. Government policy is not addressing the issue, and a narrowing of the curriculum by Ministers means that creative learning, problem solving and team building in the widest sense—enterprise education, in the widest definition, is required for the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century that will allow us to compete in the modern world—are not being championed, and careers advice is being downgraded.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there was no golden age. The careers system that he left behind at the end of the Labour Government was pretty weak. Does he agree that there has been a failure to change the incentives in order to ensure that all schools provide first-class careers advice and guidance, as a small number currently do? One of the major things is to ensure that, in places such as Hartlepool, young people get qualifications that add value. He will be delighted, as I am, to see the number of young unemployed people aged between 18 and 24 in his constituency go down from the 1,200 when he left government in 2010 to, I think, 615 according to the latest figures. That is fantastic news, and we are seeing that transformation across the country under this Government.
Mr Wright
The hon. Gentleman will understand that we want a universal and properly resourced careers service that is staffed by committed and professional people with the necessary breadth of knowledge and experience to be able to say, “This is what the future looks like. The potential for you, as a young person, is huge. This is what’s on offer. Let me guide you through it.” That is not happening at the moment. I have six specific, brief points.
Mr Wright
I will be brief, I promise. First, this debate is about 14-to-19 careers advice, but providing appropriate careers advice and information about the future world of work needs to come at an even younger age. We have a pressing need to encourage more women into engineering, but all the evidence suggests that girls are put off or are pushed into gender stereotypes or pigeonholes at primary school. Encouraging and motivating eight, nine and 10-year-olds is a vital prerequisite to good engagement and effective careers guidance for 14 to 19-year-olds. What is the Minister doing on that?
Secondly, work experience is not given the importance that it deserves, and young people from families who do not have connections at the golf club, or whatever, will miss out. I was lucky, because I had two weeks at a firm of solicitors when I was 16. Those two weeks were invaluable in convincing me that there was no way on God’s holy earth that I was going to have a career in law, but being able to dip a toe in the water and being able to try different things is important. The Government need to recognise that and ensure that work experience is given more priority.
Thirdly, as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) mentioned, destination data and employment and training routes for young people should be considered a key part of school reporting and evaluation, and they should even form part of the remuneration packages of the head teacher and senior school management. We should ensure that a wide and impartial range of advice is given, rather than pushing pupils towards a certain end, but that is not happening at the moment.
Fourthly, face-to-face guidance is effective and wanted by young people. Online research is valuable, but it should not be seen as a substitute for face-to-face discussions, particularly with professionals. The Government need to address that.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Campbell
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that the sooner face-to-face advice occurs, the better? All too often, face-to-face advice is only a one-off and very late in the day at age 15 or 16. It should happen early in secondary education.
Mr Wright
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that face-to-face advice should be a key thread running through young people’s education, evaluation and experience.
Fifthly, impartial advice is important, and it is not given in far too many cases, particularly for 11 to 18-year-olds. Schools may be pushing pupils towards the sixth form when they would rather consider a vocational or apprenticeship route.
Sixthly, we should value careers professionals. As the hon. Member for Eastbourne said, they are vital professionals who can navigate young people through a tricky and complex world. We should treasure them a lot more. For far too long, careers advice has been a secondary consideration, somehow as an add-on. In the modern world of work, we need a knowledge-based economy. We do not know what the future looks like, so careers advice needs to be much more central to this country’s education offer.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I strongly congratulate the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on securing this debate on a crucial subject. I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the country. I can barely walk down the street, and I can certainly never visit a school or educational establishment, without young people directly raising their concerns and demands about the careers services that they want. I am here to speak for them.
I completely endorse the comments of most hon. Members who have spoken today. Young people tell me that they want face-to-face guidance when they need it. That is particularly important in my constituency because many young people do not have connections. They do not have parents with understanding and knowledge of the modern world of work. Many of them have come to this country, and perhaps their parents do not have good English.
On Monday, I was at the KPMG City academy in my constituency with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). A year 12 pupil told us that she wants to be a doctor but that her mother is a single parent. She said, “I don’t have the connections that some of my friends in the school have.” The school helps to provide her with the connections that help to level the playing field. KPMG and the City of London sponsor the academy, and KPMG helps to provide her with support—other pupils also have mentors through KPMG. Those business links, as my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, are vital.
When I talk to businesses in the community and head teachers, one of the key things they mention is linking those businesses with individual pupil achievement in the school, as well as giving pupils a view of the world of work. That is more complicated than simply careers advice, but I have always supported embedding business connections in schools, and it is one of the reasons why I am broadly in favour of the academies programme.
On careers advice more specifically, I am delighted to have worked from the outset with the charity My Big Career. We found each other because I had been working to encourage professionals in my area to become the family for young people in Hackney who do not have their own connections. I got professionals and sixth-formers into networking events, where they shared notes and found each other. Those young people made their own connections.
The redoubtable Deborah Streatfield decided to set up My Big Career because she is a professional careers adviser working in the private sector and, as well as the private school that employs her, she is often privately commissioned by parents. She realised that the careers advice in many state schools was not of the same standard, so she set up the charity. Happily, I was able to secure office space in Cardinal Pole school in my constituency, which now has an outstanding sixth form. Deborah Streatfield has been offering face-to-face advice, and it is not just her. She has been getting in volunteer careers advisers and, crucially, professionals from business who are trained to give the right kind of professional advice to pupils.
The charity also offers a results day service, which was so effective last year. Shockingly, it was the first time in Hackney’s history that pupils received a results day service from volunteers trained to go in at 7 o’clock in the morning so that young people who had missed a grade could access discussions with universities. For example, four young people who would not have got on to their nursing degree did so because of that input, which should be standard. That happened because a professional, qualified careers team was there at that point.
Young people tell me that they want such advice. For many young people, face-to-face advice is so important because they are just not getting it through other routes. The key thing about My Big Career is the service’s high-level professionalism. I echo the point raised by other colleagues that we need good, properly qualified careers advisers.
I also echo the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) about ensuring that teenagers make the right choice early on. One of the things that My Big Career has discovered is that many young people are being encouraged, quite rightly and effectively, to get a good GCSE in maths, but for many a C grade was just not enough for the course they wanted to take at university. They needed a B grade, and even many heads of maths did not understand the significance of a B grade for the future career choices of their pupils. Bright, able and capable sixth-formers were finding that that one dropped grade in GCSE maths was limiting their future career options. That goes to show that the professional understanding of good, qualified careers advisers makes a difference throughout a school, not just at 14.
The Government have thrown money at careers advice. At one level, we should accept the £20 million that has gone to the careers company, but I have serious questions about how that has been tendered and whether it is really best at national level. There is no road map for how the careers company will deliver good quality careers advice throughout our educational establishments. I hope the Minister can give us more information, because we are all desperate to know how that will help people in Hackney, Hartlepool, Scunthorpe and around the country. I want to know how we will be monitoring the independent advice and guidance provided directly by schools, because the quality varies enormously, as we have heard.
I, too, have a list of asks for the Minister. First, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne described, we want a clearer set of requirements on appropriate and good guidance. We do not have a common set of standards at the moment, and it is vital that we do. It is not fair that a young person going through a school—sometimes a very good school—might have their future completely altered by the lack of quality careers advice. We want a common standard.
Crucially, we need really good evaluation of what works and quality control. The key thing is the bit in the middle, which my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe talked about—the broker between businesses and young people. The broker could be the careers adviser, but there could be work placements. Rather than young people just being thrown at work placements that have been brokered by a careers service, they could say, “I want to do this, and I need to know who I can speak to so I can go and do that particular role.”
I represent Shoreditch, which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor called “tech city”. It is a hub for future jobs and growth in this country, but most of the jobs in Shoreditch do not exist as such. They do not have job titles, because they are so new and emerging. I can sometimes broker the connections, because of the peculiarity of an MP’s role, where we see a lot of different things. We need to make sure that our teachers and particularly our careers advisers are aware of the opportunities and can make those links. That crucial bit in the middle is the broker. When the broker finds a young person with a particular skill, the broker will know how to make the two or three phone calls that will get the young person the connection to the career opportunity that they can really learn from. We also need to see greater stability of funding so that we can be sure there is a career path for good quality careers advisers.
I welcomed the Government’s decision to include outcome data as a key part of schools. We still do not have much of an update from the Department for Education on how it is going to work. Many schools in my area feel challenged about how they are going to deal with it. I believe—I represent Shoreditch, so I would—that good, well-worked-up software that would allow alumni to be tracked and, crucially, give alumni something back in terms of networking, could be very useful. I have been talking to UBS, the bank that sponsors the Bridge Academy in Hackney. There is a real opportunity to be grabbed, but it needs to be fleshed out. I hope the Minister will do so.
I have mentioned the issues about grade B maths. Such issues underline the need for clear understanding throughout schools of how early choices can affect careers and damage career options. The Government need to ensure that that is embedded through a set of standards.
I have set out my asks. Careers advice is crucial. My young people in Hackney want action. They want to see the best provided to all and I back them in that.
Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
Order. We have two further speakers wishing to catch my eye, and we have seven minutes, so please do the maths yourselves.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Mr Williams. I will make a few comments in the short time I have. I congratulate the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on securing the debate. It is good for us all to have an input. As a Northern Ireland Member of Parliament, I am conscious that we need to cater for access to careers advice that teases out options for every young person, so that they are not left feeling at sea about where life is going to take them. Everybody is good at something in life. My wife can provide a list of things that I am not good at around the house, but I am glad to say that when it comes to the issues for students we need to do something for them.
We have a nation of ambitious, driven and generally hopeful youths who have clear careers aspirations. There are two worries. First, there is still a group that is unsure about which path to take and needs guidance. Secondly, the access that we give to careers is not keeping up with the ambitious demands of young people, and, as a result, they are misguided or misled through a lack of information about the relevant qualifications and steps needed for them to succeed in their goals.
With young people today so impressively strong-minded, it is not necessarily true that the ambitions for their career paths were even founded through educational institutions or careers services advice. That is not to say that there are not young people under pressure from others about what they feel they should do, perhaps following the example of friends or expectations of family members. Although it is good to be encouraged and motivated to achieve, access to an individual, driven careers service can help avoid career paths that are not suited to the individual. We need to have the right direction for students to go in, which is the thrust of what has been said so far.
One of the local grammar schools in my area, Regent House, has implemented a career strategy whereby the mock results for exams were handed over to the children all at once in an envelope, and then the children were taken and given careers advice based on their results. That is the way forward. It has shown that there is a better way of doing things and perhaps a better way of encouraging greater study.
I believe that between the ages of 14 and 16 aspirations start to take full form. Access to careers advice should not rely solely on broad advice, but should be specific. A flaw that has been recognised is that young people are advancing down career routes when they are not fully aware of the qualifications needed. Some have no clear vision of where they want to go in employment, resulting often in an exit from the education system because they cannot see what it can do for them.
I am conscious of the time, but I will make this point. Within this particular group, the concern is that there is not enough advice pushing for these individuals to acquire work experience, interview skills and CV-building capabilities. Simply sitting down with someone and talking through their aspirations so that they are aware of the expectations and relevant qualifications needed would help.
For those leaving school and going to further education colleges, the route they see for themselves is often more vocational or based on learning a trade. In the Northern Ireland strategy for apprenticeships, we recognised that, through apprenticeships, we can ensure and enable mobility within a sector and across the wider economy by including a breadth of training beyond the specific needs of a job, through both on and off-the-job training. The South Eastern Regional college in my area gives great advice. The universities in Northern Ireland have been lucky enough to keep student fees low, but at the same time we need to be able to ensure that those who want scholarship programmes are aware of how to source funding.
In conclusion, we cannot let our best, youngest and brightest be hindered in reaching their potential because they did not know how to get there. We must ensure that the best advice is available to the greatest number of children, and this is something that our education system must ensure is available as a right and not as a bonus. That is why this debate is so important.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Thank you for fitting me in, Mr Williams. I am afraid I was not originally down to speak because I was chairing the Education Committee this morning.
Careers advice and guidance is such an important topic. The Select Committee produced a report. People are listening to thoughtful speeches from many colleagues, but the heart of the problem is a simple one. It does not come out in myriad reports that have been produced on the subject, or indeed in enough speeches given by colleagues in the Chamber. The problem is that there are insufficient incentives for schools to take the matter seriously. That is why 80% of them do not. It is simple: they do not have to take it seriously. No one loses their job and no one gets fired or publicly humiliated for failing to do it properly, but they do if five good GCSEs are not achieved. We therefore have to change the accountability regime and have a high-stakes environment in which someone very easily gets publicly humiliated or sacked. That is the central problem.
We need a better balance—perhaps a nudge that does not simply add further burdens on leaders within schools and colleges, but addresses the central problem. The Committee did not have any perfect solutions, but we said—I will say this to the Minister—that schools should at least be made to publish their careers plan, so that parents and employers can have a look at it. Ofsted could check in advance. Hard-working Ministers could sit in Whitehall, as I know my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools often does late at night, and look at it on the website.
The Government helped to fund a quality in careers standard for schools. It exists, so we can make schools work towards it and keep to it. I know it is bureaucratic—a bit input-esque—but we have not got great destinations data yet and we do not have another solution, so we have to give it a nudge. Let us not have any more reports from the alphabet soup of organisations. Teach First has done one this week that has some good stuff in it, but the central issue is that schools are not incentivised to take the matter seriously, and they have perverse incentives such as filling their sixth-form places, which means they will not even let colleges in.
Let us address the incentives, get the framework right, stop faffing around with all the other talk, and we could make a real difference to the lives of children. It is worth looking at what happened under the previous Secretary of State, who, it is fair to say, was pretty dismissive of this agenda, but he was not dismissive of the need to raise standards in schools, to challenge the low standards that prevailed for too long, and to put in place a pressure on the system to get people to sit for qualifications and do a curriculum and syllabuses for exams that matter to people and were of some value. That is already starting to pay off. Combined with an economic plan that focuses on enterprise and growth, we see transformations.
I am sad to say that for those who are trying to be fair-minded, those transformations do not get properly reflected in speeches by Opposition Members. I admire enormously the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), as I do all the Opposition Members in the Chamber, but he does not mention that youth unemployment in his constituency has gone from more than 1,000 when the Labour party left office—there were more than 1,000 young people in his constituency who were scarred for life by unemployment, because we know that youth unemployment scars people for life—to 425 today. Similarly, in Hartlepool, about 600 young people’s lives have been transformed by a Government who are delivering and not just talking. The youth unemployment figure there has gone from 1,200 to 600, so another 600 young people have had their lives turned round. In south Hackney, the youth unemployment figure is down from 750 when Labour left office—750 young people just sitting there—to 250 today. That is all great news.
Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
Order. This debate is about careers advice and not about unemployment among young people.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on raising this important topic. I also congratulate all the hon. Members who have spoken; their speeches demonstrate the importance of this subject.
Careers advice is “broken”; it is on “life support”; and the Government show a “reluctance” to take it seriously. Those are not my words as an Opposition Member; they are the words of the CBI and the Skills Commission. Also, the Education Committee has been fairly critical; in 2013, it described
“the worrying deterioration in the overall level of provision”.
That is all pretty damning, because careers advice is absolutely vital, as I think we have heard from everyone who has spoken today.
Young people need to know what the options are—not only which A-levels to take or which university to go to but what training they may need to become an engineer or to work in IT. They also need to know what the emerging jobs market in their area is, and what they need in order to access the full range of education and training options, as the Association of Colleges has said in its excellent report. But what have the Government done? They have pushed the responsibility for careers advice on to schools and colleges.
Schools must provide access to impartial careers advice for young people aged between 14 and 19. They are told that this advice should be independent and involve outside providers. However, the schools have a vested interest in keeping up the number of students studying A-level courses, to ensure a viable number if they have a sixth form of their own; in some cases, the survival of a school’s sixth form depends on the school keeping those students. I have heard from some sixth-form and further education colleges that they are being denied admission to schools, and consequently they are not being allowed to give the full range of options to students.
Many teachers follow the academic route so they do not have experience of the world of work, know the local economic conditions in their area or understand the range of experiences that are offered by going down the “earn and learn” route. Indeed, I have heard from some young people about the pressure they are under to stay on at school and take A-levels, rather than starting apprenticeships. One young person told me that they were ostracised by the school when they said they wanted to do an apprenticeship. Another particularly savvy young person said to me, “I’m just seen as a walking pot of money.”
Mr Graham Stuart
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the issue of apprenticeships. The TUC and Unionlearn have said—I think it was in the past few days—that they completely oppose the Labour party policy to abolish level 2 apprenticeships. Will the Labour party look at that policy again? Level 2 apprenticeships, where they transform income and provide high-quality training, should be retained; we must not lose this vital building block in providing support to young people.
Yvonne Fovargue
I will not go into that issue too far, but I will say that level 2 will not be branded as apprenticeships, and the training will certainly not be going; it will be a pre-apprenticeship. However, that is a different issue.
It is no wonder, therefore, that careers advice is simply not being provided. Three quarters of schools that Ofsted visited were not providing adequate advice—so far, not so good. And what else has happened? We have heard about the new careers and enterprise company, and a number of questions have been asked about it. I wonder whether the job it will do is already being done. The Chairman of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), who is here today, has said:
“It is clear that the…new body replicates the very role and remit of the National Careers Service...and only the leadership and governance is different”.
I would like to hear more about what will happen with that situation.
The fact is that we need more than an unenforced duty on schools, which simply leads to buck-passing. One in three teachers say they do not have the right expertise and resources to adequately provide effective information, advice and guidance. We need a complete rethink about how we deliver careers advice to young people, and rebuilding the careers advice service will be an early and vital priority for a Labour Government. Fragmentation and short-term and unsuitable initiatives are absolutely endemic. We need a careers service that is modelled around what provides the best outcomes for the young person and for the country, because young people are our future work force, as we have heard today. We need a careers service that guarantees that face-to-face, one-to-one guidance is available for all young people who need it, and that ensures that businesses and employers are linked in with it, the importance of which we heard about from my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin).
Building closer links with industry is absolutely vital, but I would like to add my support for the face-to-face guidance, as somebody who has worked in providing face-to-face advice, even if it was not in this sector. Websites can help many young people, but many more will need face-to-face contact. The level of contact may well be different: it may just involve initial contact, or there may be contact that takes young people further through the process. As Centrepoint has said, particularly young people who have little parental support, as well as those with poor literacy or who have other support needs, may need more assistance.
Working together is the other watchword. That is why I support the idea of careers hubs, which we have heard about from a number of hon. Members today. I visited the Bristol campus of South Gloucestershire and Stroud college the other month. The college has an excellent careers hub, working with schools across the area—independent schools, academies, state-controlled schools and primary schools—and providing one-to-one advice from professional careers advisers, which it employs. The college is the point of contact for all employers, it works with the local enterprise partnership, and it is considering expanding its service. It is an excellent model for the careers advice of the future. If such hubs were rolled out across the country, they could provide a single point of information about careers advice and career options in each area and employ the professional careers advisers whose work is so valuable.
Careers hubs could also co-ordinate work experience. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) how important work experience is for young people. Currently, however, work experience provision is another postcode lottery.
A taster session of work experience is valued by young people and employers, but not enough employers are incentivised to provide them, even though they can provide real benefits, including introducing the reality of work to young people. My daughter found that out on her first day of work. Horrified, she told me when she came home, “The manager told me what to do, and d’you know what? It wasn’t sensible!” I thought, “That’s a good life experience for you.”
Taster sessions also allow students to consider a wider range of roles than they may have been told about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool said, young people put their toe in the water and they might not like it. However, they might like it, especially if taster sessions give them a wide range of roles to consider. It is also indisputable that if people have an early experience of work, they are less likely to end up unemployed and more likely to get better jobs and earn more money. However, at the moment less than half of young people have access to high-quality work experience. We have really fallen behind countries such as France in this regard.
We also need to work more with employers to break down some of the barriers faced by young people who are perhaps harder to place than others, including those with disabilities, in order to dispel the preconception that the employers themselves may have that those young people cannot do the jobs that are on offer. A careers hub could help those young people, as well as others who are perhaps more in the mainstream.
We believe that destination tracking is another activity that should be taken further. Schools actually have a responsibility for their pupils that goes beyond simply where they go on leaving school. A young person who goes to university and drops out in the first term because the course is unsuitable for them is not a success; a young person who takes an apprenticeship and completes it is a success, and should be celebrated as such. We therefore need to track destinations for much longer than we do now. Also, there has been a worrying rise in the number of “unknowns” recorded by the local authorities. We not know where those people are, which is a concern from a safeguarding point of view as well.
Our young people are the work force of the future, as we have heard before; we rely on them to pay and look after our pensions, basically. They need to be given every opportunity to have a worthwhile and satisfying career, and to develop their skills throughout their working lives. If we do not give them access to advice at the beginning of their working life, when they are thinking about what work to do, in order to help them navigate the confusing landscape of the world of work, which is becoming ever more confusing, we are failing them. In fact, we are not only doing that but we are jeopardising our future economic success as a country.
The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. This has been an excellent debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on securing it and congratulate all hon. Members on their contributions. However, I am clearly not able to respond to every question asked and every point raised.
I start by observing that, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) said, there has never been a golden age of careers advice and guidance. I think we can all agree about that. He is a former Minister in this field and took office at the end of a long Government full of largesse, so I think he will have noted that large Government budgets have not proved to be the solution to the lack of advice and guidance. He made a perfunctory reference to Connexions, but nobody has come up to me, either since I was elected to Parliament or since I was appointed to this job, and mourned the scrapping of that service. There may well have been good intentions behind it, but the reality is that it achieved very little, with a relatively large budget. When we faced the largest peace time budget deficit in our history, it was a right and proper economy to make to get rid of Connexions as it was then constituted.
There was never a golden age and, certainly, the previous Government did not manage to produce a system of careers advice and guidance that led to high-quality advice for young people throughout the country and in all schools. We as a Government have recognised that, thanks to the good work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chairman of the Education Committee, and others, and have taken steps to ensure that schools are more focused on their responsibilities. Hon. Members have mentioned the introduction of statutory guidance requiring schools to provide independent advice and guidance. We certainly recognise that too few schools are doing so. There were many calls from Opposition Members for proper resourcing for this. However, there is a difficulty here, because proper resourcing means more money either dedicated to or ring-fenced for the provision of careers advice and guidance and the employment of more careers advisers. In that case, Opposition Members have to answer questions—I know they never like doing so—about what other things they are going to cut, what taxes they will raise or what borrowing will be increased to provide that resourcing; otherwise, that resourcing will have to come from within the existing schools budgets.
The reality is that good schools of all kinds—grant-maintained schools, academies, and all kinds of schools—realise that it is critical for them to make an investment from their budget and employ a careers adviser or co-ordinator. Lots of different models work. Good schools realise that this is a priority and there is nothing stopping any school deciding to invest some of their resource in proper advice and guidance.
Mr Graham Stuart
Just for the record, the Committee did not call for additional money. It recognised that, in an ideal world, it might have been a good thing, but that the most important thing was to change the incentives for schools, because the fact that 20% of schools can find the budget—they tend to be successful schools delivering outstanding academic results as well—shows that it can be done. In fact, those things are mutually enhancing.
If the Minister wanted a crude proxy for the success of the education system—I remember saying this to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) when he was a Minister in the Labour Government—it would be how many young people end up as NEETs. I am pleased that the number in the shadow Minister’s constituency has gone from 900 when Labour left office to 140 today.
Nick Boles
Of course, I am always particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Select Committee. I will come on to his point on incentives, which is a good one.
Probably the most useful thing I can do for hon. Members who participated in this debate is to answer some questions about the new careers company, because I understand that although people are broadly and in principle supportive of it, they question how it will fit into the landscape and particularly what its relationship with or functions relative to the National Careers Service will be.
The key point about the new careers company is that we observed that there is no shortage of organisations offering high-quality activity. Straight after this debate I am meeting the people who run Inspiring Futures, which is an excellent programme with speakers for schools and any number of online resources. Of course, the National Careers Service provides high-quality advice to lots of young people as well as to adults. There is no shortage of provision, but schools face great difficulty understanding what is available, what is high quality and what would really meet the identified needs of their young people.
The point of the careers company, under Christine Hodgson, is to create a structure whereby every school has somebody it can ask to help it through this forest and identify the resources and the providers who will help provide a much better range of experiences and inspiration to young people. It will focus initially on mapping what is out there, because people have to know that before they can start offering guidance. It will then focus on Lord Young’s excellent idea, in his report to the Prime Minister, of appointing an enterprise adviser. That person will be a current or recently retired local executive from the public or private sector, who will be attached to a school and whose role will be to help it identify local businesses and employers that can come in to the school and provide work experience, and resources relating to programmes relevant for the school. A school will identify that local enterprise adviser with the help of their local economic partnership.
I agree with those who have said that local economic partnerships have an obvious role to play in helping schools understand who out there can help them deliver on their duty. I do not think many teachers or head teachers are failing to provide careers advice and guidance because they do not believe in it; it is because they are busy and not particularly qualified to do it. It is no criticism of them to suggest that. They need some help. As we have heard, a plethora of local business executives is only too willing to get involved. However, we need some structure of brokerage in that regard and some guidance to schools on how they can give better advice and guidance to their young people.
Those will be the two main priorities for the careers company. It will have a small pot of money of about £5 million—a small part of the £20 million—from which it will be able to back new ideas for new kinds of experience and advice and guidance. That will act more as a sort of seed fund or a venture fund. It will also work more long-term on Lord Young’s other idea, which is for an enterprise passport that would probably be an online record of all of the non-formal educational achievements of a young person—all the volunteering and holiday jobs they have done, all the clubs they have joined and all their other extracurricular achievements at school—so that employers have an objective record of the full range of a young person’s contribution to their community when judging their fitness for school.
In the final minutes of this debate I should like to focus on the point of careers advice and guidance, although I am happy to answer in writing any questions from colleagues about the careers company. The point of careers advice is to lead to a career, and the point of every career is to have a series of satisfying and fulfilling jobs. I hope that every hon. Member of every party will recognise the signal achievement of this Government, which is to have created more jobs in Yorkshire—as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment reminded us—than have been created in France, and to have created more jobs in the United Kingdom than have been created in the whole of the European Union.
The key to a career is having an economy that creates jobs—new jobs in new sectors, requiring new young people with new skills. Of course, they need advice and guidance, and of course they need clear data that help them understand which choice of qualifications leads to which possibilities regarding a career. However, ultimately, without an economy that is creating employment at the speed we have been doing so in this country, there is no point having even the best careers advice and guidance in the world. Right now, even with fantastic careers advice and guidance, someone who has the misfortune to be a young person in Spain will have a pretty small chance of having a fulfilling career because youth unemployment there is pushing 40%.
Let us remember the point of careers advice and guidance, which is to guide people on to a path that will give them a satisfying range of jobs in the economy, creating jobs like no other.
Police Widows Pensions
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Williams. Would it be in order to allow the police widows and widowers who are attending today to come into the room before we start?
Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
Yes, they can come and sit in the Public Gallery.
Okay, Mr Graham, I think you should now begin.
Richard Graham
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams, and a real pleasure to be able to speak on an issue that is important to Members from all parts of the House. The happiness of the many individuals involved and the reputation of the Government and the House for ensuring that, as far as possible, justice is done for those who for no reasons of their own find themselves in a difficult situation hinge to some extent on the decisions made on this matter by Ministers and, in due course, the Government.
I will sketch the background to how I came to bring this debate to the House, run through some of the examples I hope the Minister will consider, and summarise by making the argument that the Government should reconsider how police widows’ and widowers’ pre-1987 pensions are treated. Just before Christmas last year, I received an e-mail from the Police Federation outlining a situation of which I had until then been unaware. It pointed out that the Police Pensions Regulations 1987 did not allow a number of police widows and widowers to marry or cohabit without losing their right to a police widow’s or widower’s pension for life. The e-mail highlighted the case being made by PC Colin Hall’s widow, Cathryn Hall, who was widowed at the age of 24 in 1987 and left to bring up her four-year-old daughter alone.
Cathryn, who is with us today—as are some 15 other widows and widowers—was faced with a difficult decision: to keep her police widow’s pension or to move in with her partner, which would mean that she was no longer eligible to receive the pension. She set up a petition, which has more than 71,000 signatures. The campaign, which I was unaware of until Christmas last year, is one I would like the police Minister to consider. In the petition, Cathryn describes how her husband Colin died and life after his death, and she makes the case as to why she and other widows should be treated in the same way as those whose pensions are covered by the change in the 1987 regulations. She makes the point that the Minister is in a difficult position in balancing the sacrifices of police officers and their widows or widowers against those of members of the armed forces, for whom significant changes were made on Remembrance Sunday last year.
Since I have been in contact with Cathryn Hall, she has kindly introduced me to a number of other widows and widowers, including two from my county of Gloucestershire: Sharon Jones and Julie Shadwick, both of whom have sad stories to tell. Many others have been in contact with their MPs, but there is not time, alas, to read out all their stories. I will mention Sharon’s story. She was married to Ian Jones, a chief inspector in the Gloucestershire police force, who was killed in an accident in June 2005. She survived on the pension that the service provided and brought up three children on her own. She recently met another man and married him at the end of October 2014, which, as she writes,
“brings me a wonderful opportunity to start a new life. However, as a result of this, I have lost my pension entitlement which I object to most strongly. I am being penalised for finding new love after 10 years alone.”
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Because we ask police officers to put their lives on the line to keep us safe, does he agree that it is only fair that we do what the Government have done for the armed forces widows and retrospectively amend the rules to make them fair for such people as my constituent, Eileen Britton, and many more like her?
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which was precisely the trigger that made me find the campaign so compelling. The changes made last November for the armed forces should apply in the same way, retrospectively. Despite the fact that Governments do not like retrospective legislation, the precedent has been set—he is absolutely right.
I will run through the technical issue to which my hon. Friend just referred. The campaign that Cathryn Hall is leading is to some extent about fairness. Before 2006, police widows, widowers or surviving civil partners automatically lost their pension if they remarried or lived with a new partner. That effectively compelled them and their dependents to choose between future financial security but loneliness at home, and the opportunity for happiness, but with the financial loss of the pension.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it is not just the widows, but the children who are impacted by these decisions? As a Parliament, we talk a great deal about the importance of children being brought up within a loving family. If we are condemning widows and widowers to live alone and to have their children outside of a loving family, that is also wrong and something we should address and right.
Richard Graham
As so often, the hon. Lady makes a good point. Children are often the people we do not mention when we discuss these issues, but they can suffer the most. I am grateful to her.
What changed in 2006 was society’s perception of fairness, and the new scheme in 2006 recognised that. All new recruits since 2006 and anyone who transferred to the new scheme—there were some who did not—now knows that should the worst happen, their loved ones will receive their pension for life, irrespective of whether the survivor remarries or forms a new partnership. That applies to unmarried but cohabiting partners, too. The new regulations did not apply retrospectively to those who had left the service before 2006 or had died before that date. For those who are penalised in that way, such as Cathryn Hall, the many who are here today and the other 800 to 900 widows and widowers—most of them are widows—it must be frustrating to have remarried and seen financial disadvantage relative to those who were widowed later. It is an issue of fairness.
Things have changed. The regulations on police pensions in Northern Ireland changed last year and, more significantly, a very similar rule was amended for the armed forces so that from April this year, all widows and widowers of our armed forces can remarry or live with a new partner without losing their pension. That change is retrospective, and it sets a precedent for further change. What is true for soldiers, sailors and airmen and women is also true for our police. Having to deal with the consequences of a husband or wife having died in the course of duty is no less ghastly if that happened on the streets of one of our cities, rather than a dusty path in Helmand province. I hope that the Minister, who has seen active service in uniform, will be sympathetic to the case being made. In an e-mail that he sent to Cathryn Hall fairly recently, he rightly highlighted that it is appropriate for Ministers to be able to make changes when a compelling case is made. I know that the Minister is a man who understands the duties of those who serve in uniform, and the responsibilities of Government to those who are left behind when they are either killed or die in accidents while on duty. I also know that his Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), is supportive of the case being made by the group of widows and widowers who care so passionately about the opportunity for happiness and to retain their pension.
Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
I am sure we all appreciate very much the case my hon. Friend is making. I am grateful for the opportunity to make an intervention on behalf of an unnamed constituent of mine who is approaching his 70s and wants to change his position. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have a good record in seeking to put right the errors of the past? That is a further reason for looking at what now appears to be an anomaly in the regulations. The change he is seeking would be welcomed as being in the spirit of what the Government have sought to achieve in one or two other areas in order to correct past wrongs.
Richard Graham
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Government do have a good record of trying to right problems and issues inherited from the past—one could call them historical leftovers. It is to the benefit of many people when a Government are able to tackle such issues with the fairness and justice they deserve. That is why today’s debate is timely. It comes some three months after the Government rightly addressed what could be described as an injustice for the widows and widowers of members of the armed forces. Today’s debate gives the Minister for Policing an opportunity to spell out the challenges, in his view, in getting a similar injustice addressed for the widows and widowers of the constabularies of this country.
There are many such cases. This morning I have met widows from Scotland, Lancashire, Yorkshire and all parts of southern England, as well as two from my own county. I am wearing a badge on their behalf, and all the widows and widowers present are wearing it as well, as a symbol of their unity in trying to resolve the problems with the 1987 police pension scheme.
Richard Graham
Yes; the hon. Lady has spoken for Wales.
I hope the Minister will address the fundamental problem. I understand that his dilemma is one of trying to balance different issues, not least that of cost, which is always on the mind of any Government—perhaps this one in particular, bearing in mind the huge debts that were inherited—but I want the Minister to consider one particular point today. In his letter of 11 February, he wrote to me:
“You mentioned in your letter the changes made in respect of Armed Forces widows’ pensions. The special circumstances of military personnel and their families presented a compelling argument for that change, supported by the Armed Force covenant. Armed Forces personnel have often been moved with little notice around the world and have been encouraged to take their families with them.”
Although it was certainly the case historically that armed forces personnel were often posted around the world with their families, the situation has changed considerably.
Police officers have been posted all around the country and, indeed, as the Minister knows, in Northern Ireland, in situations of difficulty. There is at least one widow present today whose husband was on duty with the police force in Bosnia, and there will be others in Cyprus and other parts of the world. If the argument in favour of armed forces widows’ pensions is about their being moved and so not being able to create a normal working life and build up a pension of their own, the same argument can be made—to a considerable extent, at least—for the families of serving police officers. I hope that argument will not be used to prevent the widows and widowers who have signed Cathryn Hall’s petition from receiving justice.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Is there not also the issue of the sacrifice these people have made in the service of our country, whether in the armed forces or the police service? I have had the pleasure of working with Karen Winterburn, whose husband Andy was killed in 2003. She has gone through very difficult anniversaries as she tries to rebuild her life. Is it not a shame that that sacrifice also means that she now has to think about the issue of finance as she moves on and rebuilds her life?
Richard Graham
My hon. Friend is right. We should all share the belief that someone should not have to consider whether to remarry or cohabit on the basis of wondering whether they are going to lose so much financially that their happiness is somehow not so worth while. The situation is extraordinary; I think we all feel that and hope that the Minister will address it. He is a fair, reasonable and compassionate man and I am optimistic that today, we will hear of an opportunity for the Home Office to reconsider the current situation.
The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
I reiterate the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams.
I want to indicate from the outset that, although the debate is short, if anyone has not had an opportunity to contribute so far, I am happy to take interventions. My hon. Friend was very generous in taking interventions, but it is absolutely right that colleagues who have been present from the start of the debate and want to contribute should be able to do so.
As my hon. Friend mentioned, I approach the issue of police widows’ pensions not only as a former uniformed guardsman but as a former firefighter. I served alongside the police on many occasions—some of those situations were very dangerous and the police put their lives in danger—as well as with the other emergency services. My hon. Friend touched on the fact that, through its devolved powers, Northern Ireland has already acceded to the widows’ requests. I was the Northern Ireland Minister at the time and, although that matter is devolved, I can assure Members that I was lobbied very heavily in Northern Ireland. I hope that I was part of that decision.
Before I took on ministerial responsibilities for policing fairly recently, I was at the Department for Work and Pensions. My Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who is sitting behind me but is not allowed to speak because of protocol, was already lobbying me. We were already discussing the matter before fate decided that I was going to be the Minister with responsibility for policing in England and Wales.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester and for Winchester for their campaigns on behalf of not only their constituents but the constituents of Members from both sides of the House. I thank colleagues for writing to me—some of them many times; some because they wanted to know the exact position—and I congratulate the campaigners on their online petition, which is growing daily.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for securing this debate. Does the Minister accept that, in many cases, such as that of my constituent, Mrs Penn, who has taken the issue up with me at a surgery, people are supporting the campaign on behalf of others? The pension might not be hugely necessary for them financially, but they are supporting the campaign on behalf of their colleagues for whom it is. I very much commend the public-spirited nature of the petition. It is about not only those who need the pension—we fully respect their needs—but those who are doing it on behalf of others.
Mike Penning
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The compassion that has been shown in the correspondence is remarkable. If people who are campaigning on other issues could look at how this campaign has been conducted, they might find that their campaigns receive not dissimilar support from across the House.
On a negative point, I want to take issue slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester on the similarity to military covenant decisions. Perhaps I would do, as a former guardsman, but I was also part and parcel of the drafting of the military covenant in opposition. In my correspondence to colleagues, I have said that there is a difference, including because of deployment. Thank goodness most of our troops are now home from Iraq and Afghanistan, although some brave people are still out there assisting in training, but British armed forces are still deployed around the world—indeed, the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) has been with me on trips to those places. British servicemen and their families are in Cyprus, the Falklands and other parts of the world, and such deployment is not of their choice.
The police use mutual aid. In Northern Ireland, we had to run the G8 summit at Lough Erne. We could not have done it without other forces in Great Britain helping us, but all those personnel volunteered. I am not saying that everyone volunteers in every case, but there is a difference between deployment under the military covenant and police deployment. That does not take away from the argument—the “compelling” argument, to repeat the word that I have used in correspondence since I have been the Minister with responsibility for policing—in the cases that we are discussing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester mentioned that there was scepticism, to say the least, because no matter what colour of Government are in office, when people talk about “retrospective”, the Treasury has jitters galore. The important thing now, however, since we acknowledged that the case was compelling and the Home Secretary and I asked our officials to look into things, is that the Treasury as well as the Home Office is involved. Home Office and Treasury officials are working together, which is very important, because we must ensure that any decision we make is not only right, but one without a huge impact on other aspects that might lead, for example, to people claiming judicial review of other schemes.
I come to the subject in a personal way. In my constituency, PC Frank Mason, who was off duty, walking his dog and minding his own business, saw a bank robbery taking place. He intervened and was murdered. Frank, like all police officers, was a warranted officer. In other words, when he was off duty he was really still on duty—he could be called in and his warrant was with him all the time. That is where the difference is and why the Home Secretary and I describe the argument as so compelling.
A full-time police officer in a force in England and Wales—I acknowledge the point made by the hon. Member for Bridgend and am as proud of being responsible for the police in Wales as I am for those in England, while those responsible in the other two devolved Administrations are also surely paying attention to the debate and the campaign—has a warrant in the service of the Queen and so is still responsible when off duty. Different terminologies can be used, but that is what I feel—police officers are still serving their community even when off duty. That puts pressures and responsibilities on them.
Recently, I raised the issue with the people from the Police Federation—no slight to them, but I raised it when they came to see me and it was not on their agenda, although they had lots of other things to talk about. I specifically wanted to talk about this, however, and I said, “We need to narrow down what we are talking about here.” What does “an officer on duty” mean? Is an officer on duty only when they are on shift, or could it mean someone in a similar situation to Frank Mason, who was assisting the public when off duty? I am adamant that, if a scheme comes through and if we make the changes, there should be help in cases of the likes of Frank Mason’s—should his widow so wish. If off-duty police officers were driving to work and were involved in a road traffic collision, I am afraid that I do not think that that would be a similar case, because they are not on duty. There is a difference, which I think most people would accept—the federation, too, accepted that point.
We are now at an important stage. We are analysing the implications in cost terms and any impact on other schemes that might be affected. For example, three months ago we did the right thing for the armed forces and now that case is being used for the police, so we have to be careful about whether what we do has implications for other schemes. The compelling case that has been put forward by colleagues today, as well as by others, and the nature, tone and empathy of the campaign, have been enormously helpful to me as a Minister and to the Home Secretary, enabling us to acknowledge the “compelling” case—the first time such language has been used.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I simply wish to associate myself and those in Montgomeryshire who have contacted me—about six people are in that position—with what has been said, to strengthen the argument. A number of other MPs wanted to be in the debate this morning, but could not be. They told me how much they would have liked to have been here, because this is a major issue of fairness. The campaign has pretty widespread support throughout the House.
Mike Penning
There is empathy throughout the House with what my hon. Friend says. There are always reasons why such anomalies, as they were described earlier, are out there, and sometimes there are reasons why they cannot be addressed. That is always the case. When I was discussing the issues privately with my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester, however, I suggested that he put in for the debate. It is important. Members should be able not only to write to Ministers, but to hear them say something that has been in correspondence, such as what I have said in mine: because of the compelling arguments put forward, we have asked officials in the Home Office and throughout Government, in particular the Treasury, to look at the implications and at how things might be progressed. Once we get a report back, matters might be slightly above my pay grade, as we get so close to the Budget and to a general election. At the end of the day, with the language that I am using today, I am going as far as I possibly can without announcing what the officials have found and what the implications are.
Richard Graham
The Minister is saying encouraging things in an encouraging tone and paying tribute to the great campaign run by the widows and widowers. He is absolutely right about the tone of the debate and the campaign. Is this not a wonderful opportunity to do something that is fair, even if we cannot always do things to right the injustices of the past, as he rightly said? With the Budget so close and a general election after it, would it not be a wonderful thing for the Government to tackle the problem now?
Mike Penning
My hon. Friend—who is just about still a friend—is drawing me into Budget speculation, but I have been about long enough not to be drawn into it. The Chancellor, however, is speaking at the 1922 committee this evening, so perhaps there will be an opportunity to put questions to the mechanic, rather than to the oily rag, as the saying goes.
I have been lucky to be part of a Government in which I have had opportunities to make changes to correct anomalies such as those my hon. Friend mentioned. For example, I was absolutely chuffed to take through changes to the mesothelioma legislation. People who through no fault of their own had caught a terrible, horrible disease were left out of compensation arrangements because we could not track their employer or their insurers, but I am pleased that the compensation is now up to 100%, even though we originally thought we would not be able to achieve that budget.
I completely agree that we need to do what is right for our constituents. For the first time the issue we are discussing has reached the level it is at now, with analysis being done by the Home Office and at the Treasury. I look forward to getting those reports on my desk as soon as possible, but perhaps there will also be an opportunity to have a word with Chancellor about what will be in the Budget, although I am sure there will be no direct answer until Budget day.
Gaza
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood, in particular because you are one of the few Members of the House who can properly pronounce my constituency’s name; I will say it now as a hint for any Members who wish to refer to it during the debate—East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow.
I am pleased to be having this important debate today. I was motivated to secure it by the Westminster Hall debate of 1 December 2014, secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), on the subject of ending the conflict in Palestine. I re-read the Hansard report of that debate recently and was struck by how much common ground there was between the Members who contributed. I spoke in it, championing my belief that the two-state solution is the only way forward. It also struck me that that debate could be a foundation to build upon; that is what I want to try to do today.
I recognise that there are still significant problems. From my perspective, our problem in the UK Parliament is that far too many Members cannot separate the troubled history of that part of the world from the objective of a two-state solution; as a result, far too often, debates in this place become mired in a grisly, macabre and desperate pit, relying on the body count in the most recent conflict or on a selective part of history so as to condemn one side over the other. Whether the contribution of a fractured and weak Palestinian leadership or the lurch to the right in Israeli politics, both sides often fail to recognise properly their own weaknesses. In particular, when violence breaks out the rush in this place to condemn Israel is matched by a pedestrian-paced admonishment of the Hamas violence that has started that same trouble.
Although the debate on 1 December marked, for the most part, a coming together of minds on many issues, every proposal made was negative. It was an oxymoron of a debate: a positive start conjoined to a negative finish. The conclusion was that there should be boycotts and sanctions. But they will not solve the problems of Palestine and Israel; rather, they will pour diesel on an already blazing fire, and create more resentment and more obstacles to peace. The aim of this debate is to create an environment for peace, to recognise the plight of the people of Gaza and to identify how we can overcome the barriers and create a more successful outcome for everyone. I will also set out the very real threat that Gaza faces from within, and the internal struggles that beset the Palestinian leadership.
In the interests of transparency, I place on the record the fact that I am one of the vice-chairs of Labour Friends of Israel. I am also an unequivocal supporter of a two-state solution for two peoples, with Israel safe, secure and recognised within its borders and living alongside a democratic, independent Palestinian state. I will be clear from the outset that last summer’s war was a disaster and tragedy for the people of Gaza and the people of Israel. Six months on from the end of Operation Protective Edge, this debate presents a timely opportunity to discuss ways in which Britain can contribute to halting the recurring spiral of violence in Gaza.
At home and in this House the war caused both anger and division, but surely we should now be able to unite around one goal and single objective—to ensure that the death, destruction and suffering experienced by both peoples are not repeated. Let me be absolutely clear: the people of Gaza did not cause or start the war, nor did the people of Israel. The responsibility for it and for the destruction that followed rests squarely with Hamas, and has done so on each of the three occasions in the past six years when Hamas has launched indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israeli civilians from residential areas of Gaza.
The question today is what can be done to break the vicious cycle of violence, against a backdrop of Hamas’s ongoing efforts not to support the people of Gaza but to continue its war against Israel. Although Arab nations and international donors have pledged the enormous sum of $5.4 billion for investment in Gaza, not one thin dime has been spent, because Fatah and Hamas cannot agree on payments to Hamas’s civil servants and cannot decide who will control the Rafah crossing—those are the priorities in those discussions. Instead of taking the opportunity to invest resources in its people, Hamas is investing in rearming. Now, ominously, it has almost regained its full military capability. I will put on the record that Hamas is preparing for further attacks on Israel as this debate takes place.
That point leads me to my first positive contribution on the way forward to peace. The international community needs to put an end to the threat posed by Hamas and other terrorist groups by halting rearmament and urgently pursuing disarmament in the Gaza strip. Secondly, the lives of the Palestinians living in Gaza must be improved, not simply through reconstruction but through concrete steps to lift the restrictions on the movement of people and goods, imposed not only by Israel but by Egypt, that stifle Gaza’s economic development and future prosperity.
Let me be unequivocal: the second of those objectives has to be utterly dependent on the first. The reality of Hamas’s perpetuating of conflict and laying the groundwork for another bloody war must be confronted by everyone. In December, Hamas celebrated its 27th anniversary by burning effigies of Jews and parading trucks carrying long-range rockets through the streets of Gaza. At the celebrations, Hamas’s military spokesperson, Abu Obeida, thanked Iran and Qatar for supplying the group with arms and support. A month earlier, Iranian leaders had confirmed their good relations with the Islamist group; having already done so much to hamper the cause of peace between Israel and its neighbours, Iran has pledged to redouble its malevolent efforts with these words:
“West Bank will surely be armed just like Gaza”.
That was tweeted by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
Hamas claims to be concerned about the welfare of the Palestinian people, but many of us have long known that that is a lie, as it is proving once again. As I mentioned earlier, instead of turning its efforts to rebuilding Gaza, Hamas has rebuilt its depleted arsenal of rockets and mortars. In addition, it is rebuilding its terror tunnels. It is also rebuilding its armed forces by recruiting a new so-called popular army of young men aged between 15 and 21. Last month, 17,000 teenagers spent their mid-term break at Hamas’s military camps being drilled on how to launch attacks through tunnels and how to kidnap and murder Israeli soldiers. That is Hamas’s education policy—teaching young people to kill.
Hamas also likes to tax and spend. That is the name of a policy that is sometimes the subject of debate in the UK, but Hamas’s tax and spend is slightly different. It taxes the people of Gaza so that it can spend the money on reconstructing its terrorist infrastructure. For example, in a list I saw recently, furniture imported to Gaza at a cost of 1,200 shekels faces an additional tax of 800 shekels. That is also true of many other goods that have to be imported into Gaza. Hamas says that Israel and Egypt should lift the blockade, but only two weeks ago we learned that the Israeli navy had intercepted a ship travelling from Sinai to Gaza. On board was liquid fibreglass, one of the many dual-use materials Hamas uses to build its weapons of war—in that case, booby-traps for houses with tunnels running underneath them. The reality of Hamas is clear: it does not care at all for the people of Gaza. The intentions of Hamas are also clear: it seeks to wage another bloody war against the people of Israel.
In the face of that reality and those intentions, there is only one solution: demilitarisation. The international community knows that and during last summer’s conflict, both the EU and the United States of America made it clear that demilitarisation of the Gaza strip rested at the heart of ending the violence. Moreover—this is a really important point—the Palestinian Authority support that.
The prevention of a new war requires an urgent drive towards demilitarisation of Gaza, but it needs more than that; it needs hope and opportunity for its people. There is real disappointment that despite last spring’s Palestinian reconciliation deal, the Palestinian unity Government have failed to establish control in Gaza, where Hamas operates what President Abbas calls a “shadow Government.”
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
To take the hon. Gentleman back to his comments on demilitarisation, given the Egyptian crackdown in Sinai and the recent evidence of increased smuggling of weapons into Gaza through the Mediterranean, does he think that the building of a seaport in Gaza—which we would all like to see eventually, but not in the current circumstances—would increase the likelihood of Gaza being demilitarised or increase the likelihood that weapons would be smuggled in?
Mr McCann
I will come on to talk about a seaport and an airport, but my proposal for a route map to peace must be premised on demilitarisation. No one will invest that type of money in Gaza when the whole thing could fall apart and be destroyed again because of Hamas’s malevolent influence.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Given my hon. Friend’s opening comments, I am looking forward to what he will say about Israel’s responsibility and contribution, because so far his speech could have been written by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tel Aviv. Is he seriously suggesting that aid should be restricted and the reconstruction of Gaza refused without demilitarisation? Does he realise that most non-governmental organisations have said that that is not an appropriate way to behave?
Mr McCann
As a member of the Select Committee on International Development who visited the Occupied Palestinian Territories and saw first hand the tragic circumstances that the Palestinians face, I hope that the Palestinian leadership want to take all steps necessary to improve the plight of their people. Goodness, surely that would be immeasurably improved if the people who are causing the problems and violence stopped doing that.
Demilitarisation should be a prerequisite, because as my hon. Friend knows, until that is done, there will not be a willing partner in the state of Israel to participate in talks. It strikes me—perhaps he missed the first part of my contribution—that we continually look backwards at the problem and do not look forward. In my coming words I hope to look in that forward direction and make a positive contribution to a proposal for peace.
As I mentioned, President Abbas calls Hamas a “shadow Government” and the renewed tensions between Hamas and Fatah since last autumn are ominous. When Hamas’s reconciliation agreement with Fatah was under pressure in June last year, it responded by kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teenagers, which was a precursor that provoked the war. Reconstruction and the political and security environment are inseparable issues and I cannot fathom anyone who says otherwise. I have received correspondence from charities and NGOs who work in the area and, based on my visit to the area and witnessing such events first hand, they are deluded if they think that investment can be put in without dealing with the military and security issues.
The people of Gaza have been the casualties of those failures. The lives of the Palestinians living in Gaza must be improved through reconstruction and by the lifting of restrictions on imports and exports, as the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said a few moments ago. The blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt restricts not only the movement of people and goods in and out of the territory, but any prospect of much needed economic development and prosperity, and any prospect of the alleviation of poverty. If poverty is the breeding ground of terror, cannot prosperity be a catalyst for peace?
While the Palestinian Authority and Hamas argue over salaries and who controls what, the Israelis have kept Gaza supplied, and while Hamas has concentrated on guns and bombs, and with access to Egypt completely closed, Israel has allowed 43,000 residents from Gaza to purchase building materials for personal use. It has also allowed students to cross the border to study and, contrary to what was said in contributions made in the 1 December debate, people have been able to travel to the al-Aqsa mosque and visit their families in Israel.
I completely recognise that there is a massive journey still to be undertaken, but for Israel and Egypt to open up Gaza crossings further and to allow the maximum amount of material in, they must be given credible guarantees about their own security, with assurances that Gaza will no longer be used as a base for terrorist activity. I will be happy to take any interventions from hon. Members who want to condemn or make that point.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I did not really want to intervene, but I must quickly challenge my hon. Friend on a number of issues. I listened to a Palestinian last night in the room adjacent who was denied access to the Gaza strip to visit his dying father, who was denied the opportunity to transfer from Gaza to a specialist hospital. Perhaps he died because of that. Is my hon. Friend seriously supporting the blockade, which predates Hamas’s control of Gaza, as a collective punishment? Surely all the United Nations agencies and charities—[Interruption.]
Mr McCann
Thank you, Mr Hood. Unlike some people who contribute in these debates, I will give a direct answer. I believe that the blockade of Gaza is unsustainable and cannot be continued, but if I was part of the Palestinian leadership, the argument that I would be taking forward in those debates is: we must ensure that there is demilitarisation so that we have security for our own people as well as the other people who live beside us in the borders to ensure that we can get reconstruction and development and traffic in and out of Gaza to allow people to get treatment.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr McCann
I will not take an intervention at the moment, because I am still dealing with one. In terms of the tragic circumstances that my hon. Friend the Member for Easington relayed about the individual who was prevented from getting medical treatment, I also heard such tragic stories when the International Development Committee spoke to people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but I find it difficult to understand that hon. Members would seek to refute my contention that the way forward on all of these issues is demilitarisation and taking the weapons out of Gaza.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case for what needs to happen. Does he agree that the stumbling block is Hamas control in Gaza and that, unless Hamas gives up its power, we will almost certainly have the same problems in the years to come?
Mr McCann
Hamas continues to reject the Quartet principles. It has publicly condemned any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and it continues to reject the two-state solution. By contrast, the Palestinian unity Government have committed to the Quartet principles and they are the legitimate interlocutor in Gaza, both for the international community and for Israel. All sides must do their best to enable that Government to govern in Gaza.
Mr McCann
I think we could hope for even better than that. In terms of a normalisation process, we can hope for the rights of Palestinians to be restored completely and for them to live in freedom and peace alongside their neighbours, the state of Israel. I very rarely hear those words said by people who propagate the type of view that the hon. Gentleman holds—[Interruption.] Someone says, “Nonsense” from a sedentary position, but I am sick and tired of coming to debates in this House where we hear about people dying, about the blood, and about the disaster of buildings being destroyed and hospitals being destroyed. I am sick and tired of coming to debates like that. I am trying to move forward with a positive proposal for peace.
A Labour Government were responsible for proscribing Hamas’s military wing. I commend the Government for their work to ensure that it remains listed by the European Union. However, I also urge the Minister—perhaps he can address this in his contribution—to assess the increasing evidence that Hamas’s political and military wings are contrapuntally linked, and they should also be looked at in terms of their contribution to peace or war.
Britain can contribute to preventing another war in Gaza. I have set out the practical steps: first, demilitarisation and initiatives to stop Hamas’s rearmament, with additional reassurance that the British Government must also pledge that the push to secure a nuclear deal with Iran does not lessen the pressure on it to cease its destabilising policies in the region.
Secondly, Britain can show leadership at the United Nations Security Council by proposing an initiative that would impose sanctions on UN members caught attempting to transfer weapons to Hamas and other militant groups. Such a resolution would provide a clear signal that the international community is committed to preventing a return to hostilities in Gaza. However, it should also go further by providing for disarmament inspectors on the ground who would oversee the destruction of rockets, mortars and other heavy weaponry in Gaza.
Thirdly and crucially, a robust staged disarmament mechanism in return for economic development must be designed to open up Gaza and reconnect it with the world. Together, Israel, the Palestinian unity Government, the Quartet, Egypt, Jordan and the Arab League should present Hamas with a clear choice: let the disarmament inspectors into Gaza and let them do their job; and in return, the international community, Israel and the Palestinian unity Government will immediately begin the work needed to ensure Gaza’s reconstruction and future prosperity.
I remind hon. Members that that $5.4 billion investment has not been prevented by Israel or the international partners. It has been prevented because the two competing elements of the Palestinian leadership cannot agree on a way forward. Most importantly, with our place in the European Union and our seat on the Security Council, Britain can lead an international effort to stop the inevitable next step without demilitarisation, and therefore the inevitable next step and next debate in this House—perhaps led by my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Easington or another hon. Member—in which we talk about another bloody war in Gaza.
I suspect people may not agree with this point, but nothing in my contribution today should divide us. If some hon. Members want to go over the history of who is right and who is wrong, count me out. If people believe that what Hamas is doing can be justified, please will they have the honesty to stand up and say so in their contributions? However, unlike the solutions—
Mr McCann
No, I will not, because I am coming to my peroration, and I want to ensure that other people have the opportunity to contribute as well. Unlike the solutions offered on 1 December 2014, when my hon. Friend the Member for Easington led the debate, my solutions are positive and realisable. They combine the need for the people of Israel to be secure with the needs of the Palestinians to have the rights that they are entitled to.
I finish with this challenge for those who will follow in this debate: if their motivation is a desire to seek a resolution, I welcome that, but they must also consider whether their motivation is a desire to be a proxy for the status quo.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. I inform hon. Members that I have nine speakers on my list plus two Front Benchers. I intend to call the Front Benchers at 3.40 pm, so to try to allow everybody in, I will put a time limit on of five minutes.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I give my full congratulations to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) who introduced the debate, for whom I have admiration on this issue. He speaks with incredible wisdom.
I want to focus on five myths that hinder the reconstruction of Gaza, and through that, the peace process in the middle east. I will examine the occupation of the city, the blockade on aid, the border closures, the Israeli military operation and finally, the issue of settlements and how it affects the debate.
It should not be forgotten that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, implemented in 2005 by Prime Minister Sharon, was one of the most painful political decisions to have been taken. It led to the split of his Likud party and the complete restructuring of the Israeli political landscape. Behind that plan, there was a real impulse to mend Israeli-Palestinian relations. The greenhouses were meant to stimulate the Palestinian economy, and if that had worked, further steps would have involved Israeli withdrawal from much of the west bank, just as they had had the courage to withdraw from Gaza.
That is why there must be no doubt, when discussing Gaza’s occupation today, that it is not an Israeli occupation, as it has been described. Since 2007, the people of Gaza have been oppressed by Hamas who, after literally throwing Fatah officials off the roofs of the city, have spent the last eight years subjugating the population and forcing civilians to act as human shields when launching indiscriminate attacks against the Israeli population. Therefore, the first steps towards reconstructing Gaza should be ensuring that Hamas no longer divests international aid for a reconstruction purpose to the armament of a city they occupy, and recognising the crucial role of Israeli aid in the reconstruction of the city.
There is also criticism of the aid blockade that is supposedly in place. Since September 2014, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the UN have agreed to a trilateral mechanism of reconstruction for the Gaza strip, following the summer’s Operation Protective Edge. That would facilitate the rebuilding of 60,000 homes in Gaza, and the use of materials would be supervised by the UN, thus ensuring that Hamas would not be able to appropriate those resources.
There have been millions of tonnes of aid from Israel into Gaza. A few hundred trucks go from Israel into Gaza every week. To talk about an Israeli blockade on aid would be to negate the 62,000 tonnes of construction supplies that have entered Gaza since the beginning of the plan, and wilfully ignore the crucial role of Hamas in stripping the people of Gaza of the resources they need. Let us not forget that it was a Hamas rocket that took down the Israeli electrical power plant that gives Gaza electricity. It is worth noting that the Palestinian territories receive more humanitarian aid per capita than any other country on earth. So much of it has been taken away by Hamas and abused and used for corrupt purposes. We know about the secret tunnels that cost $3 million each. Why do we have those when that money should be spent on helping the Palestinian people in Gaza?
The attempt to find justice where there are just preconceptions must be extended to this summer’s war. There can be no peaceful Gaza without a recognition of the mandate of self-defence that Israel had to take on when Israeli civilians were indiscriminately targeted by Hamas. We should remember that the Israelis suffered from 19,000 rockets fired by Hamas on to Israeli towns after Israel withdrew from Gaza. We remember the 3,360 rockets fired in just under a month. There can be no reconstruction if we allow Hamas to carry on rearming and carry on training its terrorists.
Andrew Percy
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that Hamas was recently judged to be the second most wealthy terrorist organisation after ISIS, and would he like to say something about what the UK Government should be doing to ensure that more pressure is put on the funders in Iran and Saudi Arabia so that the reconstruction that he wants can happen?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend makes the exact point that so much of the money that goes into Gaza is being used for terrorist purposes—to fund weaponry. Palestinian economists have estimated that about 2,000 Hamas operatives have made $1 million each from the smuggling that goes on in the tunnels. We need to look at what goes on in the other countries. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
Bob Blackman
Taking account of the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), does my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) agree that British aid should be tied to proper reconstruction and peaceful means, and that that should be guaranteed so that none can be used for military purposes?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend again hits the nail on the head. British aid that goes to the Palestinian Authority should not be used to pay the wages of Palestinian prisoners, for example. Aid should be used for exactly that—to help the poorer Palestinian population, so neglected by the people who rule them, particularly Hamas.
When we look at the situation in Gaza, we need to remember that this is an area that has fallen, tragically, to a terrorist organisation, one that has the authority but not the will to implement a peace process, while the more moderate Palestinian Authority have the will but not the authority.
Robert Halfon
I will not, because I have given way twice.
We will not get a Palestinian state until we decide which Palestinian state it is going to be. Is it the one in Gaza, ruled by Hamas, with its terrorist network, its determination to throw every Jew into the sea and its continuing desire to fire missiles indiscriminately at Israeli territory? Is it the one in the west bank, with the more moderate Palestinian Authority?
Robert Halfon
Just out of respect for the hon. Lady, I will briefly give way.
Yasmin Qureshi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He talks about the west bank, but we know that more than half a million illegal settlements have been carried out there. As an hon. Member said earlier, even if we really believe in a two-state solution, that is not going to happen, is it?
Robert Halfon
The whole idea of having a negotiation is that there will be land swaps. As I said, Israel withdrew from Gaza, the biggest settlement of all, and all that happened was 19,000 missiles were fired indiscriminately on to Israeli territory.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend who secured the debate. I spent four years with him on the Select Committee on International Development trying to avoid having to pronounce the name of his constituency. I will not mess that up by making another attempt now.
I have to say that I was a little confused by my hon. Friend’s contribution, because he started off talking about the need to move forward and not talk the language of boycotts, sanctions and so on, but I was listening carefully to what he said, just as I read carefully the article that he wrote on Left Foot Forward, and it seemed to me that the conclusion he drew was that there was a need for boycotts and sanctions on Hamas. I agree with a number of the things that he said about Hamas. It is a pretty reprehensible organisation in many ways, but the idea of saying that because there is an organisation in control of Gaza not only that we disapprove of but that commits some heinous crimes—it does—that justifies, excuses or places as something to be dealt with at a later date the situation facing the ordinary people of Gaza is one that I just cannot go along with. The reason is a moral one, but there is also a legal one. It is called collective punishment. Collective punishment is illegal under international law, and that is what has been happening to Gaza. It has been happening in a very extreme form since 2007, but it was going on from 2005; actually it was going on before that, before the Israeli withdrawal, as well. Were it not going on before that, why was there ever a need for an agreement on movement and access in 2005?
My hon. Friend says that it is wrong to count the bodies, and that is true. Often, debates just get stuck on that, but when we look at the horror of what is going on in Gaza, some figures do bear repeating. The last big military conflict there, Operation Protective Edge, left 2,205 Gazans dead; 1,483 were civilians and 521 were children. The reason I say that is not just to give the statistics, but to pose the question: what if that happened here? In the UK, it would have meant that 76,800 people were killed; 51,456 would have been civilians and 18,000 would have been children. One quarter of the population of Gaza is still displaced to this day. It would have meant 16 million people in the UK displaced.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
I certainly regret the loss of human life in Gaza, but is my hon. Friend aware that the work conducted by the Meir Amit intelligence and terrorism information centre has shown that 52% of those who died were actually terrorists? Forty-eight per cent—a regrettable figure—were civilians, but 52% were terrorists.
Richard Burden
I am not aware of that particular organisation. I am aware that the Israeli Government have queried the figures compiled by a number of respected international organisations. I assume that that is what my hon. Friend is referring to.
Operation Protective Edge and the war last year was an appalling thing, but the real tragedy of Gaza is what goes on. It means that farmers can be shot and are shot just because they approach a border fence. Let us think about what the response would be if Hamas said it was entirely legitimate to shoot people in Sderot because they were getting too close to the border with Gaza. If it works one way, it should work the other. Let us imagine what it is like. My hon. Friend who secured the debate referred to the sea. There is a blockade by sea. Actually, what we have had recently in the waters outside Gaza is the interception of fishing boats. That happens regularly. In one case recently, three children on a fishing boat were required by Israeli gunboats to leap into the sea without their clothes on while the fishing boat that they had been occupying was sunk.
Richard Burden
No, there is no time to take any more interventions.
That to me means that we need something a bit more than saying that Hamas must demilitarise if we do not want to allow these things to carry on. If my hon. Friend is right to say that Hamas uses the population of Gaza as pawns, as playthings, what on earth would be the incentive to demilitarise in that situation? What would cause it to do that if, as he is saying, it plays and thrives on the current situation?
To resolve the problem, we need to lift the blockade. Of course, there can be security around that. In fact, there was. There was a major border crossing at Karni, with sophisticated equipment to ensure that the wrong things did not come in. That does not operate now. Why? Because Israel has demolished the Karni crossing. Why is it, when we talk about restrictions in and out of Gaza, that Israel has even put restrictions on the export of strawberries between Gaza and the west bank? How can that be justified on any kind of security grounds? The idea that somehow we can get a solution in Gaza without addressing the issue of the west bank and settlements in the west bank is, frankly, fanciful.
If my hon. Friend thinks that there should be sanctions against Hamas—I think that there are; there is international co-operation on stopping arms getting to Hamas—perhaps he could also consider sanctions against other breaches of international law. How about sanctions against people who aid and abet the illegal construction of settlements in the west bank? How about saying to Israel, “If you expect to receive the privileges under the EU-Israel association agreement, you also have to accept the responsibilities under that”?
How about my hon. Friend joining me and other hon. Members here in telling the Israeli Government and the Israeli embassy to let parliamentarians into Gaza? That could contribute to solving some of these problems, as we could speak with some knowledge about what is going on there. I and other hon. Friends here were the last ones allowed into Gaza to see what was happening, and that was after Operation Cast Lead in 2009.
On several occasions, I have asked the Israeli embassy, “Why do you not let us in?” Each time, it has said, “We are surprised you are not let in.” However, every time we try to get in, the co-operation disappears and the walls go up. As far as I know, my hon. Friend has not been to Gaza, and I imagine he would have the same problems as me in getting in.
Let us, therefore, speak with some knowledge. MPs from this country should be given access to Gaza so that we can see for ourselves whether the international organisations that operate there are right or whether my hon. Friend is right that this is all some kind of Hamas plot.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
It is customary in these debates to ask the Minister for answers or information, but I want to ask him not to do something: not to tell us how he has urged this or condemned that. I ask him and the Government to be agents of change, because unless we do something differently, no change will be brought about. The UK can be an agent of change.
We all know that the Balfour declaration was conditional: it was clearly anticipated that conflict could arise, and a future home in Israel was conditional on the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities being protected. We all know that, and we also know that there has been a clear breach of that contract.
What has disappeared from our TV screens is the daily reporting of numerous rockets being fired from Gaza. That has disappeared, of course, because it is not happening. That is good news, and we all welcome it. We all condemn the firing of the rockets, and we are pleased that innocent Israelis can go about their lives free from fear. We wish that for everyone.
What has also disappeared from our screens, however, is the daily suppression of the Palestinians in Gaza. It has disappeared not because it is not happening, but because the world has largely moved on to other issues. That suppression is still taking place, and, as I have said many times, the absence of bombing in Gaza is not the only determinant of whether there is peace.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Having visited the west bank with the hon. Gentleman a couple of years ago, I agree wholeheartedly with the points he is making. Last week’s UNICEF report showed the systematic and widespread ill treatment of Palestinian children detained on a military basis. That is still going on, but, again, it has been absent from our news reporting.
Mr Ward
That is the very point. I assume other Members will refer to the living conditions in Gaza, so I will leave that to them, but we know the situation that people face. Schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and homes are not being bombed at present by the Israelis, but can we really call the conditions in Gaza peaceful?
The international community would allow no other country to treat anybody the way Israel treats the Palestinians. Such a country would be ostracised and treated as a pariah state; at the very least—as in the case of Myanmar, Russia and South Africa—we would impose sanctions. I have an online petition with more than 80,000 names calling on the Government to be an agent of change and to consider sanctions as part of bringing about a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
The truth is that, until we engage in an honest debate about why Israel is given special protected status, we will never resolve the conflict.
Neil Carmichael
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one useful step would be to send a signal that we would recognise a Palestinian state? Does he agree that that would mean safety for Israel and improved governance in Gaza?
Mr Ward
Of course. The long-term solution is peace for both sides. Although those who support Israel are called friends of Israel, I would argue that they are the enemies of its long-term safety and security because they defend the indefensible actions it takes every day against the Palestinians.
What is apparent to anyone visiting Gaza is the tremendous contribution that countries around the world make to support the Palestinians. However, I have to ask how much of what is contributed is the result of genuine concern for the suffering of the Gazans and how much is donated by nations with a guilty conscience because of their failure to take action against the country that destroyed the very buildings they are helping, yet again, to rebuild. Too often, it is the easy way out for those nations to say they are supporting the Palestinians by helping them to rebuild and to reconstruct, when the damage would not have occurred if those countries had had the courage to take action against Israel.
The debate is not about our contribution to the important life support machine of international aid for a stricken patient, but about our contribution, as an agent of change, to ensuring that the Palestinians and Israelis can live in peace as neighbours. Unless something changes, things will stay the same. The urging and the condemnation do not work; something new needs to happen, and I would argue that that will come through sanctions.
Given its legacy across the region, the UK can and should provide leadership. The same old responses from a UK Minister will not help—they will simply not take us anywhere, and they will not bring about change. We are no longer waiting for banal responses; we need action from the Government to show that they are on the side not only of the Palestinians but, in the long term, of those in Israel who seek to live with the Palestinians in peace, side by side and in a neighbourly way.
Dame Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. Like others, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann). For the record, I am the parliamentary chair of Labour Friends of Israel.
All of us around the Chamber have really good instincts about what needs to happen. We want peace for the Palestinian people and the Israelis. It is a tragedy and a blight on the international community that, six months after the end of last summer’s Gaza conflict, people in Gaza are still suffering as a result of a humanitarian crisis.
I would not often say this, but I want to recognise the British Government for continuing to support humanitarian efforts. However, I have one or two questions for the Minister. When he replies, will he comment on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s recent statement that only $135 million in pledges have been received from donor countries, leaving a shortfall of nearly $600 million? That means that assistance programmes have been suspended. All of us want a quick response to the crisis facing the people of Gaza, although hopefully it is only a short-term one.
Efforts to reconstruct Gaza in the longer term throw up greater challenges, some of which have been addressed today. I would like the Minister to comment on the remarks made not by the Israeli Government or any other country in the area but the UN Under-Secretary-General, Mr Feltman, who expressed alarm at the reports of Hamas rearming. He said that there were “dangerous developments” in the area. Given the general acceptance that under the Oslo accords there should be a demilitarisation policy, will the Minister comment?
I want the cycle of violence to be broken. I will not be in the next Parliament; but Members cannot return again and again to discuss the aftermath of yet another conflict in Gaza. Given what the UN Under-Secretary-General said, there is potential for that to happen. I hope the Minister—or, indeed, my hon. Friend the shadow Minister, when, as I hope, he assumes a ministerial role—will continue working with the UN to deter the continued arming of the Hamas regime.
Britain has much to do. It is a question of encouraging Israel and President Abbas; looking towards work with Egypt, the Quartet and the Arab League; and coming together to make Hamas face the real choices it has if it wants to open up Gaza in the best interests of its people. Even the Arab League secretary-general, Nabil Elaraby, said on Sunday that the dispute between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority was hindering efforts to reconstruct in Gaza. He told the London-based paper Al-Hayat that the Arab League was holding consultations with donor countries. However, he also said:
“The internal differences and the absence of cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are behind the delay in reconstructing the Gaza Strip”.
This morning I listened to an interview on Radio 4 with two mothers, one Gazan and one Israeli. The astounding thing was that, regardless of their views on the particularities of the current situation and what caused it, they both identified what it was doing to their children—Israeli and Gazan children. They both talked about its traumatic impact, even while there is supposed to be a ceasefire. Peace is not easy. It is really difficult, and we all, as people of good will, must play our part in it. That includes the UK Government.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. To allow all those who want to speak to get in, I must cut down the time limit for speeches to four minutes.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I have taken part in probably most of the debates on Israel and Palestine in the past 10 years. Some have been uplifting, such as the one on Palestinian recognition introduced recently by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris); some have been quite testy, because there are strong views on the subject; and some have been quite constructive, particularly when they were about aid. I have no pleasure in saying that I found today’s debate to be premised on an entirely cynical proposition, and quite disrespectful of the human rights of the Palestinian people. Listening to hon. Members on either side saying that Israel has kept Gaza supplied, I think people must be living in a parallel world.
My hon. Friend the Member for Easington referred to the delegation from the General Union of Palestinian Students, some of whom come originally from Gaza. They came here to acknowledge the contribution made by Members of this House to the recognition of a Palestinian state, and told us their personal stories, which included that of a young man who could not see his dying father because, like the 30,000 people trapped and waiting to go in at the moment, he could not get into Gaza. Almost certainly his father died because he could not be given the aid he wanted. That is a common story.
Despite the encouragement of my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), I am not going to stop talking about the body count. That is not because I do not regret every Israeli death just as much as every Palestinian one; but the fact that 15,049 Palestinian and four Israeli civilians died has significance, because of the disproportionality and because of the weapons used by Israel against Palestinians, consequent on the blockade. The bombing of schools full of refugees, the shelling of hospitals, the contamination of water supplies and the reduction of Gaza, such that according to the UN it will not be habitable by 2020, are factors that have not so far been mentioned in the debate.
Leading NGOs have commented on the situation. The United Nations Relief and Works agency says:
“You can’t punish freezing children because of the actions of armed groups.”
Amnesty International says the blockade
“is unlawful and should be lifted immediately and unconditionally i.e. it should not be contingent on any other possible processes, including demilitarisation.”
Oxfam says:
“Humanitarian assistance and reconstruction must be provided based on need and cannot be contingent upon political developments or demands, including the demilitarization of Palestinian armed groups.”
I ask hon. Members who support that proposition to reflect on what those organisations have said; on the fact that Israel has a responsibility, just as Hamas and other organisations do; on the fact that war crimes are committed by Israel and that collective punishment and the blockade of Gaza are major contributory factors to what we are dealing with; and on the fact that Israeli forces, often unprovoked, fire on people in the Gaza strip.
The blockade should be lifted now, under international law. That could be done, and supplies could go into Gaza with monitoring and verification to make sure that arms do not get in. An entirely false and unworkable premise has been put forward, as I am afraid its sponsors know. Let us have genuine dialogue and reconstruction. Let us prevent arms from going to Gaza; but let us not punish the children and civilians of Gaza for what is happening there.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) on securing this important and timely debate. It is true that the rehabilitation and restoration of Gaza following Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians last year has been slow, and it is important that the barriers to that rehabilitation be removed; but what is happening now is far from that, and it is vital to be alert to Hamas’s current activities in preparing to launch a new war. It is doing that by reconstructing the terror tunnels; rebuilding its arsenal of rockets and mortars and, indeed, trying to beat Israel’s defence system, the Iron Dome; and recruiting an army which it describes as having been set up for the purpose of “liberating Palestine”.
Robert Halfon
The hon. Lady’s remark about Hamas rearming is important. Does she agree that despite that rearming, and contrary to what the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said, hundreds of tonnes of aid are going from Israel into Gaza every week?
Mrs Ellman
I agree. Israel was right to defend its citizens from attack in 2014 and if necessary it will defend itself again, but a new round of violence started by Hamas aggression cannot bring a solution to a peace for Palestinians and Israelis any nearer. I call on all those who genuinely care about peace to take whatever action they can to stop a new war. That means recognising the threat posed by Iran, which is already saying how it supports a new war, and threatening, as the Ayatollah Khamenei did in a tweet in November:
“The West Bank will surely be armed just like Gaza”.
We should recognise the problems that Iran poses with respect to the lack of peace in Gaza, and the current nuclear talks with Iran should not stop pressure being applied for it to cease destabilising the region. The United Kingdom should urge the UN Security Council to pass a resolution preventing the rearmament of Hamas and starting a process of demilitarisation. Demilitarisation and the rehabilitation of Gaza are not alternatives to reaching a comprehensive agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, but they are an essential step towards that goal. Hamas aggression started a horrendous war last year with deplorable loss of life.
Mrs Ellman
I have no time to give way. Hamas has now embarked on a new course, preparing for renewed attacks targeted on Israeli citizens. That will make the prospect of peace even more distant. To all those who seriously want to secure peace, I say this: do all that is possible to stop Hamas rearming, prevent a new war and work for a peace that brings a new and fulfilled life to Israelis and Palestinians, including the long-suffering people of Gaza.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that if they accept interventions, they may cut off somebody who is on the list to speak.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It would be churlish of me not to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) on securing the debate. However, I feel that, in many respects, it is a counsel of despair, because of the propositions that some hon. Members have put forward, and because of the failure to look at the historical facts and properly analyse the way forward.
I will divide my much-curtailed contribution into two parts. Of course, every hon. Member and every person with a conscience wants to avoid a repeat of last summer’s catalogue of horrors. We have heard the figures for the appalling loss of life and the destruction of residential areas and United Nations facilities. Ordinary Palestinians in the Gaza strip are being made to pay the price for the conflict. We must look at the root causes of the situation. We are talking about a day-to-day, grinding occupation. The occupying power is Israel, which maintains an illegal and unjust iron grip on the territory and its inhabitants. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who has unfortunately left the Chamber, suggested that Israel has disengaged, but that is a false premise. The international community recognise that the situation in Gaza is an ongoing occupation, because of the restrictions on trade, employment, movement, access to medical supplies and medical treatments, and so on.
I refer Members to article 154 of the fourth Geneva convention, which refers to the responsibilities of the occupying power under belligerent occupation. Of course, the closure of Gaza is part of a long process that predates the rise of Gaza. Members who support the Israeli Government often use that fact as some kind of justification, but it is quite incorrect to do so. The punitive nature of the blockade, although it is denied by those who strongly support the Government of Israel, is acknowledged by those who administer it as an act of collective punishment. If we believe in anything as parliamentarians, we believe in the rule of international law in upholding international conventions, and collective punishment is forbidden under international law.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman hold the same view about Egypt?
Grahame M. Morris
There are some really important lessons to be learned internationally, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland and the peace process in South Africa. There are issues that must be addressed with Egypt, and I do not think that its position is awfully helpful. The fundamental point is that all interested parties must come together and actively participate in a meaningful process.
Time is short, so I turn to the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow that Hamas would voluntarily disarm on the basis that Israel would, at that point, end the blockade and its illegal settlement enterprise and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. The parties in Israel are opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, so that premise is deeply flawed. In the west bank, the Palestine Liberation Organisation adopted non-violent resistance to the occupation in 1988. In the years since, what has been its reward? House demolitions, the expansion of illegal settlements, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers, continued oppression, the arrest of children and the subjugation of military occupation. My hon. Friend’s suggestion is not conducive to peace, because it proposes only to remove Hamas’s weapons. It would not address the factors that lead people in the west bank towards violence. Let us learn from the peace process in Northern Ireland. We are treating the symptoms and not the cause. We must address the blockade, and rather than undermining Palestinian political institutions that seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict, we should strengthen them.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Any proposal for ending conflict between Gaza and Israel that does not prioritise the upholding of international law and a just settlement between Israel and Palestine is bound to fail. Indeed, the failure of the international community to halt the colonial theft of Palestinian land and to broker a just peace is the greatest provocation of further unrest.
The Oslo dynamic, which has persisted for more than 20 years, has demonstrably failed. In conflict resolution, victims of conflict sometimes abandon their right to seek justice for past crimes and transgressions in the hope of building trust and strengthening a political process that is designed to resolve the broader conflict. We need only look to Northern Ireland to see how that principle has worked in practice. Importantly, the dynamic assumes that the parties to the conflict are sincerely interested in resolving the situation in a way that is both legal and acceptable to the other party. Sadly, that is not the case in the virtually non-existent middle east peace process. Rather, Palestinians have been asked to sacrifice almost every conceivable right or claim to justice at the altar of negotiation. That has afforded the Government of Israel unparalleled impunity for its many crimes against the Palestinian people. With each unpunished transgression, those on the Israeli right are encouraged to continue to act as they like, however immoral or illegal their actions, safe in the knowledge that there will be no adverse consequences.
Palestinians are told that they must negotiate for their rights, their statehood and their freedom from occupation. Meanwhile, the party with which they must negotiate changes the facts on the ground day by day to make the realisation of those rights an ever more distant prospect. For those who seek to deny the Palestinians their rights, it is worth noting that the Israelis were not expected to negotiate with the Palestinians for the same rights. It is both impractical and wrong to expect a successful peace process to emerge from a dynamic in which there is such a disproportionate imbalance of power and in which the rule of law has been totally abandoned.
Most of the current Israeli Government—those with whom the Palestinians are told they must negotiate to obtain their rights—are on record as saying that they fundamentally oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. Last summer, Binyamin Netanyahu, who is on the left of his right-wing coalition, spoke his mind:
“I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”
For the past two decades, negotiations have served as little more than a fig leaf to cover Israel’s expansionist aims so that it can consolidate what it has already taken by force of arms.
If the situation is to end and space is to be created for a meaningful peace process, the UK must push to make Israel accountable for its breaches of international law. That means that we should be prepared to pull whatever levers exist, whether economic or diplomatic, to ensure that the Israeli Government understand that continuing to annex Palestinian land, collectively punishing 1.7 million people with an illegal blockade and systematically denying a people their fundamental rights will not be tolerated by the international community. We should also do what we can to strengthen the voices of moderation inside Palestine and to demonstrate that it is the path of politics and peace, not the path of violence, that leads somewhere. Our Government should respect the will of Parliament and immediately recognise Palestine as a state. We must also do all we can to support the unity Government, in which Hamas is to take a back seat. In fact, the announcement of the unity Government that preceded this summer’s assault on Gaza was widely seen—
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Does my hon. Friend recognise the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) that Hamas would disarm in return for economic development? That would make a hostage of all those peace-loving people in the Palestinian population who neither hold arms nor hold any brief for those who hold arms.
Andy McDonald
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and it involves doing all we can to support the unity Government in which Hamas is to take a back seat. The unity Government was welcomed by everyone, save only for Israel.
Critically, we should understand that the realisation of Palestinian rights and the success and security of Israel are intertwined. There will never be justice for Palestinians while the occupation continues and their rights are denied. Peace and security will be unobtainable for Israel so long as Palestinians live with such injustice.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
The two Front-Bench Members have each given Fabian Hamilton a minute.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Hood. I appreciate that. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann)—I hope I pronounced his constituency correctly.
My last visit to Gaza was in March 2009 as part of a Foreign Affairs Committee delegation. The visit included opportunities to see the post-war situation in both Israel and Gaza following Operation Cast Lead, but owing to security considerations only four members of the Committee were allowed to cross the border. In Gaza, the delegation witnessed at first hand the destruction caused by Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli military operation waged to stop Hamas’s indiscriminate launching of missiles from Gaza against Israeli towns and cities. In Israel, we visited towns, including Sderot, that had been most greatly affected by the Hamas terror rockets. Those rockets were constructed from the metal pipe work that was sent by Israel to reconstruct the sewage treatment works in Gaza but was instead cut up into rocket-sized tubes, packed with explosives and rocket fuel and sent back across the border to Sderot in order to inflict as much civilian damage as possible. In fact, the police station in Sderot had piles of spent missiles with Hebrew writing still stamped on the cut-up lengths of metal pipe. Sadly, it feels as if little has changed since my last visit to Gaza in 2009.
In the time I have left, I will briefly mention what life under Hamas means for the people of Gaza. One of the things we hear most about are the summary executions with no hint of due process. Hamas publicly executed 25 people in just over 48 hours last August, allegedly for collaborating with Israel. Those executions cannot be explained away as the excesses of war. Among those executed by Hamas in 2013 was a juvenile offender, despite what Amnesty International termed
“serious concerns about the fairness of his trial, including allegations he was tortured to ‘confess’.”
Hamas regularly uses torture. According to the recently published annual report of Human Rights Watch, not a body that anyone could describe as a stooge of the state of Israel:
“The Internal Security Agency and Hamas police in Gaza tortured or ill-treated”—
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) on securing the debate. As others have said, more than 2,000 people were killed in the conflict last summer, many of them civilians, including more than 500 children. Many more were injured, including more than 3,000 children. As a result of their injuries, more than 1,000 of those children are likely to have physical disabilities for the rest of their lives.
Last summer’s conflict was, of course, the third since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, and the cycle of violence was grimly reminiscent of the events that led to Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 and Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012. On all three occasions, it was obvious that a sustainable solution will not be found through violence and that a political solution is necessary. The human cost of the failure to negotiate a lasting and sustainable settlement to the middle east conflict is all too apparent in the continued trauma, devastation and insecurity not only in Gaza but in the west bank and Israel. My hon. Friend is right to warn that the international community must now do all it can to avoid further conflict in Gaza, and that a complex mix of pressures in Gaza, Israel and the wider middle east must be thought through and understood to avoid further bloodshed, and over the medium term, to move towards a more comprehensive negotiated settlement that secures the two-state solution that I suspect everyone in the House wants.
An immediate priority must be to address urgently the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Almost 20,000 homes have been completely destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, and many others have been damaged, and more than 100,000 Palestinians are still displaced. Some 19,000 displaced people are still living in United Nations Relief and Works Agency shelters, such as school buildings. Those whose homes remain habitable struggle to cope with the scheduled power cuts of up to 18 hours a day, and basic services such as access to water and sanitation can best be described as dysfunctional. That already grim situation has been exacerbated by recent winter storms, which resulted in further deaths and affected those in emergency shelters or damaged homes.
In that context, the $5.4 billion pledged by the international community at the Cairo conference last October is welcome, but it is deeply worrying that UNRWA had to halt a $720 million project that aimed to give rental subsidies to people whose homes have been damaged and are inhospitable, and cash to people to repair and rebuild their properties. UNRWA has stated that it has been left with a shortfall of almost $600 million, as the money pledged by international donors has yet to be translated into actual disbursements.
It was recently reported that just $300 million of aid pledges have so far been transferred. The UK pledged some £20 million at the Cairo conference to support the reconstruction effort in Gaza, and the Department for International Development announced the disbursement of $4.7 million just before Christmas, bringing the total amount it has disbursed to some £7.8 million. Will the Minister update the House on when the next disbursement is planned? How much will be disbursed, and for what services will that aid be delivered? Why has progress on disbursing our aid appeared to be so slow?
What discussions have the Government had with other international donors to ensure that they fulfil their pledges? The Minister will know better than the rest of the House which donors have not so far met or begun to come close to meeting their expectations on delivering aid. Does he believe that a further international effort is needed to facilitate progress? What role, for example, might the EU’s new High Representative, the Quartet or the Gulf Co-operation Council play in helping to facilitate progress on reconstruction?
As has been mentioned in the debate, donors appear to have become concerned about the failure of the technocratic unity Government, agreed by Hamas and Fatah in April 2014, to take control of Gaza, where Hamas remains the de facto Government. What is the Minister’s assessment of the scale of difficulty faced by that technocratic unity Government? What progress are the Arab League and the UN making on their consultations to put in place a Palestinian authority to govern Gaza? My hon. Friends are right that the blockade of Gaza must end.
Mr Thomas
I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, but I will not give way because of the time.
The blockade of Gaza must end with the co-operation of Israel. What recent action has the Minister taken to press the Government of Israel on that critical issue? No one wants to see a repeat of last summer, and clearly a crucial element of preventing another conflict must be for the international community to stop Hamas rebuilding its arsenal and tunnels so that it cannot again fire thousands of rockets into Israel. There can be absolutely no justification for the conduct of Hamas and other organisations that fired rockets into Israel and sought to infiltrate civilian areas. We are unyielding in our condemnation of Hamas both for the indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians and for the disruptive role it has played when others have tried to secure the two-state solution that we all want.
Ultimately, we have to help the Palestinians and the Israelis to get back to the negotiating table. It is surely the responsibility of all of us in the international community—certainly the UK, but also countries across the international community—to use the leverage that we have to encourage again the conditions so that negotiations can begin on a peaceful, lasting solution. Such a solution needs to involve the peoples of the occupied territories and of Israel, as well as their leaders. Progress on violence, on respecting human rights and on illegal settlements will be critical to building the conditions for such negotiations to take place.
I come back finally to the urgency of the situation in Gaza. The humanitarian crisis there demands that the international community steps up its efforts to get the construction of homes and access to basic services going again. I look forward to hearing what further role the Minister thinks the UK can play in helping to achieve that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
I shall begin, as others have done, by congratulating the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) on securing this important debate. I thank hon. Members for the tone and the manner in which we have discussed this very important issue. I share with hon. Members and hon. Friends my frustration in having only nine minutes or so before the Division bell rings to answer all the points. I have written pages of notes in order to respond in detail, and I feel frustrated because of the limitations of the debate. May I ask the powers that be, if they happen to be listening, that we have a longer debate on a more regular basis, such is the importance of the issue? I will do my best to get through the points. If I do not, please forgive me. I will do my best to write to hon. Members and respond to their points.
We have played a key role in support of Gazans. During the summer, the UK was one of the biggest donors to Gaza, providing more than £17 million in emergency assistance to deliver life-saving food, clean water, shelter and medical assistance to tens of thousands of people affected by the fighting. We have also played a vital role in supporting Gaza’s reconstruction. The UK pledged more than £20 million at the Gaza reconstruction conference, which I attended in October, to help kick-start the recovery and get the people of Gaza back on their feet. A quarter of our pledge has already been distributed, and we urge other donors to disburse theirs. The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) was right to say that there have been problems, and we need to make sure that the bottlenecks are sorted out.
DFID’s long-term programme of support in Gaza is focused on relieving the humanitarian impacts of the occupation, supporting the provision of basic services, including health and education, and helping local businesses to grow and provide jobs.
Mr Ellwood
I cannot give way because I need time to answer the questions. Let us have the debate in the Chamber, give me half an hour to reply, and I will be happy to give way.
We are still deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation, which has continued to deteriorate, as hon. Members have implied. Thousands of families still do not have homes to return to. The UK is working closely with international partners to support the work of the Gaza reconstruction mechanism, which was created to facilitate the importation of vital construction materials, and is providing £500,000 in support.
We continue to stress to the Israeli authorities the damage that their restrictions are doing to ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. We are clear that supporting legal trade for Gazans is firmly in Israel’s long-term interests. We are concerned about the closure of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Indeed, let us open the other crossing. The Rafah crossing is a pedestrian crossing that needs to be converted into a wider one for vehicles. The Kerem Shalom crossing could be expanded, and Erez is another one that needs to be widened. We continue to raise those important points not only with the Israelis, but with the Egyptian Government, who are central in bringing together the parties to get the negotiations restarted.
We firmly believe that ending the cycle of violence in Gaza is in the interests of all parties. Last summer, Israelis lived in fear of indiscriminate rocket strikes and terror attacks. That is clearly not acceptable and we deplore the terrorist tactics of Hamas. The people of Israel have the right to live without constant fear for their security, just as the people of Gaza have the right to live safely in peace. We are deeply concerned by reports that militant groups within Gaza are re-arming and re-digging tunnels. That will not deliver peace to the people of Gaza. Only a durable ceasefire can offer that. The UK will do all that it can to support efforts towards that goal.
Last year, we worked hard with international partners to bring a ceasefire about, and we came close before things unravelled in April. We urge the parties to resume negotiations to reach a comprehensive agreement that tackles the underlying causes of the conflict. Such an agreement should ensure that Hamas and other militant groups permanently end rocket fire and other attacks against Israel, and that the Palestinian Authority—not just a technocratic Government—resume control of Gaza and restore effective and accountable governance. An agreement should also ensure that Israel lifts its restrictions in order to ease the suffering of ordinary Palestinians, and allow the Gazan economy to grow.
In response to some of the comments that have been made today, we are lobbying Israel on the transfer of goods from Gaza to the west bank. We want an increase in the fisheries zone from six miles to the 20 miles that was in the Oslo peace accords. We want further movement of people out of Gaza at some of the crossing points that I mentioned. We also want Israel involved in longer-term strategic measures such as power, water and exports.
I have personally lobbied Federica Mogherini. She and others in the European Union could promote the idea of getting the marina working. Let us have an umbilical cord going from Gaza to the EU via Cyprus, which is secure, with the agreement of the Israelis. Such an EU contribution would be very helpful indeed. Unfreezing the tax revenues, which are causing such problems with funding at the moment, would also help.
We are lobbying the Palestinians. We are certainly disappointed about the political stalemate between Fatah and Hamas, and we would encourage the Palestinian Authority to increase their footprint in Gaza. It does require their being able to get there, so we call on Israelis to allow the movement of people, particularly the politicians, to be able to exert their leverage. We are also emphasising the need to resume talks on a long-term ceasefire to achieve stabilisation.
Egypt plays a crucial role. We want to facilitate the contacts towards reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. We want Egypt to resume its important role in hosting the talks that began in Cairo.
Mr Ellwood
I am afraid I will not give way. I hope the hon. Gentleman understands why.
In the short time that I have left, I will try to respond to some of the points that were made. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) took a step back and talked about the general plight of what is going on in Gaza. What we see is a tragedy in one of the most populated areas of the world, with 57% of the population suffering food insecurity and 80% reliant on aid. Such numbers suggest that that is exactly where terrorism can be incubated, when so many people are so poor. It must be in everybody’s interest to make sure that we tackle that.
The hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) talked about events that are no longer on our television screens. He is right to say that. They are not on TV at the moment, but we do not want to go around this buoy again. We do not want to see another Operation Cast Lead or another Operation Protective Edge. We do not want to see such conflicts again. Yet, what we are not seeing on our TV screens—this has been illustrated today—is the tunnels being built, the salaries not being paid and the taxes not being collected. It also seems that settlements are still being built. We have seen on previous occasions that those ingredients could be leading us into a very dangerous place. We need to recognise that and work together to prevent repeating history.
The right hon. Member for Stirling (Dame Anne McGuire) talked about funding, which I have touched on. It is important to get the funding streams working. The UN representative talked about the re-arming and dangerous developments that are taking place. I met Nabil Elaraby, Secretary-General of the Arab League, last week in Washington.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
Order. I will give the Minister two seconds to finish, or we can come back after the Division.
Mr Ellwood
I would like to say so much, but I am being denied. I hope we can continue this debate. I thank hon. Members for their contributions.
Transport Infrastructure (West and South Cumbria)
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I am reassured that this Minister is responding to the debate and feel completely assured of a sympathetic hearing. I know he understands the issues at hand and I look forward to his response.
The issues that I wish to raise are incredibly and genuinely important. Plenty of my constituents will currently be sitting in their cars on congested roads not fit for purpose or be crammed into trains that are full to bursting. This is a daily occurrence for many in west and south Cumbria who are simply trying to get to and from work.
West Cumbria and the whole Cumbrian industrial economic crescent, which stretches north to south, has the potential to be an engine for substantial economic growth for the region and for the country as a whole, but the current infrastructure is already creaking under the strain. Nowhere is this issue more visible than on the A595 from Barrow to Carlisle. This key artery for the economy of the north-west is simply not fit for purpose in its current state. I shall set out the irrefutable case for significant Government investment in the A595 to ensure that Cumbria’s economic potential can be realised.
Earlier this month, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport outlining these issues, and I want to expand on them. I should be grateful if the Minister outlined the Government’s position on investment in this critical piece of road infrastructure.
The A595 is an 85-mile carriageway extending from the Dalton-in-Furness bypass in the south to Carlisle in the north. The vast majority of the road is single carriageway, with only a few examples of dual carriageway along the route. The road around Whitehaven, which is also served by the A595, was designated a trunk road in 1946, but was de-trunked in 1998, apart from an 18-mile section between Clifton and Calderbridge, and from Sellafield to the A66. The road carries over 10,000 vehicles each day, including those on a large number of inevitable, unavoidable work-based trips. It is the main route for people travelling to and from Sellafield, a site of incredible national importance. At shift change, twice a day, it is not unusual to see around 10 miles of tailbacks, with people sitting in their cars for hours. The chaos this causes to emergency services, schools, and more, is palpable and clearly understandable to all hon. Members here.
The road simply cannot cope with the volume of traffic it currently carries, and this situation will only get worse as our local economic plans accelerate. One section of the road to the south of Whitehaven is ranked as the 10th least reliable road within the north Pennines route, and according to the Highways Agency three sections of the A595 rank in the 100 least reliable roads in the whole country. There is also a large number of collisions on the A595. The route is in the top fifth of routes with the highest rates of injury from collisions.
Given the rurality of the region, with pockets of urban populations linked by the A595, many people rely on the road, but it just is not fit for purpose. On 14 April 2014, the then Minister of State for Disabled People, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), following a visit to Sellafield, wrote to the Minister’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), decrying the state of the A595, saying:
“This congestion causes significant issues for the site, its employees and the local community alike and will only get worse.”
He concluded:
“I would encourage the Department for Transport to facilitate action in this area.”
That Minister’s letter represented an unusual, unexpected, but welcome intervention and he has my full support on this issue. I have not seen the Government’s reply to the Minister, but I should be grateful if the Minister undertook to furnish me with a copy of that response.
In his letter, the Minister stated:
“We have seen the potential of major transport infrastructure projects to promote economic regeneration in east London following the 2012 Olympics.”
The incoming investment to west and south-west Cumbria is on an Olympic scale—potentially greater—and it demands Olympic ambition for the infrastructure that will serve it. As I have set out, the current infrastructure is woefully inadequate.
A technical annex to a Highways Agency report estimates that by 2031 there will be substantial growth in the area. In Allerdale, Barrow-in-Furness and Copeland combined, 14,000 new jobs will be created, with an additional 12,000 new homes created as a result. Local economic development agencies, such as Britain’s Energy Coast, estimate that many more thousands of jobs will be created, in excess of the 14,000. In any event, there will be an influx of tens of thousands of new workers, with the associated increase in vehicle trips and strain upon the road network. The increased industrial activity will see more freight on the roads. Without improvements, the network will grind to a halt.
The Highways Agency’s “North Pennines Route Strategy Evidence Report” states:
“Certain specific developments provide specific operational challenges, for example on the A595 in Copeland”—
my constituency—
“traffic associated with operations at Sellafield, which directly employs around 10,000 people, causes significant congestion outside the normal morning and evening peak periods. The lack of alternative routes and viable alternative travel options, such as local bus and rail services, combine to result in rapid build-up of congestions when incidents occur.”
It also states:
“The A595 and A590 in Cumbria are likely to be the major focus for economic development on the route with the expansion of activities related to energy generation along the ‘Energy Coast’ including the construction of a new nuclear power station at Moorside.”
I expect that my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness will talk about stress on the roads in relation to the huge development that he has helped to secure in his constituency, too.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
I fully support the hon. Gentleman’s arguments. Cumbria desperately needs some real infrastructure spending internally, although we have good communications going out. Does he agree that the A595 going up to Carlisle is equally important for the development of Carlisle? If there were better connectivity between the east and the west, that would be good not just for economic development but for the health economy.
Mr Reed
It is absolutely in the best interests of Carlisle to develop the A595. Considering that we have all worked on a cross-party basis for many years to try to get the airport developed there, it needs to be served by good road infrastructure, otherwise the benefits from it will be not what they should. I will come on to the health service in due course.
In reality, more than 10,000 people work on the Sellafield site, and it will soon be one of the biggest construction sites in Europe as decommissioning progresses, whether or not new missions are secured. The report goes on to state:
“Without any interventions, planned development is likely to result in further deterioration in network performance.”
The case for investment to upgrade the A595 is overwhelming. It is undeniably in the national interest, and the Government should recognise that fact and act accordingly. In less than a fortnight, a petition arranged by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness has gathered well over 1,000 signatures. It calls for investment, and more people add their support daily. A few testimonies from the many people who have signed the petition show just how much of an impact the A595 has on their daily lives. One person said:
“I am the manager of a health centre and cannot get to work by any other road. When it blocks, we cannot get essential staff to work. When this happens, our patients are affected.”
Another said:
“Every day my travel to work of 17 miles exceeds one hour, ten minutes.”
I would like to see people in London put up with that kind of delay. Another simply added:
“Something needs to be done.”
My constituents rightly demand that the Government take a lead on this matter. As I have repeatedly said, this infrastructure is of national importance and the economic case is indisputable. West Cumbria can be a world leader when it comes to the creation of skilled jobs, and we are already hugely significant in that regard. Imminent inward investment from around the world means that our position as a global centre of excellence will be not only maintained but enhanced. Our vision is to become a global centre of nuclear excellence and through that to diversify and grow the economy through spin-outs, but the only way we can realise that potential is to have the infrastructure in place to support the growth and make it stick. It is a clear example of where a return on investment would greatly outweigh any initial costs and would improve the lives of many thousands of people.
So far I have spoken mainly about the economic benefits of new investment in the A595 and the economic cost of inaction, but a failure to invest would have wider ramifications, not least for health care, as the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) pointed out. There is great strain on ambulance services in the region, but North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust envisages more patient transfers in the coming years. The journey time between West Cumberland hospital in Whitehaven and the Cumberland infirmary is already upwards of two hours bed to bed. As congestion worsens, that travel time is set to deteriorate further. Without investment in the A595, there will be serious ramifications for the health of my constituents, and that is unacceptable. It is also a key reason why patient services should not be further stripped from the West Cumberland hospital. This is not the place to air those issues, but let me be absolutely clear: there must be no further erosion of services at the West Cumberland hospital and no more unjustifiable transfers of services from Whitehaven to Carlisle. Not even the best road in the world would be capable of shortening the 42 miles between the two hospitals. No road upgrade could ever justify further service erosion.
In west Cumbria, we are building a 21st-century economy on 19th-century infrastructure. By failing to act, any Government would be knowingly acting against the economic interests of the region and the country as a whole. Cumbria simply cannot reach its full potential if we do not have the roads to enable us to achieve our ambitions and to make the unprecedented investments coming our way stick. The ambition of west Cumbria is there. It is manifest in our community spirit, our ambition and our determination, all of which bind our local economic ambitions—north, east, west and south.
Will the Minister make a commitment to undertake a feasibility study of what improvements will be necessary to cope with future economic developments in the area and future demands on the road network? The scope of that work need cover not simply road improvements but how more Sellafield workers, for instance, could be located away from the Sellafield site in Whitehaven town centre and right across Copeland in new office buildings, thereby achieving town centre regeneration and reducing site risk and road congestion. Will he also give a commitment to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness to discuss the issues in more detail? The Minister is usually amenable, and I know that he is a committed and passionate public servant when it comes to dealing with requests from all parts of the House.
In west and south-west Cumbria, we are about to receive the single largest private sector investment we have ever seen. It has been hard won over many years, and it has not happened by accident. These are once-in-a-generation investments, and every opportunity must be seized. West Cumbria’s best days are ahead of us, but we can only reach our true potential if significant improvements are made to the A595. These are not tiresome partisan issues, but issues of national strategic importance. Will the Minister back our drive for growth?
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
If the hon. Gentleman has permission, he can make a speech.
Mr Jamie Reed
The fault is mine, Mr Hood. I gave my permission a long time ago.
Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)
That has just been brought to my attention. I call John Woodcock.
John Woodcock
Thank you for your forbearance, Mr Hood. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I know that you must particularly look forward to these debates on A roads. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) on securing this debate and on leading the campaign on the A595 with such energy. It is an urgent issue. My hon. Friend put the case so well, but for a couple of minutes I will add a few brief points.
Nearly 400 people travel from my constituency to Sellafield every day. As the area realises its ambition to become a global centre of nuclear excellence alongside the building of a new nuclear submarine fleet in Barrow-in-Furness, it will become an extraordinary powerhouse of nuclear expertise. As the travel-to-work area spans that geographic footprint, there will be much greater use of the A road in both directions, yet parts of it are barely worth calling a road. There is an infamous bit in my constituency that is literally a farmyard. If the Minister has time, I urge him to watch the videos that intrepid safety campaigners in the Kirkby area have made. For drivers on this stretch of road, it is an almost daily occurrence to see huge juggernauts coming towards them with, at points, no way around.
We have seen 18 deaths and 550 injuries on the road in the past five years, but there has been no upgrade in spending, which is vitally needed. We need better public transport and transport infrastructure investment that matches both the scale and ambition of the growth and the amount of value that will be added to the UK economy—not just the economy of our area. I want much better engagement from the train companies and the Government for park and ride schemes in Askam or Broughton going up to Sellafield and the new Moorside sites, but that cannot come at the expense of the investment that is so clearly needed. We are not asking for all the money up front, right now. All we have asked for in writing is for the Government to pay for the feasibility study. Will the Minister confirm that they will do that? If his view is that there should be a bridge across the Duddon, say that now. We need an option, and it needs to be properly looked at. We need the money for the study.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)
It is a great pleasure to be able to respond to this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) on securing it. I worked with him when I was an energy Minister, particularly on nuclear issues, given his commitment to and expertise in that area. That is not irrelevant to this debate, as he made clear in his contribution. The growth in demand from the investment in Sellafield will undoubtedly have an effect on the volume and character of traffic. It is important that the infrastructural investment in nuclear power be matched by infrastructural investment of other kinds to make that economic regeneration as meaningful as it can be. I welcome the contributions of the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) and my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), who have highlighted the wider effect that such investment might have on their localities.
Given that we are discussing a part of the country that boasts our splendid Lake district, some may have expected me to quote one of the Lake poets, but I am not a predictable Minister. The only thing predictable about me is that I will quote a poet, but it is not going to be a Lake poet; it is going to be W. B. Yeats. When I think of the Lake district, I think of Yeats and “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”:
“I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.”
As the hon. Member for Copeland spoke, I thought of that glorious part of the country. Because it is glorious, it attracts a considerable volume of traffic, not only from the locality and not only for the economic reasons he described, but because many people choose to go there for all kinds of other reasons. I have been there to enjoy the scenic beauty of that part of the country.
With its industrial heritage, the glorious landscape is also a vibrant and dynamic place, as the hon. Gentleman made clear. I mentioned Sellafield, which is a modern powerhouse and deserves to be treated as such. As the hon. Gentleman indicated, we are planning to build three new nuclear reactors at Moorside, near Sellafield, which will create very many jobs—more than 20,000. That will have a big effect, particularly when one adds in the 10,000 jobs at the reprocessing site. In the early part of this Parliament, before I was an energy Minister, I was the Minister responsible for apprenticeships, so I am delighted to be able to celebrate the fact that there are going to be 121 apprenticeships as well.
There has been a lot of interest from companies that want to mine the extensive coal deposits that still lie under the Irish sea. Such developments are welcome. The road investment strategy we have set out is the most ambitious road-building programme since the 1970s and the first time a Government have committed long-term funding to such a strategy, and it is important for Cumbria. We will invest £15.2 billion in more than 100 major schemes to enhance, renew and transform the network between now and 2020. That will take 69 new road schemes into construction over the next six years, as well as completing existing projects and delivering on our previous commitments.
All the infrastructure I have described will support economic growth of the kind I have briefly amplified, and to which all the hon. Gentlemen who spoke drew the House’s attention. It is really important that the work we are doing, the investment we are making and the plans we are devising and delivering in those principal arterial routes are supported, as the hon. Member for Copeland said, by route strategies. I will share a secret with all those present, although it is not a secret to you, Mr Hood, as you so ably chaired the Infrastructure Bill Committee. I insisted that that Bill be amended to take account, on its face, of the significance of route strategies. As I considered the matter and discussed it with shadow Ministers, it seemed to me that unless we got the strategy right for the roads that feed the main arterial routes, we would not succeed in providing the extra capacity required to benefit areas such as the hon. Gentleman’s and, by the way, my own, as well as those of many other Members.
The hon. Gentleman rightly said that, working with all agencies, which of course includes Cumbria county council, the local highways authority, we must now ensure that the decisions made are consistent and coherent between all authorities. I was in a meeting yesterday with council leaders from the south-west, and we were discussing the A303, another of those key arterial routes, on exactly that basis. I intend to encourage and, indeed, to ensure further consultation with local authorities, local communities, stakeholders, businesses and others to make sure that the route strategies actually match the same kind of ambitious thinking, are built on the same sort of empiricism, and commit the funds required to deliver the infrastructure outcomes that service the economic demand described by the hon. Gentleman. That goes for the areas immediately adjacent to the main arterial routes, but also for the areas adjacent to those areas—a point made by the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness and my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle.
The hon. Member for Copeland will know that the document to which he referred, the north Pennines route strategy, helped to inform our road investment strategy—our macro document, one might say—which underpins the plans that I have outlined. I will ensure that the north Pennines route strategy will be used as a basis for future investment decisions. The second part of the route strategy, which details the proposed solution, has not yet been published but will be. It will be published on the basis of that kind of stakeholder engagement—that consultative approach—informed by the hon. Gentleman and other local representatives, along with the other interested parties, which will of course include major local employers.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether I would make available the response that originated from the visit of a previous Minister to his neck of the woods. We will look to see whether a response was made. If it is on record, I will happily make it available to him and, if it would be helpful, to other contributors to this debate, so that they can be as informed as possible.
At this point, it seems that I should return to the script that has been prepared for me. I do not like to do that with too much regularity, because it makes one’s contributions to debates such as this altogether less interesting and less of a response to what has been said before one rises. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman can look forward to a concentration of resource and expertise from central Government, working with the relevant partners to try to bring about some of the things he set out.
The hon. Gentleman will know that Cumbria county council has received £13.7 million for integrated transport improvements over the past four years, and £109 million for highways maintenance. Picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness, I accept that maintenance is not the principal concern in respect of the road of which he was speaking, but clearly it is a concern. Until we reach the point where we can make major new investment, it is important that we make good the highways that people use day to day. We certainly would not want to delay the necessary maintenance and repair work just because we intend to do more.
Over the next six years Cumbria county council is set to receive more than £13 million for integrated transport improvements and more than £141 million for highways maintenance. That money is not ring-fenced and the council is free to spend it as it wishes. Having said that, the more co-ordinated we can be and the more that the joint working I have identified can take effect, the more success we are likely to have in ensuring that the money is allocated properly.
Finally, I could speak about the need to integrate with rail as well, because that is a pressing concern in the locality we are discussing. I know that it was not the basis of the speech by the hon. Member for Copeland, but he has raised the matter previously. I pay tribute to him and, in order to conclude, I will commit to writing to all hon. Members present with any further information that is useful. Once again, I assure the hon. Gentleman that he has paid us a service in drawing these matters to our attention.
Bullying on School Buses
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I am pleased to have been able to secure this debate as I wish to raise the issue of bullying on school buses once more before I retire from the House. I have raised the case of Ben Vodden in the House on a number of occasions, most recently on 5 November 2013, when I led an Adjournment debate on bullying on school transport. I shared the story of 11-year-old Ben, a young student who, in 2006, after being bullied persistently on a dedicated school bus in Sussex, took his own life. As I said at the time, the incidents of bullying that led to his tragic death were reported on a number of occasions, yet, for whatever reason, they were ignored.
The heartbreaking case of Ben Vodden shone a light on the role of dedicated school bus drivers. The driver of Ben’s bus not only failed to intervene, but was complicit in the persistent bullying that took place on the bus. In the view of Ben’s parents, that took the situation to a whole new level. Bullying by peers is, as we know, incredibly difficult to deal with, but adding to that bullying by the person seen by a child as a responsible adult is difficult even to comprehend. Since the tragic death of Ben in 2006, his father, Paul Vodden, has dedicated a great amount of time to tackling the issue. He has campaigned tirelessly for greater protection for children from bullying, worked closely with United Kingdom charities and met me and various Ministers from both the main parties to draw attention to the problem.
Back in August 2010, a year after the Government released their guidance on tackling bullying on school journeys, a survey conducted by 4Children and me showed that most local authorities did not have any kind of safer travel policy in place. From the survey we discovered that of the 67 local authorities spoken to, 60% did not have a safer travel policy; of the 40% that did, only half said that the policy covered all forms of bullying and 38% said that all forms of journey were covered.
As I outlined in my previous speech, the situation on dedicated school buses is naturally unique and consequently problematic. Where else would we suggest that an untrained and unqualified person be solely in charge of dozens of children while undertaking another task at the same time? The facts of the matter are that when children are put on a school bus there is no formal supervision as in a school playground, there is no way to avoid conflict situations and, often, the children have absolutely no choice as to the composition of the group by whom they are surrounded.
In August 2013 Mr Vodden carried out his own online survey to assess more closely the issue of bullying on dedicated school buses. He wanted to discover the extent to which bullying on buses was a universal problem and to understand what role, if any, the driver had. The report made it clear that many of the problems persisted and that the issue needed urgent attention. I shared the methodology of Mr Vodden’s study with the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), then the Under-Secretary of State for Education and the responsible Minister.
Mr Vodden and I have both now carried out further surveys. In his latest study, Mr Vodden focused on school bus drivers. He has not finalised his report, but is permitting me to quote some of the preliminary results today. I shall refer to his first study as Vodden report No. 1 and the latest study as Vodden report No. 2. As a former teacher, I realise that this will require concentration as I proceed with my speech. I will not spend too much time talking about Vodden report No. 1 today, as I shall focus more closely on my second survey, which I carried out last year. Some key conclusions from Vodden report No. 1, however, provide a good context in which to assess whether progress has been made.
Vodden report No. 1 found bullying on school buses to be a significant problem. Thirty of the survey’s respondents reported self-harming, 24 had considered suicide and 97 simply wanted to hide away. The research indicated that bullying on school buses starts in year 7, highlighting the difficulties of making the step up to a large secondary school, perhaps from a small village primary school. In fact, in response to my previous speech, the Minister at the time acknowledged that that was concerning and needed exploring. Will the Minister today update me on what steps have been taken?
Vodden report No. 1 also revealed that only six of the respondents knew about the safer travel policy that all local authorities are required to have. To hear that 69 respondents were aware that their school had an anti-bullying policy was promising, but, equally, it was worrying to find out that the same number were not so aware. Many of the respondents did not know whom to turn to in the event of bullying or whether their school actually had a system in place to deal with it. Concerns were expressed about the role of the driver and the need, in four instances, for a driver to intervene to prevent bullying. By stark contrast, in 41 incidents the driver failed to act, while in an alarming 17 cases the driver joined in.
As I have mentioned, last year I carried out a second survey to discover whether any progress had been made on the implementation of safer travel policies by local authorities. Given the findings in Vodden report No. 1, I felt that it was necessary to discover the extent to which local authorities had introduced such measures and whether perhaps any innovative and successful anti-bullying systems had been introduced. The survey was sent out to 152 local authorities in England, and 109 responded in time to be included in the report.
I think it is fair to say that the responses to last year’s survey have been varied. A number of the local authorities made great strides in tackling bullying on dedicated school buses. Some authorities have displayed fantastic examples of best practice in dealing with the problem, but others have failed to act, with some local authorities convinced that no action needs to be taken because they are sure that bullying is not an issue in their area. I shall talk through a few of the key findings of the survey, celebrating the progress that has been made, but also outlining areas that still require much improvement if we are to tackle bullying on school buses and to learn lessons from the sad events of 2006.
To discover that 64 local authorities had a clear safer travel policy in place was refreshing; a further 24 had policies specific to the safe transportation of children on school journeys. Unfortunately, and in spite of the 2009 publication of the Government guidelines, 18 councils still reported not having a safer travel policy, nor any policy resembling one. Given the unique circumstances of the dedicated school bus journey environment, does the Minister agree that at the very least it is important for all local authorities to have such a policy in place?
When the authorities were asked if there were contractual requirements on bus companies to ensure the safety of their passengers—in this case, the children on the buses—108 out of 109 answered yes. I acknowledge the point made by the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk in the previous ministerial response on the issue that local authorities have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children under the Children Act 2004. For that reason, however, I find worrying my survey’s finding that still only 40 of the responding local authorities require contractors to follow an anti-bullying policy. That is in spite of all the findings of previous studies, the Government’s published guidelines and the previous Minister urging such a policy on the contractors in the 2013 debate.
Potentially, the aspect of my survey to display the most worrying lack of progress or success was the finding concerning the provision of training for drivers on how to deal with bullying. Only 16 of the 109 local authorities responding answered yes when asked if that was included as a contractual requirement. Given the clear message from the Vodden report No. 1 about a risk of school bus drivers acting inappropriately towards young people in their charge, as well as my emphasis on that in my previous speech on the subject, I am disheartened. Again, I make a plea for a requirement for at least some training to equip drivers with the necessary skills to deal with the array of inevitably childish incidents that occur on dedicated school buses.
Corroboration is also provided in the preliminary results from Vodden report No. 2. Only 25% of the responding school bus drivers said that they had received training on working with children, while 78% had not been given any advice on how to handle bullying or behavioural issues. In a follow-up meeting with the then Minister, we talked about the necessary cultural change, but we also stressed the point that when contracts were let there should be a requirement for training for drivers.
In my recent survey, only one local authority said that displaying prominent anti-bullying messages such as posters was a requirement inside school buses. However, promisingly, a few councils currently in the process of updating their anti-bullying policies mentioned that they had not thought of that as an option before and that as a result of the survey’s drawing their attention to it they were going to review the idea with the intention of including it in future plans. That highlights the importance of sharing best practice among local authorities: if one council has seen success with a particular anti-bullying scheme or policy, it should be made readily available to other councils, enabling a more coherent nationwide approach to tackling bullying.
Nine local authorities reported over 21 cases of bullying in the 12 months prior to the survey, with 62 reporting between nought to five cases in the same period. One could be forgiven for assuming that the nine areas with the highest reports of bullying would be where we would find the worst anti-bullying policies; on the contrary, those local authorities often had the most detailed and wide-reaching policies in place. That is a really positive discovery: facing up to the fact that a problem exists and tackling it means that local authorities will find out more about it. Further research in this area will be really helpful.
I suspect that the actual process of reporting is confused, to put it mildly. Some reporting will be to schools and some will be directly to local authorities, and it is not clear whether all the data ever get collected together. If we bring academies into the equation, it will probably get even more complicated. Then, of course, there is the definition of bullying. I accept that it is really difficult for anybody to distinguish between high spirits and bullying, but that is something that we have to work through.
It is clear that over the past eight years important steps have been taken to get a better grasp on the issue of bullying on dedicated school buses. From the research I carried out in 2010 with 4Children, from findings of the Vodden reports and from my recent survey of 109 local authorities it is clear that much more needs to be done to ensure further progress.
There must be accredited and appropriate training in how to behave when dealing with children, how to respond in the event of bullying and how to avoid becoming involved in the bullying itself, and it should be a requirement for all contractors of school transport to give such training to their school bus drivers. In addition, all school bus drivers should have an assessment to see whether they are suitable and safe to transport children. Clear reporting procedures need to be set up and followed. In Vodden report No. 2, only 33% of respondents said that the bus company had a clear procedure in place for reporting incidents.
Ideally, properly trained adult chaperones should be provided for all dedicated school buses, particularly on longer journeys, so that the driver does not have to compromise the safety of the children in order to resolve disputes on the bus. Another possibility is having dedicated school bus monitors—older students who step up to the role of monitoring the bus and reporting any incidents to the school; one local authority reported great success with that method. A further possibility could be to install CCTV. More protection and support need to be given to students in year 7, the group that Vodden report No. 1 identified as the most susceptible to bullying. The psychological effects of bullying in that age group are particularly significant.
There should be a comprehensive transport management approach by local authorities. It should be made clear to all students which agencies and individuals are directly responsible for resolving incidents on the school bus, and those people must be properly trained. That would ensure that children suffering from bullying, and their parents, knew exactly where to go to access help. The responses to my survey indicated a lack of joined-up thinking between the relevant agencies when dealing with bullying. Even when systems are in place to deal with bullying, they can be ineffective: I know from personal experience that local transport departments can be quite separate from local education departments, and I have intervened on occasion to make sure that departments talk to each other.
I very much welcome the progress that has been made on the issue over the course of this Parliament. My survey alone has shown some excellent illustrations of good practice across the country. Schemes such as Suss the Bus and Buswise, and the creation of safer travel teams, are excellent, innovative steps towards tackling the problem. However, we must pay attention to what the survey suggests are areas for further improvement. If we do so and continue to take action to create an environment where students feel safe and comfortable talking about bullying, to promote more holistic bullying policies that are acknowledged and understood and to improve communication between all the parties involved, we really will reduce bullying on school buses.
We can always do more to tackle bullying in all contexts. The limited time available today has meant I have focused on one particular area where we can and should make further efforts to protect our children. I hope that the Minister has been convinced by the research that Mr Vodden and I have carried out, quite separately, that his Department should look at the issue in more depth, with, perhaps, a more rigorous research base. It is a moving picture, with improvements already in place, but I am convinced that more needs to be done.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing this debate. I know that bullying on school transport has been a key concern of hers for many years and that she has raised the issue before, both in the House and at meetings with Ministers, including my predecessor in this role, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Bullying in any form or for any reason is totally unacceptable and should never be tolerated. No child should have to suffer the stress and indignity of being bullied at school or on the way to school. It is tragic beyond belief when bullying results in a child taking his or her own life. I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr Vodden in the past and admire the fact that he has devoted so much time and energy to looking into these matters, with a view to ensuring that no other child or family should have to go through what he and his family have had to suffer.
The response of schools to bullying should not start at the point at which a child is being bullied. Schools that excel at tackling bullying have created an ethos of good behaviour, in which pupils treat one another and school staff with respect because they know that that is the right way to behave. Respect for staff and other pupils, an understanding of the value of education and a clear understanding of how our own actions affect others should permeate the whole ethos of schools and should be reinforced by staff and all pupils.
To ensure that teachers have the powers that they need to maintain discipline and enforce school rules, we introduced a number of reforms in 2011-12. Tackling bullying and ensuring good behaviour in our schools is right at the heart of our education reforms, which are designed to raise academic standards in our schools.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I apologise for not being here in time for the start of the debate; there are many demands on our time. This is an important issue, including in my constituency, and I am sorry that I did not hear the contribution by the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. In Northern Ireland, including in my constituency, we have addressed the issue by working with the police, schools and transport companies, as well as with individual parents. In that way, it has been possible to address bullying on buses going to and from schools. The issues that had to be addressed were clear, but it took a combination of all those bodies to make that happen.
Mr Gibb
I am grateful for that intervention. I could not agree more with that approach. The agencies—schools, local authorities and bus companies—have to work together to tackle the problem. We revised the home-to-school travel and transport guidance last July; I will come back to that.
To tackle the specific issue of bullying on school buses, we have to track back and raise standards of behaviour in the whole school system. That has been a key focus of this Government’s approach to education policy. We have given teachers stronger powers to search pupils, removed the requirement to give parents 24 hours’ written notice of after-school detentions and clarified teachers’ powers to use reasonable force. We revised and updated advice to schools on promoting good behaviour and maintaining discipline—that advice includes the Charlie Taylor checklist on the basics of classroom management—and simplified advice on how to prevent and tackle bullying. We introduced anonymity for teachers accused by pupils of criminal offences until such time as they are actually charged with an offence. We changed the system of independent review panels to ensure that a school’s decision to exclude an unruly pupil is not undermined by an appeal process that can force the reinstatement of a permanently excluded pupil against the best interests of the school and its pupils.
In the light of evidence that showed that one in three secondary schools were still not confident in using their powers to discipline pupils, we updated our advice in February last year to make it clear that tough but proportionate sanctions for misbehaviour are permissible. Such sanctions range from verbal reprimands to loss of privileges, writing lines or essays or providing a school-based community service such as picking up litter or weeding the school grounds.
We expect each school to promote appropriate standards of behaviour by pupils on their journey to and from school by rewarding positive behaviour and using sanctions to address poor behaviour, and we have clarified our advice to make it clear that teachers have the power to discipline pupils for misbehaviour outside the school premises to such an extent as is reasonable. That can relate to any bullying incidents that occur anywhere off the school premises, such as on a school bus or public transport, outside the local shops or in a town or village centre.
When bullying outside school is reported to school staff, that should be investigated and acted on. The head teacher should also consider whether it is appropriate in extreme circumstances to notify the police or the antisocial behaviour co-ordinator of their local authority. In all cases of misbehaviour or bullying, the teacher can discipline the pupil on school premises or elsewhere only when that pupil is under the lawful control of the staff member.
We have strengthened Ofsted’s power. We reduced the number of criteria for inspections from 27 to four, and one of those four is behaviour and safety of pupils in the school.
I understand that my right hon. Friend’s constituent, Mr Vodden, has been impressed by the work undertaken by the anti-bullying organisations the Diana Award and Kidscape. They do excellent work to tackle bullying, which is why we are providing funding to them. I have been involved with the awards ceremony of the Diana Award, where I have met many inspiring young people genuinely tackling bullying in our schools up and down the country. We are providing £4 million of funding to several organisations to tackle bullying, and we are considering bids for further projects. Many parents are concerned about cyber-bullying, so we have issued guidance to parents and to teachers on how to identify and tackle it.
Local authorities can play a part. My right hon. Friend touched on this: when they contract to provide school transport, they can instruct companies to include anti-bullying procedures as part of their tenders. The statutory guidance I referred to earlier on home-to-school transport, which was revised in July 2014, requires local authorities to ensure the safety of pupils on school buses. Paragraph 44 talks quite explicitly about the training of bus drivers, which she referred to. It says:
“All local authorities should ensure that all drivers and escorts taking pupils to and from school and related services have undertaken appropriate training, and that this is kept up to date.”
Paragraph 47 says:
“The Department expects each school to promote appropriate standards of behaviour by pupils on their journey to and from school through rewarding positive behaviour and using sanctions to address poor behaviour.”
It cites the Education and Inspections Act 2006, which, it says,
“empowers head teachers to take action to address unacceptable behaviour even when this takes place outside the school premises”.
That guidance, which is extensive, needs to be adhered to, because local authorities have a statutory duty to make suitable travel arrangements for eligible children in their area and to promote safe and sustainable travel to school.
Annette Brooke
I thank the Minister for his general points on bullying and for focusing on what happens inside the bus. I accept that there are clearly lots of guidelines, but I am concerned that they are not being implemented by all local authorities. Absolutely, there is good practice, but what checks will he carry out among just a sample of them to ensure that the guidance is being implemented?
Mr Gibb
I will reflect on my right hon. Friend’s point. A number of local authorities have adopted a policy of withdrawing transport either temporarily or permanently in more serious repeated cases of misbehaviour. There are examples of good practice up and down the country, but I will reflect on her comments and this debate to see whether we can do more to ensure specifically that bullying on buses is being tackled by local authorities.
I should make the point that bullying on school transport is a symptom of a deeper malaise in schools where poor behaviour exists. I could cite the survey from schoolteachers today that says that three quarters of teachers report better behaviour now than they did in 2010, and when schools have exemplary behaviour policies and behaviour is right in the school, that extends beyond the school to the pupils’ school bus environment and to town centres. We are trying to have that in all our schools up and down the country, because as a Government we place a high priority on improving standards of behaviour in our schools.
I conclude by reiterating my opening point and that of my right hon. Friend: what Ben Vodden suffered on that school bus should never have happened. It should not have happened to him and it should never happen to any child going to or from school. Tackling bullying outside schools is more challenging than tackling bullying in schools, but we have been clear on teachers’ powers to discipline pupils for poor behaviour, including bullying outside the school gates. However, if a school’s approach to behaviour is as good as in the best schools in the country, that good behaviour will extend to the behaviour of pupils on school transport as much as in the schools. As I said, teachers are now reporting much better behaviour in our schools than in 2010, but until we have exemplary behaviour in all our schools and every pupil can feel safe and secure from bullying, work on that challenge will continue.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statement
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Powers of Entry (Review)
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
I am today announcing a new policy on the application of section 10 and paragraph 9 of schedule 4 to the Electricity Act 1989, concerning the minimum length of notice to be given to occupiers and owners of land in relation to tree felling, lopping or root pruning in cases where there has been a dispute between an electricity licence holder and an occupier or owner of land.
Section 10 and paragraph 9 of schedule 4 give electricity licence holders power to give notice requiring the felling, lopping or the cutting back of the roots of a tree to the occupier and owner of land on which a tree is, or will be:
in such close proximity to an electric line or electric plant so as to obstruct or interfere with the installation, maintenance or working of the line,
or where a tree constitutes an unacceptable source of danger (whether to children or other persons).
The licence holder must pay the reasonable costs of the expenses incurred in complying with the notice.
If the notice is not complied with within 21 days, and no counter notice is served by the occupier or owner objecting to the requirements of the notice, the licence holder may cause the tree to be felled, lopped or the roots cut back, as the case may be, to prevent the effects mentioned above.
If, however, the occupier or owner serves a counter notice, objecting to the requirements of the notice, the matter is referred to the Secretary of State to settle the dispute—unless the counter notice is withdrawn. After giving all the parties the opportunity to be heard, the Secretary of State may make an order to grant access to land to carry out such tree felling, lopping or root pruning as will prevent the effects mentioned above.
The Secretary of State has the power to require the licence holder to serve such notice to any person by whom a counter notice was given of the commencement of the work as the order may direct. I have decided that future orders will require the licence holder to give occupiers and owners who serve a counter notice a minimum of seven days’ notice before the licence holder may enter onto land under the order to carry out works. The seven day notice requirement will only be imposed where the reason for granting the order is that a tree obstructs or interferes with the installation, maintenance or working of the line or plant. Immediate entry will still be available to the licence holder where the tree poses an unacceptable danger to persons. This policy will provide an additional safeguard to occupiers and owners of land on the reasonable execution of this power of entry.
This new policy is being introduced following a review of the powers of entry for which I am responsible, as required under section 42 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.
[HCWS299]
Grand Committee
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Andrews) (Lab)
My Lords, I should advise the Committee that if there is a Division in the Chamber the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Infrastructure Planning (Radioactive Waste Geological Disposal Facilities) Order 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do consider the Infrastructure Planning (Radioactive Waste Geological Disposal Facilities) Order 2015.
Relevant documents: 19th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 24th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con)
My Lords, I will introduce the order before providing background on geological disposal and why the Government recommend that this order should be approved.
On 12 January, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change laid before the House a draft order to bring certain development relating to geological disposal facilities for radioactive waste within the definition of “nationally significant infrastructure projects” in the Planning Act 2008. Making this legislative change will help us to implement geological disposal, an action vital for both for our energy past and energy future. As a pioneer of nuclear technology, the UK has accumulated a legacy of higher-activity radioactive waste and materials. More will arise as existing nuclear facilities reach the end of their lifetime and are decommissioned and cleaned up, and through the operation and decommissioning of any new nuclear power stations.
Most noble Lords will be aware, but it is worth reiterating, that geological disposal is recognised across the world, and by our own independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, as being the best available approach for the long-term management of higher-activity radioactive waste. A geological disposal facility, or GDF, is a highly engineered facility capable of isolating radioactive waste within multiple protective barriers, deep underground, so that no harmful quantities of radioactivity ever reach the surface.
Last year, my department published a White Paper to move the process of implementing geological disposal forward. It set out three initial actions for government and the developer, Radioactive Waste Management Ltd, which were informed by a review of the GDF siting process that had operated since 2008. The purpose of these actions is to better inform communities on issues of geology, development impacts, community representation and investment before they are asked to get involved in discussions about potentially hosting a GDF. A national geological screening exercise will consider the available geological information across the country and provide guidance on features relevant to building a safe GDF. The detail of how the Government and the developer will work together with communities will also be developed. These are important and challenging issues, on which there must be clarity before communities are asked to get involved in formal discussions with the developer, from which they will have an ongoing right of withdrawal.
A GDF for the UK’s higher-activity radioactive waste is clearly an infrastructure project of national significance. The Government believe that it is appropriate that the approach to land use planning decisions reflects this. The Planning Act 2008 created a new regime for development consent for certain types of nationally significant infrastructure, such as major energy, transport and waste projects. The process is designed to streamline the decision-making process for these projects and, while ensuring there is still a thorough examination of the benefits and impacts of the projects, make it fairer and faster for communities and developers alike.
The purpose of this order is to bring both a GDF, and the deep borehole investigations necessary to assess and characterise the suitability of potential sites, within the scope of this process. This will provide a clear process for the developer seeking consent, as well as placing specific requirements on the developer to consult local communities, local authorities, and other interested parties.
I wish to make it very clear that the process of seeking development consent to assess or develop a site for a GDF is distinct from any process to identify a potential site. The Government continue to favour an approach to siting a GDF that is based on local communities’ willingness to participate in the process. The 2014 Implementing Geological Disposal White Paper is clear that the final decision to apply for development consent and regulatory approvals for a GDF will not be taken until, and unless, there is a positive test of public support for hosting a GDF at the site in question.
In support of this approach to land use planning, the Government will produce a national policy statement to set out their policy on the need for these types of infrastructure in more detail. This will be subject to an appraisal of sustainability. The Government intend to bring forward the preparation of a generic national policy statement as soon as is practicable to help inform the process of working with communities on GDF siting. This approach to land use planning would of course apply only to the development of a GDF in England. The development of a GDF elsewhere in the UK would need to be progressed through the appropriate devolved planning system.
The purpose of this order is to put in place an appropriate process for land use planning decisions in relation to geological disposal facilities and facilitate the provision of greater upfront information to interested communities through the production of a national policy statement. In this way, it will help to ensure that we are able to implement geological disposal, which will contribute to securing our energy past and our energy future. With this in mind, I commend the order to the Committee.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a Cumbrian resident and a member of Cumbria County Council. I want to set my position on record right at the outset: I think that the Minister should withdraw this order. I do not believe it is right that the Government should be able to impose what we all colloquially refer to as a nuclear dump on Cumbria, regardless of the views of the whole Cumbria community and its county council, which is essentially what the Government are trying to do.
I emphasise that I am a strong supporter of nuclear power and always have been. It would be a tragedy for the country if we were to retreat from the proposed programme of new nuclear power stations, one of which is at Moorside, adjacent to Sellafield in Cumbria. To sacrifice the nuclear programme because of some temporary fall in the oil price—and because a lot of people are talking about the prospects for fracking in Britain and Europe, which are extremely uncertain—would be to risk our long-term energy security, as well as our ability to meet our carbon reduction targets.
I also believe that a long-term solution to the problem of nuclear waste must be found. Indeed, I would like to see a massive research programme undertaken into this issue because it cannot be beyond the wit of scientific ingenuity to find new solutions to this problem in the next 20 or 30 years. However, had I been a member of Cumbria County Council in 2013—which I was not because I was elected only in the May of that year—I would have personally advocated that our cabinet take forward the exploratory work of locating a geological repository in Cumbria on the basis that it was not an irrevocable commitment and that there was a clear legislative commitment on the part of the Government to establish the right to withdrawal, which we still await. I would have wanted to put the Government on the spot as to what they were actually prepared to deliver for Cumbria if, scientifically, it could be shown on the basis of independent geological advice that a safe site could be found. As a democrat and a Cumbria citizen, I just cannot support the current proposal that the final decision is taken out of the hands of anyone in Cumbria and left to the Secretary of State.
I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, has been extremely conscientious in her efforts on this issue, and I have no personal criticism of her role whatever. The Government argue that they have given the clear assurance that nothing will go ahead without a clear demonstration of local support. However, it is clear from the consultation document that the Government issued last year that they do not regard the support of the county council as an essential element of that clear demonstration of local support. I think that there are very strong objections to the position that the Government are now taking—objections both in logic and in terms of democracy.
If community benefits, which the Government talk about if this major development—something on the scale of the Channel Tunnel—goes ahead, are to be meaningful, they will involve huge infrastructure investments that stretch well beyond Sellafield and Copeland Borough Council, which covers the Sellafield area. For example, at present there is no dual carriageway road to the Sellafield site. If there were to be a proper connection to the M6 by one route or another, surely the county council should be involved in that decision. Similarly, it takes longer to go by train from Carlisle round the Cumbria coast through Whitehaven, Sellafield and Barrow to Lancaster than it does to go from Carlisle to London, so primitive is the infrastructure in this area. Indeed, the latest proposals from the Department for Transport will worsen services on this line as a result of the refranchising of the TransPennine and Northern rail services. Therefore, if we were talking seriously about community benefits, we would be talking about how to improve rail services, making them modern and efficient, between Sellafield and the west coast main line. Again, how could you conceivably do this without involving and getting the support of the county council? It would be both impractical and a democratic outrage.
However, there is another reason why I do not like the Government’s policy. We are currently generating a very important debate in Cumbria about local government reorganisation. The creation of a unitary authority for the county is, in my view, an extremely desirable goal and would spare local government in the county the necessity of making £28 million of cuts to local services—that is according to a recent independent report that Ernst & Young has done for the county council. My suspicion is that the Government will be determined to block any efforts to create a unitary council in Cumbria and to spare Cumbria this scale of local government cuts because they want to retain Copeland Borough Council as their badge of demonstrating local support. If so, that would be quite wrong. If they are serious about this, I would like to see the Government do something now to prevent our having to make £28 million of cuts to local services, which would be devastating for libraries, children’s centres and the rest.
At the moment, many people in Cumbria believe that, on this issue, the Government are playing games to demonstrate a measure of seriousness about their long-term ambitions for a repository simply to justify the grant of planning permission for new nuclear power stations, when there is not the slightest prospect of anything going ahead or the Treasury agreeing to the vast expenditure involved. The consequences for Cumbria would be very serious indeed.
For all these reasons, I believe that it is wrong for us to endorse an order that basically gives the Secretary of State the power to do what he wants and ride roughshod over the elected, democratic representatives of the county. That is why I would like to see this order withdrawn.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, as the Minister said, this order is simply to bring GDFs within the nationally significant infrastructure project regime of the Planning Act 2008. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has had to find out the hard way that that Act, brought in by Labour in 2008, has such an anti-democratic flavour, which at the time we feared it would. As he said, the order will remove from local planning authorities and their respective communities the final say in the planning process. I find that extraordinary when we are looking at something that we have never had before. It is not like a road, which can be a nationally significant infrastructure project if the Government choose to designate it as such; we have lots of roads. A railway, such as HS2, might be one. We have not had GDFs before; this is new. That is another reason why it should be subject to the proper rigours of a democratic planning process.
Perhaps one of the best things that the Labour Party did in the previous Government, during the time when it brought in the Planning Act, was in February 2005 when the UK ratified the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, which became known as the Aarhus convention. That is the main thing I want to ask the Minister about today.
I am very pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in his place. Back in 2006, I asked him whether any of the provisions in the Aarhus convention had yet to be implemented in the United Kingdom. He confirmed that we had ratified it and that the full lists of what that meant were now available. Those set out the UK’s range of obligations on access to information and public participation. I think that this GDF proposal would fall within Annex I to the Aarhus convention. It would be most helpful if the Minister could make some reference to that in her reply.
Having looked at the Government’s response, which was handed out with these papers today, it is very hard to balance the Government’s statement that they will not proceed without a positive test of public support without thinking that the ultimate test of public support for a planning issue is exactly that the local authorities involved make planning decisions. That is why the system was invented in the way that it was: so that there could be democratic representation and people could have a say. Something as important as this is not only about burying waste in the ground. Bear in mind that it is also about the transport of waste to that facility, which will have an enormous impact.
For all those reasons, I should like the Minister to assure us, for a start, that it complies with the Aarhus convention and, secondly, to consider whether the exceptional nature of GDFs should make them inapplicable to the process envisaged by the 2008 Act.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, as a humble citizen of Cumbria, I was very reassured to hear my noble friend Lord Liddle speaking as powerfully as he did. He certainly reflects widespread feeling within the county. It is sometimes easy to exaggerate but I think that there is almost a breakdown in trust. There is a feeling that the Government have for a long time been absolutely determined to drive through this project in west Cumbria, and that everything will therefore be done to ensure that it happens. Scepticism, to use a milder word, is inevitable if you have a situation in which, under the established rules, the permissions of the local authorities—and very much the county council—were essential if the project were to go ahead. When it turned out that the county council, with its greater strategic responsibilities, was not in favour of the recent attempt to develop further research into the possibilities, the rules of the game were revised so that in further consultations it would not be necessary to involve the county council but other local authorities could be involved. This inevitably leads to doubt.
It is also important to realise that while my noble friend Lord Liddle was absolutely right to emphasise the strategic issues of transport and all the rest—just think of the A66, the Penrith junction with the M6 and the consequences right across to Scotch Corner—this has immense implications for the wider region. That is why the local authority most responsible for the wider region, since this goes well beyond the county, should be closely involved.
I want to raise one other issue that we do not like talking about. The difficulty is that if you raise it, you will be accused of scaremongering. However, there are risks in a development of any kind to do with nuclear energy and nuclear power. We are living in an absolute world of absurdity if we believe that the consequences of anything going seriously wrong would be limited to Cumbria. It would be the whole north-west, to say the very least, and would probably be wider than that. These are issues on which we need a great deal of reassurance. I have not yet heard anything that reassures at the level necessary.
We must also recognise that there is a fundamental contradiction in the approach to governance because, as I understand it, the Government have been insistent that they favour localism—and very much on any project of this kind, because the involvement and approval of the local community has repeatedly been stated as essential. Yet the whole idea of strategic projects of this kind is to cut back and streamline what has been there traditionally and was very hard won: the possibility for local communities to pursue the things that disturb them and their consequences.
I must emphasise an interest here. Apart from being a citizen of Cumbria, I am also a patron of the Friends of the Lake District and a vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks. It seems to me that these issues about which we started talking in relation to Cumbria apply to the country as a whole. I like the idea of localism but I am not the slightest bit persuaded—and I do not believe that I could be persuaded—that issues of strategic significance such as this can be shuffled on to local authorities, with their limited resources, for them ultimately to decide whether or not to go ahead with them.
Although I am by no means an enthusiast for nuclear energy, I accept that a new generation of nuclear energy will be necessary. It seems to me that, by definition, nuclear energy and its development is a national responsibility, and that the consequences of that must be seen as a national responsibility. Therefore, I would like specific assurance from the Minister that at the outset of any such project it will be considered essential to undertake a transparent and convincing national survey to establish the best, most favourable and least dangerous place in which to develop it. When that has been established, then, of course, local involvement becomes crucial.
I make my position clear: I have said all along that I have very strong views on this project. However, I have also said all along that if, at the end of such a national convincing exercise, it became clear to me that the least dangerous place for such a project was west Cumbria, I would put myself 200% behind it and consider how we could make it the safest and least environmentally and scenically damaging project possible. That would be the responsible thing to do. However, we are nowhere near that point. We are being asked to approve the means before we have had the wider strategic assurances—of course, that will add to doubt. My noble friend was right to say that we are not in a position to approve this measure at all.
I hope that the Minister, with whom I have had many consultations on this issue in the past, can now reassure us. I believe that there is widespread anxiety, not only in the county, but certainly in the county as a whole and beyond it. This is my last point, although I could make many more. If I may use the terms in this place, there is, in an authoritative sense, an intellectual dimension to this issue. Many geologists of great distinction are already saying, and have done for some time, that Cumbria is not the place to have a project of this kind because of the situation with subterranean water. There is a feeling that these scientists of distinction have never been given the hearing on the project that they should have had. Some have made their work available at their own expense as they feel so concerned about it and have put it on public record.
We have to face the fact that nuclear waste exists and there is a whole realm of anxieties about its security and the integrity of the facilities that contain it. We are going ahead to the next generation of nuclear power, which will generate more waste, so we have to find a solution—that is the bottom line—for both existing and future waste. When we have found the right place and mobilised public confidence that everything possible has been done to make the project as safe and secure as possible—I do not believe that it will ever be made completely safe for future generations—we can get into that debate. However, we must be reassured that a national survey has been done and that there is a list—preferably prioritised—of the sites that are right and those that are not, and of those that are better and those that are less well suited. That has not happened. The Minister must put us in the picture about this and give us specific reassurances.
Lord Inglewood (Con)
My Lords, like previous speakers in this debate, I am a Cumbrian, and I declare that with pride. I also have a number of interests associated with Cumbria. They are in the register, but I am not sure that there is any particular need to enumerate them now.
I am not an enemy of nuclear power. I am not a fanatical supporter of it either; I stand in the middle. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, we have a lot of nuclear waste and we will have to deal with it. We are likely, almost certainly for the right reasons, to generate more of it in the immediate future. I come from that perspective.
In the context of discussion of any possible disposal facility in west Cumbria, it is important that we stop trying to blur the issues about the locality. In my view, Cumbria County Council is right in thinking that this is a matter that affects the entire county. I do not think that you can curtail the definition by saying that it is simply Allerdale and Copeland. It may be that they have a greater interest than the rest of Cumbria, but Cumbria as a whole has an interest that is different from the rest of the country. That is important and needs to be properly taken into account in considering this matter.
Secondly, it is important to appreciate that, in the context of the immediate history, the order is interpreted locally as sour grapes. It is perceived by a large number of Cumbrians that the Government in Westminster wished, one way or another, to get their way and have a long-term geological disposal facility in the county. Having set up a system to do that, when that form of democracy produced the wrong answer, rather like a number of countries in the Middle East and further afield, they just changed the rules. That is deeply unfortunate and has not helped the progress of the debate about this important topic.
Having said that, I want to touch on three things. First, in his opening remarks, my noble friend said that this relates only to a geological disposal facility in England. The nuclear industry in this island—in the United Kingdom—covers England and Scotland. What steps are being taken to ensure that there is a consistent and homogenous process across the two jurisdictions—if I can put it that way—to ensure that a sensible outcome is reached not only for the English, and not only for the Scottish, but for the country as a whole? That is very important. One thing that is deeply felt by those concerned about these matters is that, to put it in the vernacular, Scottish nuclear waste will be dumped at Sellafield and nobody will get in the way of that.
Secondly, going back to a point made by my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, if you write local authorities out of the process in the manner that has been described, how do you at the same time ensure that that will not take place in Cumbria without local support? Will the Minister spell out to us exactly how that local support will be measured and dealt with—and at what point in the process, because that is terribly important? I understand the argument that this is a national infrastructure project and that the way in which it is handled should take that into account. I am not criticising that, but, against that background, how, if it must have local support as a condition of proceeding, will that local support be measured?
Finally, it is also important in the context of the county of Cumbria that the proposal is not a stand-alone measure; it will bring a great deal of benefit with it. Against that background, it is very important that the benefits are spelt out and fully explained in the same detail and at the same time as the project itself. You cannot simply salami-slice the bits off each other. I very much hope that my noble friend will be able to give me some responses to the points I have raised that will reassure me.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am not Cumbrian and I have absolutely no connection with Cumbria—I live in Southwark—but I support the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, in his request that this order be withdrawn. It is clear that he was speaking from a democratic point of view, which is an incredibly valid thing to be concerned about. The fact that it is Labour legislation does not mean that it has to be used; there is a lot of quite bad legislation still on the books that really ought to be repealed.
There are a few environmental concerns expressed in a report called Rock Solid?, which was produced for Greenpeace specifically for this sort of action. There are concerns that have to be answered and the relative risks and dangers, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, have perhaps not been assessed as stringently as they might have been. For example, copper and steel canisters and overpack containing spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste could corrode more quickly than expected; we do not know. The effects of intense heat generated by radioactive decay and the chemical and physical disturbance due to corrosion, gas generation and biomineralisation could impair the ability of backfill material to trap some radionuclides.
The build-up of gas pressure in the repository, as a result of the corrosion of metals and/or the degradation of organic material, could damage the barriers and force fast routes out through crystalline rock fractures or clay rock pores. There are also poorly understood chemical effects, such as the formation of colloids, which could speed up some of the more radiotoxic elements such as plutonium. Unidentified fractures and faults, or a poor understanding of how water and gas might flow through the ground, could lead to the release of toxic materials into groundwater. These are concerns that cannot be ignored, and the order needs a little more research about whether this is an activity that can be supported with a view to complete public safety. I would argue that it is not, but I look forward to the Minister reassuring us.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I am also not from Cumbria, although I shall have the pleasure of visiting Sellafield in two weeks’ time. I know that it consumes a vast proportion of the Minister’s budget in DECC, and I look forward to that visit.
My question is more one of logic. The Explanatory Memorandum states clearly, as does the legislation itself:
“This Order will bring certain development relating to geological disposal facilities for radioactive waste, and the deep borehole investigations necessary to determine the suitability of potential sites, within the nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP)”.
I suppose that my question is this: whether one likes it or not—whether one is pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear—there is a certain logic to the idea that a radioactive waste disposal site would come within the decision-making of a major project. This was set up by the previous Government, as my noble friend Lady Miller has pointed out, and taken on by this one. It sort of fits within that. The exploratory deep borehole investigations seem to be a measure on a completely different scale, so I do not understand the logic of having both of those in. The exploration side seems logically to fit far more within the standard local authority planning system. I would be interested to hear a comment from my noble friend about why both these scales of project have been put into this order, rather than just one or the other.
While I am on my feet and we are on nuclear waste, at the beginning of this Parliament we looked at the national policy statement for nuclear power generation, and it has always slightly amused me that a footnote states:
“Geological disposal of higher activity waste from new nuclear power stations is currently programmed to be available from around 2130”,
some 115 years from now. I wondered whether the Government intended to keep their foot on the accelerator on that policy.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, we seem to have overlooked that regular high-level nuclear waste is being generated at Sellafield already and plans have to be made for its safe storage and ultimate disposal. If plans go ahead to use the 140 tonnes of plutonium that have been stored up from previous nuclear programmes at Sellafield to generate electricity, as in the two proposals that have been put forward by CANDU and GE Hitachi respectively, there will be nuclear reactors on the Sellafield site using that plutonium and generating further waste. I suppose part of the Government’s thinking in having their eye on Cumbria is that this large quantity of nuclear waste has to be moved from the Sellafield site to the ultimate place of disposal. That concentrates their attention on Cumbria. However, when the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that he would like to see a survey of all the sites that might be suitable for this purpose, I was under the impression that a lot of work had already been done on the subject and that nobody had any thoughts of alternative sites that would be superior to Cumbria. I may be wrong and would be very interested to hear from the Minister whether that work has already been in train and, if so, what the results were.
Lord Avebury
This is what I am hoping we will hear more about from the Minister when she sums up: whether that work has been done or whether she agrees with the case that has been made for a national survey, which would obviously cause considerable delay.
That brings me to question of why this matter is urgent. Is it really necessary for a decision to be made now, for reasons that may be connected with the development of Sellafield, when we already have these additional reactors on the site, coupled with the existence of large quantities of high-level waste? Is it a matter of immediate necessity that we should have this GDF in the timescale that would be possible with the order and not without it? Suppose we were forced to wait for five years or so: would that have a catastrophic effect on how we dispose of the nuclear waste at Sellafield? Would lacking the GDF impose impossible or very difficult restrictions on the work that can be done at Sellafield because of the quantity of high-level waste that has to be stored there?
Other things being equal, obviously it is better for the GDF to be in the neighbourhood of Sellafield because the high-level waste has only to move a short distance and it avoids the necessity for rail facilities to move all this waste from Sellafield, where it is at the moment, to whatever alternative site is chosen. That would add enormously to the cost, I suppose, and is something we would like to avoid if possible.
Baroness Worthington (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the order and to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. We should focus on the topic at hand, which is whether the GDF, as described, should be classed as a nationally significant development project. Many speakers have reinforced the sense that this is clearly of national importance. There has been widespread support for continued use of nuclear power and acceptance that much of the waste derives from legacy projects that have accrued since the 1940s and 1950s. It is high time that we came up with a solution for the long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste.
Personally, I support the logic behind the order and believe that the wider debate about the siting—where in the country this should go, public engagement and the tests that we apply to the siting decision—is relevant, but it is not the matter before us. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, is correct that this all stems from a significant shift in how we view planning, through the 2008 Act, which was designed to enable us to move forward on nationally important projects in a way that respected democracy, but equally made it clear that there will always be tension between projects of national significance and particular local concerns. We have to get that balance right.
I will echo some of the questions that were asked about the tests that the Government propose to apply. The noble Baroness mentioned that there would have to be a positive test of public support. It is true that a county council’s decision could be used as a proxy for that. However, in such a project, which has such a long timescale and such huge significance for the country—we must look at it as a continuum from 1940, when we started developing nuclear power, to probably 100 years from now, when we will still use nuclear power—we do not allow shorter-timeframe decision-making or slightly more local concerns to override the national importance. That is not to say it should not be taken into account; it certainly should. I am sure that the noble Baroness is already preparing to respond to the noble Lord’s comment on this; could she say a bit more about that public test? It will be important.
In that context, it probably is time for a national debate. We have had this discussion before on people’s responses to and views about nuclear risk. As we now embark on a new era of nuclear build, it is probably high time for a discussion about the risks from radiation relative to other sources of hazardous waste, which we deal with, manage and store in different ways. Radiation seems to have a particular resonance in the public mind, some of which is justified and some of which is not. It is high time that we had a basic and scientifically grounded discussion about the nature of radiation. It is a fact that radiation is natural. We have evolved living with radiation; if you want to avoid radiation altogether, the safest place to be is in a hot air balloon, hovering about a mile off the ground. We are exposed to radiation from the ground naturally and from the skies.
I fear that this has become a polarised debate and that at times it departs from the science. We need to have a better understanding of the three types of radiation and the containment measures, which are very capable of containing them. We need to better understand what half-lives are and how radioactive material decays and becomes less of a problem over time. These are things that we really get to only when we get into the detail. We need to try to have a better education process. I hope that that will then allow us to have a more considered conversation about the fears that some local residents have over the GDF and the potential for ionising radiation to seep out, which is very unlikely. That is not to dismiss local concerns. There will be a big discussion about the transport infrastructure questions that were raised. I ask the Minister to clarify my reading.
Lord Empey (UUP)
I appreciate the noble Baroness’s point about getting a debate going on radiation, but we should put this in context. I, like many others, am not from Cumbria, but historically those of us in my part of the United Kingdom saw, over several decades, the flushing of material into the Irish Sea that today would be a criminal offence. We were assured in those days that the levels were perfectly okay and that neither fish nor other wildlife would be affected. However, by today’s standards, such activity would be regarded as outrageous. This is all a continuum. I support what the noble Baroness says, but we have to see where we came from. What I am saying is that, within living memory, vast amounts of toxic material were flushed into the sea, so let us at least take comfort from the fact that that has stopped.
Baroness Worthington
It is actually a matter of millennia, if you want to put nuclear into its proper context. I do not dispute that the pendulum of regulatory approaches to nuclear swings. I have visited Oak Ridge, the home of nuclear fission research, where nuclear gases used to be vented into the woods because people did not perceive it to be a risk—indeed, there is something to be said for the view that that was not a very risky activity. We have swung back towards very tight regulation for good reason, but that is not to say that that has to be set in stone and that our approach today is right—there is a constantly shifting understanding. I said that background radiation is natural to make the basic point that we as human beings have evolved in a radioactive environment. People are not always aware of that.
This is about getting back to the basics and having another look at the physics of nuclear, so that we can perhaps defuse some of the fears. There is probably no riskier way of storing nuclear waste—if there is indeed a large risk—than the way we use today. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for pointing out that we seem to be speaking as if there is no waste and that we are suddenly creating waste to put into a depository. The waste exists and it sits around the country, although it is correct to say that a large proportion sits in Sellafield. We need to find a solution, but that is not to say that this is the greatest risk that man has ever faced. The risk is manageable and engineered and we should see it in that context.
I will not detain the Committee any longer. I am grateful for the debate. I reiterate my request from our last debate that we should begin to have a national public conversation about nuclear and the risks involved. As other noble Lords have said, the issue has to be seen in the context of the much broader environmental risks that we face. There is an inherent logic behind the regulations. This is a nationally significant project and, although we do not wish local involvement to be excluded, we need to get the balance right, so we support the regulations.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am extremely grateful for all the contributions. As always, this issue needs greater debate. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, that this is an important national debate, which we cannot reduce down to one area or region.
I start by responding to the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that this is a “dump”. Such terminology is unhelpful. If we are to have an informed debate, we need to ensure that the language that we use does not generate fears among communities. Taking things seriously, we need to be able to express an informed view to the broader public, who may not be as well informed as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.
Lord Liddle
I think that I talked about—I hope that I did, anyway—what is commonly referred to as the nuclear dump. That is certainly how the local paper refers to it. I also emphasise to the Minister that, whenever the issue of the dump comes up, I point out that Cumbria is home to an extremely dangerous dump on the existing Sellafield site, about which something has to be done as a matter of urgency.
Lord Inglewood
I hope that I may be allowed to intervene in support of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. It is indeed the case that this is known in the general locality as the nuclear dump. I must put my hands up and say, “Mea culpa”, as I am chairman of the newspaper company to which the noble Lord referred. However, we on the board do not exercise editorial control.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I reiterate that it is important that the usage of language informs the debate. Wherever we sit, we must be careful that the language used is informed and does not excite people even further.
A number of questions were raised and I will try to go through them as quickly as possible but I would like to go back to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. These matters are nationally significant and nationally important. We live with this currently. As my noble friend Lord Avebury pointed out, this is not something that is going to happen. It is already here and we need to deal with the issue. We are already dealing with it in the short to medium-term and, even then, we are talking about many decades rather than a few years. It is right that after the last process came to a halt, the Government took the sensible approach by stepping back to reflect and see what more could be done to make it a better informed debate. When I looked at the process, it was particularly to see how we could better engage with the public and other stakeholders, beyond the elected members. I agree that the role of the elected members is really important but the debate has to reach much further. Those communities that will ultimately be involved must be assured that they have the final say.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that the Government do not care about the county council being part of public support but the consultation has made it clear that the detailed process of how community representation operates from 2016 will set out that all stakeholders, including elected members, will be a part of the process. They will be able to feed in and be involved in looking at the processes before any formal discussions take place. We have two years within which that process is going to take place and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is fully aware of that. I look forward to his participation in it, along with his colleagues’.
However, I would also reiterate that noble Lords from Cumbria have just assumed that Cumbria is the given choice. At this time, no community has been identified. No site has been identified and we must not pre-empt, or be premature in, the assumption that it will be Cumbria. I also made it clear that, from looking at the last process, the debate needed to go much wider and further. Communities needed better information to come forward. That is why I continue to push back when people say, “This is ultimately going to be in Cumbria”. We do not know at this stage. We have two years in which people will be involved and able to be better informed.
The noble Lord also asked whether the siting process would be voluntary and why we are taking decisions away. The process of obtaining consent to develop a site is separate from the process of identifying a site in the first place. The final decision to apply for the development consent will not be taken until—and, as I think I reiterated in my opening remarks, unless—there is a positive test of public support for the GDF site in question.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked whether I could guarantee that the GDF would be safe. She read off a number of scenarios where she believes that there is risk. Let us first be very proud of the fact that we in the UK have regulators who are among the toughest in the world. As with all standards around nuclear, the standards for the GDF are incredibly high. If we cannot satisfy ourselves and the independent regulators that a GDF is safe then it will not be built. We would need to be reassured that the standards of the stringent international and national regulations were met before we would even endeavour to construct and operate a GDF.
My noble friend Lord Inglewood asked about the England and Scotland question. The nuclear industry covers England, Scotland and Wales. However, the planning legislation—which is what we are discussing today—covers only England. Planning and radioactive waste policy are devolved issues, and colleagues in Scotland and Wales will have their own processes to deal with planning and waste policy issues in their jurisdictions.
Lord Inglewood
The UK nuclear industry is UK-wide. My noble friend fairly described the scope of this order and how the devolved powers work, but what is happening to make sure that we have a UK-wide policy for dealing with this? However you look at it, if we were to end up with three geological waste facilities, that would seem a bit foolish.
Baroness Verma
I re-emphasise that planning remains a devolved issue for those devolved areas.
My noble friend Lady Miller asked whether the local planning system was not the means for testing public support. The process of identifying a site and demonstrating public support is separate from, and additional to, the process of obtaining development consent. The planning consent process will not replace the siting process. A GDF is clearly a nationally significant piece of infrastructure, and it is appropriate that an application for development consent should be made under the system which was designed to examine such projects.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked whether the screening exercise ruled out Cumbria, which has already been shown several times to be unsuitable for a GDF. The national geological screening exercise will treat all parts of the country equally, as I have already said, and the first step will be the development of guidance based on safety requirements for a GDF. The guidance will be developed openly and—a point made by the noble Lord—transparently through engagement with interested parties and the public. It will then be applied to produce maps and accompanying information about the potential for the development of a robust GDF safety case in different settings across the country. I hope that the noble Lord is reassured that we do not focus, as he and others have done, just on Cumbria.
Lord Judd
If I may say so, the Minister knows very well that this is not the first time she has given me such reassurances. All I can say is, “We hear the words”, but it will be the transparency, to which she refers, and the convincing nature of this operation of national research for all to see that will be crucial.
While I am on this point, we have referred to Northern Ireland and Scotland in this context. However, in terms of the hazards, presumably at some point the Irish Government have to be taken on board.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, as the noble Lord is aware, discussions on these issues are always ongoing. We are always talking to our colleagues in the devolved authorities. Coming back to the transparency argument—
Baroness Verma
My Lords, as I said, those discussions are always ongoing and I will broaden them out to all devolved Assemblies and Governments.
Coming back to the question on transparency, I hope that the noble Lord will think that the process we are taking forward this time is far more transparent than the previous process. It takes into account far more exploration and discussion with a greater number of stakeholders to get a positive view of where communities lie. I urge the noble Lord to be reassured by the work that has been undertaken on the process since 30 January 2013, when the process came to a stop.
Baroness Verma
If I may just finish my point, I will happily give way. We need to look carefully at why an issue as important as this did not generate the breadth of engagement that I believe it deserves, and why there was not much broader input from the wider community. Indeed, a number of organisations told me that they had been excluded.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
Will the Minister reassure us that, as part of these discussions, consideration will be given to the fact that these facilities will store waste for a period, so that if technology develops it can be reprocessed? Many other countries, particularly Sweden, have a policy of putting the waste in rock formations. I believe that many nuclear energy programmes around the world are looking at the possibility of reprocessing this material when the relevant technology has been developed. However, there are other solutions whereby it is put in the ground permanently. As the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, commented, it has a decay life of perhaps 10,000 or more years. Therefore, an important aspect of the discussion concerns whether this is a temporary process, as I believe it should be.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, as with all these things, we are talking about thousands of years. I am sure that as technologies evolve, those who have to take decisions thousands of years from now—it will not be me—will look at the decisions that we are taking now and consider whether our planning measures are as robust as they can be. Of course, new technologies and techniques will be developed that will change the sector. The nuclear industry itself will evolve, as will other technologies that will provide energy. However, we need to ensure that the decisions that we are taking now are being taken on the basis that we need a long-term solution to high-radioactivity waste, which needs to be put away safely so that it is secure and poses little danger to us all.
My noble friend Lady Miller asked about the Aarhus convention. The Planning Act 2008 provides for extensive levels of community engagement and public consultation but it also requires environmental assessments to be carried out at various stages of the planning process. Therefore, the Government believe that the process is compatible with the requirements of the convention and with associated European Union legislation.
My noble friend Lord Avebury and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked whether geological screening was being carried out. Radioactive Waste Management Ltd has begun the work, including engaging with interested stakeholders. It will produce draft screening guidance for public consultation. This, and the final screening results, will be reviewed by an independent group formed by the Geological Society of London. As stated in the 2014 White Paper, that will be carried out over the next two years.
I hope that I have managed to answer most of the questions. However, coming back to what we are discussing today, the Committee is simply being asked to consider the order, not to approve it. The Motion to approve will be tabled in the Chamber and noble Lords can oppose it then if they are strongly opposed to it. However, I suggest that if we are to make progress in finding a long-term solution to this significant national programme, we need to ensure that we provide the public with facts and not just bear in on myths that have been peddled over many years.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, pointed out, this debate needs to be properly informed. I would be happy—I am sure that the noble Baroness will welcome this—to widen that engagement and make the debate much more informed, so that people understand what we are trying to develop here.
Lord Avebury
I hope that there is nothing in the order that precludes the decision being made including whatever Scotland decides it needs in the way of long-term facilities for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste. As the noble Baroness was asked earlier, surely we are not going to have GDSs in all the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. I want an assurance that there is a facility within the ambit of the order for the Scots to come along to talk to us about what they are doing about long-term disposal, so that we do not have to have two separate facilities.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, having obviously not satisfied noble Lords, if I undertake to write to them, that might be a better way forward.
Lord Liddle
I thank the noble Baroness for her comprehensive reply to the debate. However, I seek clarification. In her speech, she emphasised the difference between the siting decision and the planning decision. Clearly, if the order goes through, Cumbria County Council becomes a consultee on the planning decision taken by the Secretary of State—I would hope, a prominent consultee.
However, the planning decision would come only after the siting decision. I would like an assurance—I realise that it may involve consulting DCLG as well as the Minister’s department, so she may not be able to answer this today—that, if Cumbria decides to go ahead with a local government reorganisation that gets rid of the district councils and has one or two unitary authorities, they would become the key bodies that would have to approve a siting decision.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, given that there is no inspiration floating from behind me, I undertake to put my response in detail to the noble Lord. I finish by saying that, even with all those processes, it will still have to go out to the public for public support. Ultimately, it is for the public to decide.
Warm Home Discount (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do consider the Warm Home Discount (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2015.
Relevant document: 19th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con)
My Lords, in introducing this debate on the Warm Home Discount (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2015, I will first give some background on fuel poverty and the warm home discount scheme to provide context to these regulations.
Fuel poverty remains a huge challenge and the coalition Government are committed to tackling that challenge and to helping people, especially low-income vulnerable households, heat their homes. Improving the energy efficiency of homes is the most effective way of reducing energy bills and providing lasting support to the fuel poor. Our current policies are already making a difference. For example, more than 580,000 low-income and vulnerable households will be warmer after receiving measures under the energy company obligation. We also announced, as part of the Autumn Statement, a new £25 million fund that will see up to 8,000 low-income off-grid households benefit from first-time central heating in 2015-16.
However, upgrading our housing stock is a long-term programme and fuel-poor households need help each winter. That is why the Government have a number of schemes in place, including the warm home discount, which provides direct support to customers with their energy. Introduced in 2011, the warm home discount requires electricity suppliers with more than 250,000 domestic customer accounts to provide financial support to their vulnerable customers in respect of energy costs. This winter the eligible customers received a £140 rebate on their electricity bill.
The existing regulations for the warm home discount scheme end in March 2015 and these amendments extend the scheme for another year. This will ensure that 2 million low-income and vulnerable customers can benefit from a rebate again next winter. The warm home discount scheme currently assists two groups of customers: first, the poorest pensioners who are customers of participating electricity suppliers, described in the regulations as the core group customers; and secondly, low-income and vulnerable customers, including poor families and those with disabilities, described as broader group customers. Under the core group, all the poorest pensioners eligible for the scheme who are customers of a participating supplier receive a bill rebate of £140 from their supplier. Customers who fall into the broader group, such as low-income families and those with long-term disabilities, can apply for rebates through their supplier. Customers eligible for the core and broader groups can also benefit from the industry initiatives section of the scheme. Participating energy suppliers are permitted to spend a share of £30 million annually to provide debt assistance, energy efficiency measures and energy advice, among other forms of support, to help these groups of customers make a lasting change to their energy bills.
Since we launched the scheme, around 2 million households in, or at risk of living in, fuel poverty have benefited from lower energy bills each year. As a result of the success of the warm home discount, the Government have committed to extending the support to 2016, with a spending target of £320 million. This is in addition to the £1.1 billion that has been spent over the first four years of the scheme to continue support for the people who need it most. The Government consulted on extending the scheme last October and proposed some small changes to improve its effectiveness, making it simpler and more accessible. Respondents to the consultation were supportive of extending the scheme and on 29 January we published the government response to the consultation.
I turn to the key aspects of the warm home discount next winter that would be implemented by the regulations that we are debating today. First, the core group will remain unchanged. People who have an electricity account with a participating supplier and receive pension credit guarantee will be entitled to a rebate. However, we propose to change the broader group section of the scheme. We intend to introduce a standard set of eligibility criteria. All participating suppliers will have to adopt these while continuing to have the flexibility to offer other criteria alongside.
The standard criteria are based on a variation of the current eligibility criteria for the cold weather payments group—households on certain means-tested benefits. In addition, we have now included low-income working families with an income of £16,190 or less that have a disabled child or a child under five. This change is consistent with the low-income high-cost fuel poverty indicator adopted in England, under which low-income families are the largest group in fuel poverty. This change will simplify the scheme, making it more accessible to this group of customers and removing some of the barriers to switching.
We propose to maintain the value of the rebate at £140 for the extension to the scheme. This means that participating energy suppliers can deliver 71,000 more rebates than would have been the case if we had increased it to £145. These extra rebates will be delivered under the broader group, mostly focused on low-income working-age families.
We also plan to widen the list of approved activities under the industry initiatives section of the warm home discount. First, we have enabled the provision of a £140 rebate to eligible low-income mobile home residents, primarily park homes. Mobile home residents are currently ineligible because in the majority of cases they do not have an electricity account with a participating supplier. What we envisage is that from now on they will be able to apply for a rebate if they are on qualifying benefits. This will be a voluntary measure. However, my officials are working with key stakeholders, including energy suppliers and the Department for Communities and Local Government, to develop a suitable scheme.
Secondly, we are supporting the inclusion of activities that would provide extra support to low-income customers living in non-gas homes or in disadvantaged areas, or to those with health problems or a disability. Customers with a long-term health problem or disability can be detrimentally affected by living in a cold or badly insulated home. The amendments to the scheme would encourage suppliers to provide support to these groups, who may struggle to get assistance through other policies. The consultation response also set out that it could be cost-effective to target low-income customers in disadvantaged communities. If this were the case, participating suppliers could find that they were able to help a larger number of customers at a lower cost. We will also make it compulsory for energy suppliers to provide energy advice to customers when delivering all other industry initiatives, wherever possible. Vulnerable customers will be able to make lasting positive changes as a result of such advice.
We also propose to make some technical changes to improve the operation of the scheme. First, we will put in place a mechanism to apportion any overspend or underspend in this scheme year, based on the suppliers’ market shares this year. Under the current regulations, they would be apportioned based on market shares next year. This is more equitable, particularly given the rising number of energy suppliers participating in the scheme. Secondly, in the event that suppliers overspend by up to 5% this scheme year, they can reduce their obligations by a corresponding amount next scheme year. This applies to the broader group and industry initiative elements of the scheme, and is an increase on the 1% flexibility that existed previously.
The amendments to the warm home discount regulations are necessary to help another 2 million households next winter. The changes that we are making will mean that suppliers will provide assistance to a greater number of low-income families, make the scheme simpler and improve its operation. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Baroness Worthington (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the regulations. Tackling fuel poverty is of the utmost importance. It is an ongoing embarrassment for a country of our wealth and standing to have so many people suffering from poor housing quality combined with low incomes, who are unable to afford to heat their homes and keep them in a habitable state. We really must crack that.
I understand the rationale for extending the order by another year, but I have a fundamental question. We are extending it for one year. Why is the programme so short term? It lasted for four years, now for five. Will it last for six or seven, or will we more fundamentally address the issue? I ask that because either the scheme is working, in which case we should put it on a more permanent basis and assess how well it is delivering against our objectives of tackling fuel poverty; or, if we are just using it as a stopgap while we try to find a better solution, should we not get on with that better solution? That is my fundamental question.
The longer-term solution is of course both raising people’s incomes and improving the housing stock. I question whether we are getting the right agents involved in delivering this. We are essentially relying on the suppliers to mediate between those poorer households and fuel poverty. Are suppliers the right people to do that? From my experience of working for a supplier, given a regulation such as this, from which they will see no possibility of making any profit, they will simply find the cheapest possible way to comply and constantly lobby the Government to enable them to do it more cheaply and with less onerous bureaucracy on them. They will not enter into it in the spirit of asking how we crack the problem, because they do not perceive the problem as theirs. They provide electricity and gas, and that is pretty much how they would like to keep it. They do not see themselves as responsible for people’s incomes or the fabric of people’s homes.
On top of that, there is a perverse incentive. We already see demand for electricity and gas falling in this country, and that is having an impact on the power companies’ bottom line. Therefore, I worry that they will try to find ways to meet their obligation without reducing the amount of product that they sell. It does not surprise me that we are now looking at extending the definition to allow them to take measures in non-gas and electricity grid-connected homes, because that suits the business model of them protecting their customers and continuing to sell their products while meeting the broader objective.
That is a very cynical presentation, and I am sure that the Minister can reassure me that some brilliant things are happening under the scheme, but I have not seen evidence that reassures me that that is the best way to approach the fuel poverty problem and that suppliers are the right agents to do this on our behalf. Perhaps the DWP could become more involved. I know that some suppliers will complain that it is hard to find those customers because they do not hold the data. The Government have the data. We are responsible for welfare and the DWP has a role here. Perhaps we should look again at a combination of different government departments being more involved, and getting local authorities more involved. I am not saying that that is the answer, but I raise the question of how, in our attempts to tackle this distressing element of our modern society, we keep scrutinising what we are doing, ensure that it is delivering value for money and ask ourselves: is this working and getting to the root of the problem? Perhaps the noble Baroness can reassure me that this has been, or will be, done. Can she also answer my first question, which was: for how long will we just keep extending this mechanism, and do we need a rethink as to how we approach this problem?
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, in very broad terms I welcome the extension, although the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, makes a fair point about its annual nature. However, there is one part of the regulations that concerns me, and that is the territorial extent and application. The regulations are confined to Great Britain. I have no doubt that the noble Baroness will say, “There’s devolution and therefore the Northern Ireland Assembly has a role”. However, the Welsh Assembly Government have a role. Indeed, they have a fuel poverty strategy and a budget. The Scottish Government also have a role. They have a very substantial budget and are involved as well.
Fuel poverty exists throughout the United Kingdom but the area with the highest level of fuel poverty is Northern Ireland. There are two reasons for that: first, earnings are lower and, secondly, energy costs are dramatically higher. The lack of an extension of the natural gas network to very large parts of the Province has meant an overdependence on kerosene for heating. Until comparatively recently, kerosene has been extremely expensive, and electricity has been notoriously expensive for more than 30 years.
I do not have a fundamental objection to the proposal before us but I am concerned to know precisely what part of our devolution settlement distinguishes Northern Ireland from Scotland and Wales in regard to this issue. It is perfectly clear that Scotland and Wales have policies, strategies and budgets and that they are involved in this. Energy suppliers throughout the country are of course involved as well, and I understand that. However, some years ago the Government conceded that there was a gap in the system, because devolution is an evolving process. We have just had a discussion about planning, in which it was said that planning in Scotland is separate from planning in England. That is fine, but it is just not realistic to imagine that expertise in an area such as nuclear waste disposal can be devolved and spread around the country.
I just make the point that there appears to be a difference of opinion here. Age Sector Platform in Northern Ireland lobbies Parliament every year. It did so towards the end of last year and it spoke to Members of both the House of Commons and your Lordships’ House. It has consistently argued that this is a national as well as a local issue. I would be very grateful if the Minister could explain to me precisely what differentiates Northern Ireland from Scotland and Wales in this matter. If the response is not immediately available, I shall be very happy if she writes to me, as I accept that there are complications. However, I just wanted to flag up for the record that we have doubts as to whether this is something that is entirely devolved in our case. The noble Baroness may say, “Of course, if we spent more money”—and money has been allocated here—“there would be Barnett consequentials for Northern Ireland, as there would be for Scotland and Wales”. That is true, but Barnett consequentials are not necessarily spent in devolved regions on the matters for which they receive the money. To take an extreme example, if there were a Barnett consequential as a result of this proposal, a devolved Administration could spend it on transport or anything else—there is no link. In other words, the money is not ring-fenced, yet Northern Ireland has the highest level of fuel poverty compared with anywhere in the United Kingdom. No one argues about that; it is a fact.
We have here a proposal that I broadly support, but I am concerned that I, and a number of people in Northern Ireland, are not clear on why there is this differentiation. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will know, the devolved Administration has energy responsibilities; indeed, I was Energy Minister myself for three years in the early stages of devolution. I know that our Department for Social Development also has a role: it promotes boiler replacement schemes and other measures that I know are very important to people. We have had insulation proposals and draught-proofing—the routine sorts of things that we all have. However, it is the differentiation between Scotland and ourselves in particular that I am unclear about, and I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify it, either today or at a later date.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, for their contributions. I agree with the noble Baroness—we are agreeing a lot today—that it is criminal to have so many of our citizens living in fuel poverty. However, we also have among the most energy-inefficient housing stock in Europe, and we need to address a number of issues at the same time. The scale of this is huge.
To return to today’s order, the response to the question of why it should be extended for a year if it is working so well is that we want to extend it to a year but, as the noble Baroness is aware, the commitments will then be dependent on the next spending round. While we can commit to the extension this year, the next Government will have to make commitments for further extensions, or not. We need to look at the core reasons underpinning why people are living in such inefficient homes and at how we better ensure that we resolve that part of the difficulty. The measures that we have undertaken, whether it is the Green Deal, the ECO or the rollout of the smart metering programme, will all add to helping consumers to take greater charge of how they have control over their own energy needs.
I agree with the noble Baroness that we have a long and high hill to climb, which is why, as she points out, we need to work much better across government. We are working with the Cabinet Office on how we can better data-share. On her question, “Why use energy suppliers?”, the mechanism to deliver this is cost-effective. It is right that we also try to ensure that we do not add extra costs in delivery. If it is in the interests of the suppliers, given that competition is now greater in the marketplace, it will ensure that they deliver better, more effectively and more efficiently; otherwise, they know that the process of switching to another supplier is much easier. There are lots of processes going on, and we need to ensure that those people who need to benefit the most have access to the information.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that it would be better to write to him. He has laid out rather a detailed question on Northern Ireland. He has already mentioned the Department for Social Development, which, as he will know well, already offers energy efficiency improvement schemes for low-income households. It would not do justice to his question if I were to skimp on replying now; I would rather write to him and perhaps send a copy to the Committee, if that is agreeable.
Baroness Worthington
I am sorry to rekindle the debate. While the Minister was responding, I was thinking that it may be time to introduce some form of test for energy policy to articulate the impact of energy policy decisions on fuel poverty. One of the reasons why I think that might be necessary is, if we look at what is happening with some of the extensive costs coming from last year’s Energy Act—by this I mean the cost of CFDs, for example—it is proposed that those costs should fall only on consumers, not on industrial participants. I can see the logic for that, but it will have the effect of loading those extra costs on to consumers at a time when we have a problem with fuel poverty. I wonder whether we can have a discussion on having a fuel poverty test on policies. We would then at least be aware, when we decide where costs should fall, that we are not blind to the impacts on fuel poverty.
Baroness Verma
As the noble Baroness is always aware, I am very happy to take that away and have discussions outside of the Committee with her and any other noble Lord who would be interested in the subject matter. The ultimate goal for all of us is to try to reduce the impact of any extra cost on those who can least afford it. I am very happy to take that away and have discussions with the noble Baroness and others.
Lord Empey
I am very happy that the Minister has said that she will write to me; I appreciate that. For clarity, I am aware of the Department for Social Development’s role, but my precise point is that similar roles appear to be played by the Scottish and Welsh Governments. I am trying to get at the precise difference between those three. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness.
Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the Grand Committee do consider the Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2015.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the draft Pneumoconiosis etc (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2015, and the Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2015. I am required to confirm to the Committee that these provisions are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and I am happy to do so.
These two regulations will increase by 1.2% the lump sum amounts payable under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979 and the diffuse mesothelioma scheme set up by the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008. These new amounts will be paid to those who first satisfy all the conditions of entitlement on or after 1 April 2015. These two schemes stand apart from the main social security benefits uprating procedure and there is no legislative requirement to review the level of payments each year. None the less, I am happy to confirm the increase of the amounts payable for 2015 by the consumer price index. This is the same 1.2% rate that is being applied to industrial injuries disablement benefit and some other social security disability benefits under the main social security uprating provisions.
The Government recognise that people suffering from diseases as a result of exposure to asbestos or one of a number of other listed agents may be unable to bring a successful claim for civil damages relating to their disease. This is mainly due to the long latency period between exposure and onset of the disease, often stretching back decades. Also, even pursuing a claim can take some time. We therefore fulfil an important role by providing lump sum compensation payments to sufferers of certain asbestos-related diseases through these two schemes. This does not debar a civil claim, which can still be pursued. These government schemes also aim to ensure that sufferers receive compensation while they themselves can still benefit from it, without first having to await the outcome of civil litigation.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I think we are all grateful to the Minister for the way in which he has introduced the regulations today. He has talked about some very significant sums of money to assist some of those who, through either pneumoconiosis or mesothelioma, have had a death sentence merely as a result of their going out to work. I commend the Government for the uprating that they have announced today.
I have some questions for the Minister. He rightly said that Members from all sides of your Lordships’ House have been anxious, first in supporting the Government in the provisions of the Mesothelioma Act last year, but also in pressing for far more resources to be made available, both to those who have been victims of mesothelioma and for the important work involved in research in finding cures and the causes of mesothelioma.
I notice that the Government say in the Explanatory Note:
“An impact assessment has not been prepared for this instrument”.
Although I realise that that is a fairly technical thing and it is not a requirement for the Government to do that in this case, I wonder if that might be reviewed for the future, with regard to such an impact statement and assessment along the lines that the Minister has just referred to. I was not certain what he meant about the year in which he said the number of mesothelioma victims was likely to peak. Perhaps he could repeat it.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
The year is 2018. It is very helpful to know that that is the case. That seems to differ from some of the dates that have previously been given by Ministers and in parliamentary replies.
Will the Minister assure me about continuing assessments, so that when these regulations come forward—alas, they will come forward on a regular basis—we can have much more up-to-date information about the total numbers and how the trajectory appears to be working out? I hear very different accounts from people who say that, as a result of diagnosis now being made in a different way from the past, the numbers are being assessed in different ways. Quite alarmingly, we see the incidence of mesothelioma in non-traditional groups. Those of us who have represented sufferers—through the trade union movement, in the case of some noble Lords here, or by representing constituencies, particularly in urban areas—have always been used to meeting people who worked as tunnellers or masons, or in traditional heavy industries. However, there is no doubt that there has been a significant increase in the number of people who present with the disease for no apparent reason—people who are domestic workers, who perhaps have just been at home or who work in schools, and particularly people in the Armed Forces.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, who mentioned in the House people he had been at Dartmouth with and literally playing snowballs with asbestos at that time, not realising the dangers. He mentioned the number of significant figures in the Royal Navy who had contracted mesothelioma and subsequently died. One of the things that I would specifically like to see in an impact statement would be categories of workers, such as those in the Armed Forces, for which we monitored the number of deaths from mesothelioma that were recorded so that we had a far better idea of the impact that this was having. I know that there will be particular interest from a number of those from the Armed Forces who have been following our debates. It was wonderful that the noble Lord, Lord West, along with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and others, were able to meet some of those from the Royal Navy who have contracted mesothelioma, here in your Lordships’ House just a couple of weeks ago.
The Explanatory Note also says:
“It is intended that these rates will be reviewed each year”.
Perhaps the Minister could confirm whether that will always be in accordance with the consumer prices index, as it has been on this occasion.
I shall return to a Question that I raised on the Floor of your Lordships’ House on 9 December, which was answered by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, on behalf of the Government. It touches directly on the allocation of money, and where it comes from, regarding some of the payments that are made to those who have become victims of mesothelioma. During the passage of the 2014 Act, Ministers said that the levy on the insurance industry would be set at 3%; in fact, the quote from the Minister in another place was:
“Three per cent. is 3% and we have no intention of moving away from it”.––[Official Report, Commons, Mesothelioma Public Bill Committee, 12/12/2013; col. 117.]
I asked this on 9 December and I ask it again today: why then has it been set at 2.2% when that original undertaking was given by the Government? That represents a shortfall from the insurance industry of around £11 million, so this is not a small sum of money. Although I welcome the subsequent uprating that the Government have announced in the total amounts of money that victims will be awarded under that legislation, I wonder whether there is a shortfall that still can be reclaimed from the industry and which might therefore be used to assist with the problem of research.
I moved an amendment in your Lordships’ House—I think it was defeated by a majority of about seven—which would have placed a requirement on all insurance companies to contribute to another levy to provide for mesothelioma research. I commend those insurance companies, and there are two big players, which have continued to step up to the plate to provide contributions towards research, voluntarily and without a statute. They put the other companies, of which around 150 are involved, to shame but what they contribute is far from enough. It also raises the question of why more public funding is not provided to tackle the disease.
I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm a figure. The Government have previously said to me that around 50,000 to 60,000 people will die of mesothelioma over the next 20 to 30 years. The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, who is also the Government’s chief scientific adviser for health, has said:
“I hope the research community will now respond by generating new research proposals that will provide robust evidence to help people with mesothelioma”.
What I have quoted was also said by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in response to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who said:
“There needs to be a certainty that the money is there but the top-level researchers also need to be aware of it so that the money and the level of the research capability are brought together”.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, also said:
“The funding is very much there”.—[Official Report, 9/12/14; col. 1711.]
However, that seems to contrast with both the Question that I tabled in your Lordships’ House and a letter which I have received from him.
The Question I refer to was answered as recently as 23 February where, in a table, the Government say that there have been four successful applications. One of them is “Subject to contract” and the others have been successful in coming forward to tackle mesothelioma. But then there are several applications which have been turned down, and which were for substantial sums of money. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us how this therefore accords with the idea that there are plenty of applications and that they have been sufficiently successful, because that does not seem to be the case.
In the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, wrote to me on 16 December 2014, following the exchanges on the Floor of the House, he said:
“In the last five financial years, the MRC and NICR have received just over twenty applications for grants or fellowships that relate to research on mesothelioma. Of these eight applications were successful resulting in an average success rate of 40%”.
That does not seem to be a very high success rate when we are dealing with the potential loss of life of so many British people, who have contracted this disease simply as a result of going out to work.
During the debate on my Question the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, told your Lordships that his own wife had died of mesothelioma. A few days ago, along with the noble Lords, Lord Giddens and Lord Saatchi, I met the British Lung Foundation. I met a brilliant young woman who is a registrar in London. She told me that she is the only person working anywhere in the world on an innovatory treatment, using adult stem cells which are targeted at mesothelioma cells. She says that that has proved extremely successful in the animal models that have been used. My heart rose when I heard that, and there are other examples that I could cite but I do not want to take up too much of your Lordships’ time today. Surely this is how we must proceed. During that meeting, she told us that it would take £2.5 million to move from the stage that she has reached now on to clinical trials. Again, that does not seem an outrageous sum of money in terms of what we need to do.
As a result of bringing forward these regulations today, I hope that the Minister will give us some assurances that he will return to the House—with a letter that can be sent to Members of the Committee, with further written replies to Parliamentary Questions or in Statements to the House—to tell us what progress is being made to ensure that we tackle this problem at source. Otherwise, I suspect that year after year, for the next 20 or 30 years, we will be gathering in places like the Moses Room and looking at lists of people for whom compensation is being given to deal with the effects of a disease which at the moment has no cure and which wreaks such tragedy in the lives of so many ordinary working people in the United Kingdom.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for the assiduity with which he pursues the case for the sufferers of mesothelioma, and in particular for the plea that he has just made that those conducting research into a cure for this horrible disease should receive more favourable treatment. Whether that should come out of the 3% levy or from some other source is a matter that we were talking about just before we came into this debate. I know that there are other sources and I hope that the researcher whom he mentioned, who has got as far as she has in using adult stem cells to treat sufferers of mesothelioma, will be able to secure grants from one of them. The noble Lord showed me a list of other applications that have been made but which have not been successful. I very much regret that the sources of funding for research into a cure for mesothelioma have not been more forthcoming in the cases that he mentioned.
I am most grateful to the Minister for his careful explanation of the regulations. I have discussed them with Mr Doug Jewell, the chairman of the Asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum UK, who told me that the forum is pleased that the Government are raising the payments by 1.2%—the same as the increase in social security payments—although they were not obliged to do so by the primary legislation. I thought that it would be even better if the Government undertook to make uprating in line with social security payments obligatory, in primary legislation, when a suitable opportunity arose. It seems that they have every intention of following that path, but it could be an additional safeguard under future Governments if these upratings were in line with those promised for social security payments. Perhaps the Minister could say something about that in the course of his reply.
The forum is also happy with the statement that was made by my noble friend Lord Freud on 10 February, increasing the tariff of payments made under the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme—the DMPS—from 80% to 100% of the average payment made on civil claims for those diagnosed from that day onwards. My noble friend said that this was possible because the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office—the ELTO—had been increasingly successful in tracing insurance policies, enabling victims of the disease to pursue a remedy from the companies that issued the policies.
My honourable friend the Member for the Forest of Dean said that that uprating could not be retrospective to the start of the DMPS last July because it was usual for upratings of benefits to be paid from the date of the announcement. In this case, however, the initial decision to pay only 80% of the average civil claims payment was based on a miscalculation of the success rate in tracing insurers. The Government may have needed to be careful not to exceed the 3% gross premiums cap on the contribution to the scheme which had been agreed with the insurance industry, so I assume that they worked on the assumption that the number of successful civil claims would remain constant, and so would the number of claims under the scheme, making no allowance for the work of ELTO. If that is the case, and the decision to pay only 80% was based on a miscalculation, will the Minister please tell your Lordships what the levy is expected to be as a percentage of gross premiums in its first year with the scheme as it is, and what it would have been if the scheme had paid out 100% from the start? I understand that 3% of gross premiums would be £43.6 million, that the cost of the scheme as it is would be £32 million, and that backdating the payment of 100% of civil claims to last July would be £5 million, so that the total would still be well within the 3% gross premiums cap.
These regulations cover the related question of payments under the 2008 lump-sum payments scheme and the workers compensation Act 1979, as my noble friend has explained. These payments are also uprated by 1.2%, so that a person of the Minister’s age—I am talking about my noble friend Lord Freud—and diagnosed in July would receive the princely sum of £23,881. Someone of my age would receive £13,445. Neither of those amounts would provide financial security for the victim’s partner or dependants when the patient died, as they do within an average of 12 months from diagnosis.
But the situation is even worse if the claim is submitted after the victim dies. Patients with mesothelioma realise only too well that their life expectancy is limited, and one of their main concerns is the financial security of their dependants after they die. Most of them manage to submit claims themselves, obviously while they are still living, knowing that the amount paid out in a posthumous claim is greatly reduced. In the case of a patient of my age, a surviving spouse would receive £7,462. Thus, of the 3,770 payments that were made in 2014, only 360 were posthumous. The DWP estimates that it would cost another £2 million to equalise payments between sufferers and their nearest and dearest. Will the Minister please explain on what assumptions that calculation has been based? Does it take into account the substantial incentive that patients have to make a claim so that the number of posthumous claims would decline as time passes?
The forum also suggests that the DWP’s figure does not take into account the sums that are recouped when the applicant is eligible for the DMPS, which they say would amount to £960,000, making the net cost of uprating just over £1 million instead of £2 million. The argument for moving towards equalisation relies not on the relatively small cost in relation to the social security budget as a whole, but on the fact that because of sufferers’ short life expectancy, the beneficiaries of compensation schemes were always going to be mainly their spouses and children, not the applicants themselves, and it was illogical to divide them into two classes according to the date when the claim was made.
The forum also points out the unanimous view of parliamentarians and stakeholders, which was acknowledged by the DWP in the person of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, when he was Minister in 2010, that the difference in payments was “unfair and unhelpful”. He added £5,000 to the amount that dependants would otherwise have received under the regulations then under consideration, which he said went some way towards our commitment to bridge the gap.
It is an ancient principle of law that when Governments enter into commitments the public faith is thereby pledged and cannot be lightly abrogated by their successors. I know that neither my noble friend Lord Freud nor his predecessors since the coalition came into office have said that equalisation has been abandoned, but they rely on the argument that in the prevailing economic climate the cost would be too high. I hope my noble friend can say in replying to this debate that the Government are still committed in principle to eliminating the difference and that if the economic conditions continue on their present trajectory, they will do so if they remain in office after the election.
Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, as a former president of the TUC, I reiterate the tribute to the trade union movement for its identification and campaigning on this issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has mentioned, it was a tremendously long time after the start of the trade unions’ campaign before there was any official recognition. I also speak having had a sister-in-law who died of mesothelioma. I am currently the chair of the oversight committee of the mesothelioma fund. The fund was set up after debate by this Parliament and is a matter for congratulation on all sides. I will not say too much about the work of that committee as I am not sure how appropriate that is.
I will say something first about the non-traditional industries that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned. It would not be appropriate for the oversight committee to take responsibility for this, but the DWP could undertake more publicity about the so-called non-traditional industries. I will mention jewellery repairs as an example that may surprise some. In the old days, particularly in the big centres where there was a jewellery quarter, the glossy shops would take the jewellery that needed repairing off to somewhere else. There would be asbestos benches and the workers would sit with their chin virtually on the bench, scraping grooves into the asbestos to put the mould in so that they could secure the jewellery. Some people worked in these sorts of surroundings for years, but it may not have been an obvious area for others to identify what was wrong with them. They therefore may not know that the disease could have happened as a result of their work in the 1950s and 1960s. In some of the non-traditional industries there was consistent exposure to asbestos but it is not so well known as in some of the traditional industries.
Often when people worked in factories, they were called, for instance, warehousemen. That covered a multitude of sins in the 1950s and 1960s. They were not always warehousemen at all; sometimes they swept up pure asbestos from factory floors. The term “warehouseman” was simply a designation of the grade or the pay rather than an accurate job description. We were all a bit more casual about job descriptions in those days, compared with the rather minute detail that we seem to go into now. Again, it would be useful if some publicity could be given to the fact that job descriptions did not always accurately describe the work that was done. Some publicity by the DWP would be very welcome.
One of the awful things about this dreadful disease is that by the time it is diagnosed people are sometimes so ill, and their families so upset, that the last thing they think of doing is filling in a form. I know that we are supposed to live in a “compensation culture” age, although personally I do not believe that, but some of these families have to be dragged kicking and screaming to fill in a form when all they want to do is think about their loved one. Any publicity or ease of access into the system that the DWP can provide would perform a genuinely good social service.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of these regulations, and all noble Lords who have spoken. It is a privilege to be gathered with the same cast of people with whom we have debated these issues over the past couple of years. This is a terribly cruel disease. Some of the stories that we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lady Donaghy, which reminded us of the ways people contracted these conditions, should give us pause for thought about what we are missing today. As the Minister has indicated, there is no requirement to uprate these payments. We welcome the uprating by 1.2%, particularly since it is broadly in line with increases to some other social security disability benefits and industrial disablement benefits.
The point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on whether the Government would consider putting these upratings on to a statutory footing, was also raised by my honourable friend Kate Green when these regulations were considered in another place. As she noted when the regulations were considered last year in a Delegated Legislation Committee in another place, the then Minister for Disabled People said that the Government were actively reviewing the way that the uprating could be done. Kate Green asked how that was getting on. The answer she got this year was that the matter was still under review. Could the Minister tell the Committee something about the nature of that review and how much longer it might take? Could he share the barriers found during the past year to putting this uprating on a statutory footing in the way described by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury? Has the Minister any sense of the timescale for when that might be resolved?
Secondly, I want to revisit the question of differential treatment of dependants and sufferers under the scheme, also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. This came up when these regulations were being uprated last year. Dependants receive lower awards than sufferers in these two schemes, in three broad ways. The cut-off age for dependants to be in receipt of an award is 67 for dependants, compared with 77 for in-life claims. Some in-life claimants can receive a 10% enhancement under the 1979 scheme, although not, I acknowledge, under the 2008 scheme.
Awards for sufferers are also set at a higher level than those for dependants. As we discussed last year, that is at odds with the treatment of civil claims for mesothelioma compensation in the courts, where dependants receive higher awards. Because sufferers live for such a short time, as the Minister acknowledged, this can become a real problem. I very much agree with my noble friend Lady Donaghy about the fact that when someone is diagnosed, often the last thing that people want to do is spend the little bit of time left to them having to worry about money. Because the awards are lower to dependants, though, there could be pressure on a sufferer to spend that bit of time trying to sort out a claim because they are worried about what will happen to their dependants. Because the amount is lower if the claim does not get in before they die, that can add to the pressure on them. Have the Government been able to think any more about that?
As was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, when my noble friend Lord McKenzie was the Minister in 2010 he began to eliminate that difference in treatment and began to work towards equalising payments for dependants and sufferers. However, there has been no progress since then in narrowing the gap. When we debated the uprating last year, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, said that the Government were also keeping this issue under review. I had hoped that the Minister would come back to it. Perhaps he can tell us how that review is going: is there any intention to revisit it? Since he told us that we are now looking at deaths from mesothelioma peaking in 2018, the amount of time for this to be addressed is beginning to run out. Can the Minister tell us anything today?
Finally, before I come on to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I have a brief question about education. When the noble Lord, Lord Freud, wrote last year after our uprating discussion to all of us who had contributed to the debates, he mentioned an awareness-raising campaign due to launch in Autumn 2014 with a budget of £1.3 million. He also kindly gave details about what the campaign would cover and how it would be run. Will the Minister update the Committee as to whether the campaign was launched and is proceeding in line with the information given in that letter a year ago? How will the campaign be evaluated and will the evaluation be published?
I turn to the Mesothelioma Act 2014 and the important points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. The question of 3% is very important. We spent a huge amount of time in this House at every stage when the Bill was going through discussing the appropriate level. We negotiated in careful detail about the amount of the levy, who would be covered, what the backdating period would be and the levels of the payment. We were absolutely reassured that that was the most that could possibly be afforded. So be it.
When the Bill then went to another place, the amount of compensation was raised from 75% to 80%, which was very welcome, but the question of the level of the levy was raised then. On Report in another place, my honourable friend Kate Green moved an amendment to enshrine the 3% in law. The response given by the then Minister for Disabled People was:
“Three per cent. is 3% and we have no intention of moving away from it”.––[Official Report, Commons, Mesothelioma Public Bill Committee, 12/12/2013; col. 117.]
and that the amendment was therefore unnecessary.
Now, of course, the amount has come out at 2.2%. When the order was debated in another place, the Minister said that it is not a target, it is a cap. What has happened to move from what was clearly a flat 3% to something that becomes a cap, not a target, in the intervening period? One indication being given, as has been suggested, is that the take-up rate is lower than expected. I very much hope that the Minister can give us some information to help us to understand why the take-up rate is so low and what action the Government are taking to look into either the success rate or the coverage, the reach, being taken into non-traditional areas—a point made by my noble friend Lady Donaghy. That would be very helpful.
If more money is available, there are plenty of ways in which it could be spent, which were pushed for when the Bill was going through Parliament but we were told that the money was not there. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, made a point about research, to which he has returned more than once on the Floor of the House. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, made a point about entry. There was much pressure on the Government at the time to backdate claims to earlier than 25 July 2012, which was the date eventually settled on. Did the Government consider that?
I echo the request from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lady Donaghy for more information about what is happening. If the Minister can give information about the categories of workers affected, can he also give us further information about those who were not workers at all, whom we discussed at length, such as spouses? There was much discussion when the Bill was going through of spouses who had contracted mesothelioma from washing the overalls and work clothes of people of people who contracted it, but who were not covered because they were not workers. Is there any more information about that? I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their helpful contributions to the debate. The Government recognise that the two schemes form an important part of the support available to sufferers of mesothelioma and certain other dust-related diseases, and the regulations will ensure that the value of those schemes is maintained. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, there is no statutory liability to uprate them but, like other noble Lords, I am pleased that this has been managed this year as it was last year.
Let me try to deal with the many valid points raised. In so far as I cannot supply information, or if I miss anything, I will ensure that we write to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate. I will try to take the points in the order in which they were raised.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his support and acknowledgement of the assistance that we have provided. We believe that the impact will be greatest in 2018. That is our best information but we will double check that, and will certainly write to noble Lords if that is inaccurate. We do not intend to make an annual impact assessment but we will look at whether it is possible. We certainly will have access to the indication of the estimates of the people who are likely to contract the disease, and I hope that we are able to do something around those in terms of the increase as it comes each year—hopefully, it will—to indicate that in some sort of impact assessment.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for intimating that at least the proposal will be looked at. It is pretty clear from all the interventions that have been made in these proceedings that it would be incredibly helpful if a narrative could be provided annually, along with these upratings, of where we stand on the broader horizon of the issues that have been referred to during the debate. For me, it would be a very useful outcome of these proceedings if we could have an undertaking that an impact assessment will be provided routinely each year.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I can certainly undertake to look at this and I hope that we will be able to do so. I need to go back to the department to make sure that it can be done, but the noble Lord can have my undertaking that we will certainly look at that.
The measure currently being used is the CPI, and many people have suggested that that could be put on a statutory basis. We are still looking at that and certainly have not ruled it out. That would require a statute, but we are continuing to look at the evidence as to whether it is something that we should be doing. In the mean time, we have flexibility and I think the record speaks for itself: we have been seeking to do what we can.
The noble Lord was keen to push for more research money for projects on mesothelioma. Like him, I was delighted to see that Aviva and Zurich have agreed to pay £1 million to the British Lung Foundation, which does fantastic work. I remember the work that it did when I was in the National Assembly for Wales. It is indeed an excellent organisation. We have set up a partnership that includes patients and clinicians to identify mesothelioma research priorities, and the results were published in December. I will make sure that those are circulated to noble Lords so that they have a record of what is happening in that connection.
I turn to the 3% levy, which has been raised by many noble Lords: the noble Lord, Lord Alton, my noble friend Lord Avebury and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. It is a cap, and setting it at 3% was a hard-fought agreement with the insurance industry. It is not, as it were, a budget; it is a cap and it was set at that level because we wanted to ensure that there would be sufficient funds in the scheme to pay out the money. We have to take account of the cost of the scheme, and that is what the agreement was—it was not to fund research. However, I hope that other insurance companies will follow the excellent example set by Aviva and Zurich, which I have mentioned.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again, but this is an important point. It seems grievously unfair on the two companies that the noble Lord has rightly referred to, which for purely voluntary reasons have stepped forward and provided £1 million of funding to the British Lung Foundation, when there are around 125 insurance companies involved in this. The two companies that have provided these resources have asked why other companies are not being required to do the same. There is a question of equity here, apart from anything else. I am sure that the Minister will agree that, welcome though the £1 million is, even the one suggestion that I have made, which would require £2.5 million to bring it forward to clinical trials, indicates that the sum really is a drop in the ocean. When compared with all other cancers, mesothelioma has traditionally always been at the bottom of the league table in terms of private and public funding.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I think that the noble Lord is being a little inventive in suggesting that we should compel other insurance companies to follow the voluntary effort being made by two. I certainly commend that effort but it is a voluntary one, and there is always room for voluntary effort. We would not want to see insurers having to pass on additional costs of the scheme to their customers. As I say, a hard-fought, robust agreement has been made with the insurance industry. That is not to say that it cannot ever be revisited but, as things stand at the moment, it was set as a cap, not as a budget.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, I agree with the Minister that you cannot compel the rest of the insurance companies involved to pay money when two companies have voluntarily come forward and made contributions, but perhaps he would write to the 125 other companies asking whether they consider that they are in any way morally obliged to follow the lead which has been set by those two companies and make a voluntary contribution.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I do not undertake to write to the 125 companies involved, but we will make sure that a copy of the debate and a covering note is sent to the Association of British Insurers so that it can pass it on. The noble Lord made a very fair point.
Equalisation with dependants has been raised. The rules on the status of dependants and the amounts they get are not straightforward because it depends slightly on the nature of the dependency, when the sufferer died and so on. We certainly have not ruled out equalisation but it is not a top priority. The top priority is to get money to sufferers quickly, which we do under the 1979 and 2008 Act schemes. That remains our priority. I am not saying that equalisation will never be looked at. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, along with other noble Lords, asked about an indicative estimate of the cost. It is about £2 million per annum. We will review the situation in more detail and I will write to noble Lords on that issue.
I acknowledge the work the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has done as a former president of the TUC and, indeed, the role of the TUC in campaigning on this issue. It has certainly done more than its ration in this regard. The noble Baroness usefully highlighted some of the hazardous industries which are not immediately obvious, such as the jewellery repair business, which she mentioned, and gave the example of a warehouseman who was exposed to the substance we are discussing while sweeping up.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, referred to publicity on this issue and the campaign mentioned by my noble friend Lord Freud on a previous occasion. My honourable friend the Minister for Disabled People helped to launch the current £1.13 million Health and Safety Executive asbestos awareness campaign in October 2014, to which the noble Baroness referred. The campaign aims to help at-risk workers recognise that asbestos is relevant to them and their work, encourages them to seek reliable information on how they can protect themselves and encourages safer working with asbestos through behavioural change. The campaign is not due to end until March 2015, and a full evaluation will be undertaken before any decision is made about a further campaign so that we are able to take that information onboard in framing any future campaign. However, we will, of course, report back after the evaluation has concluded. I do not have a date for that, but I suspect that the evaluation will be completed some time in the spring or early summer of this year.
I think that I have covered the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for her comments on, and general support for, the uprating. As I say, we have not ruled out the statutory footing and I have just referred to the awareness campaign. I think that I have dealt with the other points that she raised. Do we think that the low uptake is a communications issue? I do not think so. Specialist health workers and clinicians support sufferers and are fully aware of the nature of asbestos. Our schemes are in addition to that. However, I am not being complacent. Obviously, we will make an assessment of the current campaign. We also make use of social media to ensure that we get messages across.
I think that I have dealt with the points that noble Lords have made. This is a really important issue. I am very pleased that we have been able to bring in uprating at 1.2%. I will write to noble Lords with the points that I have mentioned and any other points that I have missed. In the mean time, I commend the uprating of the payment scales and ask for noble Lords’ approval to implement them.
Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the Grand Committee do consider the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2015.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the Grand Committee do consider the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2015.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)
My Lords, the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2015 and the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2015 were laid before the House on 19 January 2015, and I am satisfied that they are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
I start by touching briefly on the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order. The order provides for contracted-out defined benefits schemes to increase their members’ guaranteed minimum pensions which accrued between 1988 and 1997 by 1.2%, in line with price inflation as at September 2014. As the Committee will be aware, we are not here to discuss the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Order 2015, which was made on 14 January. The rates increased under that order, by 1%, were debated in Parliament during the passage of what became the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Act 2013.
Turning to the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order, I start with the increase in the basic state pension. One of this Government’s first acts was to restore the earnings link to the basic state pension. Indeed, we went a step further and provided for a triple lock for pensioners: a commitment from the Government to increase the basic state pension each year by earnings, prices or 2.5%, whichever is the highest. This year, as 2.5% is greater than the increases in prices and average earnings, the basic state pension will increase by 2.5%, twice the increase in prices and four times the increase in earnings, which is the minimum required by law. The new rate of basic state pension will be £115.95 a week for a single person, an increase of £2.85 from last year. We estimate this means that the basic state pension will be around 18% of average earnings, its highest comparative level for more than two decades.
Our triple-lock commitment means that someone on a full basic state pension can expect to receive £560 a year more than if it had been uprated by earnings since the start of this Parliament. This commitment also means that, since coming into office, the coalition has increased the basic state pension by around £950 a year.
On pension credit, we have taken an important decision to ensure that the poorest pensioners are able to benefit from the effects of our triple lock. That means that rather than rising in line with earnings at 0.6%, the minimum required by legislation, the standard minimum guarantee credit in pension credit will be increased by 1.9%, so that the poorest pensioners benefit from the full cash value of the increase in basic state pension. Single people will therefore receive an increase of £2.85 a week, while couples will receive an increase of £4.35 a week. Consistent with our approach last year, the resources needed to pay for that above-earnings increase to the standard minimum guarantee have been found by increasing the savings credit threshold, which means that those with higher levels of income will see less of an increase.
Turning to additional state pensions, I can confirm that these will again rise in line with price inflation in 2015-16 and so will be increased by 1.2%, which is the CPI level. The decisions we have taken on pensioners reflect the Government’s belief that even in difficult economic times, it is important to protect those who are less able to increase their spending power. This belief is reflected in our decision to ensure that those benefits that reflect the additional costs because of disability will be protected, too, and will be increased by the full value of CPI at 1.2%. These payments are the personal independence payment, disability living allowance, attendance allowance, incapacity benefit, the disability-related premia paid with pension credit and working-age benefits, the support component of the employment and support allowance, and the limited capability for work and work-related activity element of universal credit. Carer’s allowance and carer premia paid with pension credit and working-age benefits will also be protected and increased by the full value of CPI at 1.2%.
I ask noble Lords to note that, at a time when the nation’s finances remain under real pressure, this Government will be spending an extra £2.5 billion in 2015-16. Of that, about £2 billion is for state pensions, including an above inflation increase for the basic state pension, around £300 million will go to disabled people and their carers, and nearly £200 million will go to people who are unable to work because of sickness and unemployment.
The up-rating commitment that I have outlined today provides for increases above both inflation and earnings in the basic state pension and the standard minimum guarantee credit in pension credit. It also protects benefits that reflect the additional costs that disabled people face against increases in the cost of living. On that basis, I commend these orders to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, I suppose that I should declare an interest as a recipient of one of the pension benefits that the Minister has just announced. I should get that on the record. When he read out the increases, I was reminded that I was the 75p Pensions Minister. He took me back down memory lane as he spoke.
Lord Rooker
I remember it well, too.
I want to raise a very narrow point on this order. Article 10 under Part 2 concerns the rates of the personal independence payment. Within the PIP is the mobility component, which enables people to access the mobility scheme for the lease of vehicles. I was in the Commons in the 1970s when the scheme replaced the old invalid trike, so I am well aware of the positive change. I make no comment on the scheme, save to say that it has given safe access to mobility for many thousands—indeed, millions—over the years, and I hope that it will for years to come. Given that it is public money that we are dealing with, I want to call now for a full inquiry in the next Parliament by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and the Work and Pensions Select Committee into the finances of the scheme and particularly the banker-sized salaries paid to certain individuals.
The DWP is paying the Motability charity around £20 million per annum. The charity receives about £7 million in lease levy from the vehicles used. It has a total income of about £30 million. The £20 million from the DWP is paid to a company in respect of advance payments and adaptations. The charity itself—I will come to another one in a moment—is dependent on the money in this order. The chief executive of the charity, which is over 60% dependent on public funds—the money paid from the DWP—was paid £160,000-plus in 2013.
However, the main vehicle scheme is operated by Motability Operations Group plc, a company owned by four banks—Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC and RBS. It operates as a contractor to, and is overseen by, the charity. This point is crucial because it is the link with the money in this order. The revenue of the operations company is broadly £4 billion: £2 billion from operating leases and £2 billion from the sale of vehicles at the end of the three-year lease. Six hundred cars a day are placed on the second-hand car market, and I am aware that one in my family was once such a car.
The company, Motability Operations Group, claims, on page 4 of its report, that it gets no money from the Government, but the £2 billion for leases is in fact the DWP payment—now, the PIP—paid to over half a million people. Because the people receiving the PIP have agreed to assign the DWP allowance to the scheme, it is paid directly to the operations company and it is clearly government funding. I call that public money.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, it is pleasure as always to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I was the chairman of the Social Security Select Committee when he appeared in front us with his 75p increase. When I asked him if he thought he could live on that, he was honest enough to say, “No”. His reputation for honesty derives from that moment, as far as I am concerned.
The noble Lord has made a very effective intervention, even if it is on a narrow point, and I support what he is saying. I certainly think it needs to be looked at in the Select Committee in the other place and if not, the PAC is certainly the place to do it. There is a huge amount of uncertainty about the consequences of the changes. It is not just a question of transparency and proper use of public funds; there is a public policy downside that might cause great concern to large numbers of people. I do not want to detain the Committee. I just did not want to miss an uprating order because I have done 18 of them in the past 18 years and I would not want to be left out—people would think I was not well if I did not appear.
My first question is a broader one about the process we are now in. The Minister was quite correct to say that the 2013 uprating Act supersedes the Government’s usual review process for establishing value for money. What are the consequences of that? This is a unique uprating order in that sense. Was any review of any kind undertaken? Obviously, working-age benefits are largely absent from this order, except, as he said, disability carer benefits and ESA support components. What are the consequences for the future? Can we be given an assurance that when the three-year period of the 1% uplift, which was automatic under the 2013 Act—I got very excited about that at the time and I am still concerned about it—is over, we will go back to business as usual and there will be serious modelling in the department? I understand that Ministers review everything all the time and they always have done but in the old days of the Rooker-Wise amendment, for example, these things were seriously discussed on the Floor of both Chambers and that gave confidence to people that some serious modelling was done. I am nervous that that process is being eroded; it was always a valuable protection. There is a lot of corporate knowledge in the department and if it is deployed properly it can inform Ministers and Parliament. If that goes or is considered to be downgraded by the experience of the 2013 uprating Act I would be the first to queue up at the Minister’s front door and complain about it.
The other thing I noticed was the Minister’s references to the uprating of the basic state pension. The coalition Government have made some substantial progress with the uplift and the triple lock. I hope that that can be taken forward and enshrined in perpetuity, if the economy can bear the weight. The other side of that is the interesting front-page story in the Financial Times yesterday about the £7 billion reduction there has been in working age benefits that are not in these orders. I do not know if the Minister saw it.
My point is that there has been a dramatically increasing trend, in my view, of support for people past retirement age—both the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and I are beneficiaries of that and, as I say, I welcome what has been done—but it should not be consistently at the expense, over long periods, of the working-age cohort of our society. There are two reasons for that. First, as colleagues know, the value of the CPI versus the RPI erodes. There has been another erosion, too: the change to the CPI in the 12 months to September 2014 was 1.2%, while the change in the RPI in the same period was 2.3%. That is another salami slice in the erosion of the respective relative benefits available to the retired population as opposed to the working-age population. Other benefits are involved, too. No doubt the upcoming election will allow everyone to talk about this—hopefully, more intelligently than some of the debates in the past. It cannot go on like this; the working-age population cannot be expected to be the source of increased resources for people who are past retirement age. I hope that that point can be addressed.
Schedules 9 and 10 of the order talk about some of the changes to the jobseeker’s allowance provisions. I am very worried about the impact of sanctions now on the jobseeker’s allowance, and they are covered in this order. One of the big increases in poverty that we have seen—the use of food banks—both in my experience and in the intelligence available to me, is among people who are temporarily out of work. I think that the great British public perceive people who are out of work as being a static group, as opposed to those who are in work. That is not the reality, as I am sure the Minister knows; there is a churn all the time and there are families going in and out of benefit. I am really surprised at the extent to which sanctions are being applied; I never for a moment expected 800,000 to 900,000 sanctions to be applied each year—I am really concerned about that.
My third point is that the department should weigh in the balance the fact that in 2010, when the Autumn Statement set some of this policy in place, there was a clear expectation, certainly in my mind, that by now universal credit would be bringing relief to big numbers of low-income households. We all know that there have been difficulties with the IT, but I am not satisfied that it is on the right track. We need to get it in as soon as we can. It will probably be 2019 before it is finished. In 2010 we were saying, “Well, this will provide some comfort”, but the fact that it is absent except for 61,000 people—and half of them are under 25-ish—will be weighed in the balance of benefit uprating, if not in this one then certainly in the next. If universal credit had been as operational as expected, and I think 2 million people were expected to be in place by now, that would have been a significant assistance to some of these low-income households. The early rushes that I have seen from the early evaluation of universal credit show that it is working; the cohorts are actually going into work, and it is sustained work. If the anti-poverty strategy is all about getting people into work, then the main engine of getting people into work, as far as I can see, is absent. I am really quite nervous about that; it needs to be thought about more carefully.
My final point, because disabilities are involved in this uprating order, is that single-parent families are under stress. Low-income households with disabilities, and some of those people are working-age, are really struggling. The Minister said that there was an uplift of £300 million. That is very welcome, but it does not match the demonstrated need that my intelligence leads me to believe is necessary to do this job properly. We have to be very careful. We are right to pursue universal credit progressively and positively, and to pursue the Work Programme and help people in that direction. We need a housing policy because, in the long run, it is the only way that we will deal with the burgeoning housing benefit bill, which is far too big and a waste of public money in the sense that it does not build any houses.
This uprating order is unusual in that it is constrained. When we get back to normal business and the economy starts to flourish, as we all hope it will in the coming months, I hope that we can get an assurance that we will not lose any of the important mechanisms that we have had for protecting the ability of Parliament to cross-examine government, just because we have had three years of a different system. I hope that the Minister can give the Committee some assurance on that point.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of these orders and all noble Lords who have spoken. I shall be waiting with bated breath for his answer to my noble friend Lord Rooker; I look forward to hearing what he has to say about that. It is always a pleasure to be reunited with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. Had he not appeared, a search party would have been sent out for him. It is very good that he has saved us all the trouble. It is always good to come back and do this.
I was going to play really nicely, but the Minister kicked off by boasting about the wonderful triple lock. I just cannot let that go. I am sorry, I know that time presses on, but I will say just a brief word. This is the first time since it was invented that the triple lock has delivered a higher rise in the state pension than the formula that was linked to the RPI which was in place before 2010. If the Minister is looking a little baffled, I am sure that inspiration from behind him will confirm that.
It is worth reflecting on the triple lock’s history. In its first year it was announced but not used because it would have given too small a rise—75p was probably ringing in ears. For the next three years the triple lock was applied but each year it delivered a pension increase lower than what would have been delivered had the previous formula linked to the RPI been used. This is the first year in which it has been higher than what would have been delivered under the system that was around pre-2010—the increase here is 2.5%; an increase of only 2.3% would have come from the RPI. This is the first year that it has actually kicked in. That is a little bit of context; I shall calm down and return to my more specific questions.
I notice that yet again the Government have decided effectively to pass through the pension credit effect, which is welcome, but to fund it yet again essentially at the expense of the savings credit. Can the Minister unpack for the Committee what effect that will have on the incentive to save? Inevitably, it is not a cost-free element. Could he tell us what the consequence of that will be?
As well as the state pension, the order contains uprating details for some elements of universal credit, as we have heard. Does the Minister have an estimate of how many people are likely to be affected by these? I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made a very important point. When the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill was going through Parliament, the Opposition and other noble Lords expressed concern about the effect on poorer households, particularly working households. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, prayed in aid universal credit in seeking to persuade noble Lords to back that Bill. That is exactly the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. She said,
“I would ask your Lordships to remember that we are working to restore the welfare system as well. This year will see the introduction of universal credit, an historic change that will create a welfare system that is simpler, more effective, and designed to ensure that work pays. We expect some 3.1 million households to gain from the move to universal credit, on average by £168 per month”.—[Official Report, 11/2/13; col. 460.]
We are some way from having 3.1 million households; I am not sure that we have even 10% of that. Could the Minister tell us what the current number is? Could he also tell us whether the Government still expect the average household to gain by £168 a month from the move to universal credit? If that is not the case, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, is significant. Universal credit was offered up as being the reason why lots of other things had to happen, but that it would all be okay. If it is not, Parliament needs to know that.
I would also like to ask a very specific question about universal credit. One of the problems about having disaggregated all the ways in which uprating happens is that it is quite a job of work to track down where any particular element of any particular benefit is being uprated. The hardest thing to find is what is missing. What is happening to work allowances in universal credit? I fully admit that I may well have missed them. I tried to go through but I could not see them here. When I raised this last year, I was told that there was no requirement to mention them unless they were changing. If they are here, could the Minister point me to them and tell me what percentage they are being increased by? If they are not here, does that mean that they are not being increased for the second year in a row, so they are being cut in real terms?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I am sorry. I missed which benefits the noble Baroness was asking about.
Baroness Sherlock
I was asking about the work allowances in universal credit. I think that inspiration may be coming on this point. That information may be in the document, but last year I could not find it and was told that the reason it was not there was because the measure was not changing; in other words, it was not being increased even by the rate of inflation. I have not been able to find it this year.
However, what I have found this year is the childcare costs element—the maximum amounts. Again, they look to me as if they have not changed in cash terms. Is that right? We debated this issue at length when the Welfare Reform Bill was going through the House and we were told in careful detail what the improved work incentives would be under universal credit. However, if we keep effectively having real terms cuts in the work allowances and childcare elements, then each time we do that we are eroding the gains to work. Therefore, it is important that the Government are open and transparent with the Committee about what they expect the work incentives to look like. I understand that the Minister may not be in a position to give me that information today, but I would be very grateful if he would write and tell me what changes have been made to the new work incentives, and gains to work in particular, as a result of those moves.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, referred to the overall impact on living standards of the various measures that have been taken. I understand that the argument for the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Act was that it was a temporary deficit reduction measure. However, one of the things it has made harder to understand is what the cumulative impact has been on low-income households. As the Minister will be aware, there have been repeated calls from outside as well as inside Parliament for a cumulative impact assessment of the effects. We have always been told by Ministers that that could not be done. Recently, the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a report, The Effect of the Coalition’s Tax and Benefit Changes on Household Incomes and Work Incentives. The opening sentences say:
“Tax and benefit changes introduced by the coalition have reduced household incomes by £1,127 a year or 3.3% on average”.
The report points out that the average loss was made up of an increase due to reductions in direct taxes which was more than compensated for—badly—by increases in indirect taxes, and that is before the benefit cuts were taken into account. The IFS found that the result of that was that households with children have been hit hardest by tax and benefit changes and that the poorest households have lost more than 6% of their incomes. Meanwhile, those without kids in the middle of the income distribution saw their incomes rise. Whenever the Government mention the rise in the income tax personal allowance, of course what they do not point out is that that benefits those richer people who do not lose out as a result of social security changes such as those to tax credits, so the effect is regressive in that respect. Can the Minister tell the Committee what has been the impact of the combination of the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Act 1% increase and the uprating decisions on the benefits covered by these orders on those low-income households? If he cannot do so, will he write? Finally, what difference has the delay in rolling out universal credit made to the anticipated impact of its uprating strategy?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have participated in this informative debate. I shall try to deal with the points in the order in which they were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, rightly has a reputation for being independent and honest, as was indicated by the reference to the 75p amount. That took me completely by surprise. I have spoken to officials and we obviously take it very seriously. We will look at it in some detail and I will make sure that the Minister for Disabled People—Mark Harper—the noble Lord, Lord Freud, and the Secretary of State are aware of it, and will write to noble Lords accordingly.
Coming to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—although not necessarily in the order in which they were raised, as Eric Morecombe might have said—first: why is CPI used over RPI? I knew that I was not going to agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said when she said that she was going to be a good girl but then changed her mind at the last minute. I know her sense of humour, so I regard that as having been said tongue in cheek. I will come back to her points about RPI.
The CPI is now the correct index for use, as recognised by the Paul Johnson review which was commissioned by the Office for National Statistics. Internationally, it is now the recognised medium for adjusting benefits. I have not heard the Labour Party commit itself to going back to RPI, but perhaps the noble Baroness wants to intervene at this stage to say that of course it will. Perhaps she wants to keep her tinder dry—understandably. The CPI is internationally recognised as the right way to review benefits.
In relation to the three-year welfare order of 1%—I phrased that somewhat clumsily—it will obviously be a matter for the next Government what processes are followed in future. I cannot give any undertaking on that, for obvious reasons. It will depend on the shape of the next Government what the policy is. I cannot anticipate that.
In response to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, on the state pension, I welcome the fact that he welcomed the growth of the state pension—at least I think he did. It has grown—if we accept that there would have been a move away from RPI to CPI—it has undoubtedly grown positively. Many pensioners are very vulnerable and poor, and they do not have the same access to the jobs market at that age as other people. Necessarily, they are in a different position from people of working age. I recognise what the noble Lord says, and there are many cases where one wishes that we could do more, but these are the economic times in which we live. If it was a time of great expansion, no doubt we would be looking at it differently.
The number of JSA sanctions actually decreased in the year to September 2014, the last year for which we have figures, but the Oakley review stressed that they are a key element of the mutual obligation that underpins the effectiveness and fairness of the social security system. We need to recognise that they are an essential part of the system. On food banks, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, this is a complex issue. It should not be a party-political issue. It is far more complex than just the level of benefits. There is high take-up of food banks—higher than in the UK, I believe—in the US and in Germany, for example, so it is a complex issue. I pay tribute to the work that food banks have done and continue to do.
On universal credit, it is right to say that we have taken a softly softly, test-and-learn approach. It is also fair to say that the evidence is pretty irrefutable, certainly in the north-west, where it has been rolled out more substantially than elsewhere, that it is working. There has been very successful work with local authorities, for example, in getting people into jobs. We are having some success. On rollout, we are hoping that the great bulk of those affected by universal credit will migrate to it by 2019.
Using evidence from claimants in the north-west of England, the analysis found that compared to similar claimants on jobseeker’s allowance, universal credit claimants are more likely to enter work and spend more time in work. They are consistently more likely to be in work and to earn more. The results are statistically significant. It is only early evidence and we cannot be totally complacent, but it is very encouraging. I hope that noble Lords will welcome that.
Points were raised about housing benefit—I forget who raised the issue; perhaps it was the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—and house building. I could not agree more: that has to be part of the solution. We are committed to that in projects such as Ebbsfleet, which will help.
I do not have the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. The figures for savings credit used by the Labour Party—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Countess of Mar) (CB)
My Lords, there is a Division in the Chamber. We will adjourn for 10 minutes, so we will come back at 10 minutes past seven.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, it looks as though everyone who is meant to be here is back, so shall we continue?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I was dealing with the point about savings credit, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. An assessment has been made regarding helping the most vulnerable, which we took to be those people who were not on savings credit. It is worth noting that, while no detailed assessment has been made of the number of people affected, there are more than 500,000 savings credit customers who qualify for other payments, which are being uprated by CPI, so a significant number of them are getting other benefits, as it were.
Baroness Sherlock
Did the Minister say that no assessment had been made of the impact of the change to the savings credit threshold?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
No, I said that we have no precise figure for the number of people affected, which is somewhat different. I will write to the noble Baroness giving any information that we have but, as I understand it, we do not have a detailed figure on the number of people affected. What we know, though, is that more than 500,000 savings credit customers qualify for additional amounts under other benefits, which are being operated by CPI, so it is not something one can look at in isolation.
The noble Baroness made some points about universal credit. More than 3 million households will gain £176 per month on average when it is fully rolled out. She will have noted today’s PAC report, which recognises that the programme is more open and transparent and better governed, and that the twin-track approach is the best course of action. As I say, our approach appears to be working well, and that is borne out by the figures from the north-west.
She asked about the work allowances and the childcare element. Both of those are frozen. She is quite right to suggest that they are not being uprated; they are frozen at where they were last year. I think it is right to say that we are intending that there should be a move from 70% of childcare costs to 85%. I think we are aiming for 2016, so that is some good news on that front.
The noble Baroness referred to an overall assessment of the impact of benefits and tax changes. I will write to her on that; it would be a complex assessment to do over the length of the Parliament but, as I see it, it is certainly not an unreasonable request. I think that some of the figures produced by the Labour Party that I have seen knocking around—in fairness, the noble Baroness did not refer to them; she referred to independent ones—do not take account of the tax changes and seem to concentrate only on the benefits. To get the full picture, as I am sure she would acknowledge, we have to look at both—the increases in personal allowances, for example—and some of the figures that I have seen also use RPI rather than CPI. However, I will take that back and write to her, copying in other noble Lords, about how we see it playing out. I hope that I have covered the main points, although obviously I have not covered everything.
Baroness Sherlock
I thank the Minister for offering to write to me. On the question of cumulative impact, if he does not like the figures used by the Labour Party, the best thing to do is to offer the Government’s own, so I look forward to receiving them.
On the question of universal credit, I had hoped that he might be able to provide more information to interested noble Lords about the effect on what we are now likely to see in terms of gains to work and work incentives, because they will be affected by the changes to work allowances. Is that something that he might be able to do in due course?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
On the first point, as I say, we will look at that to see how we can do it, but we will come up with figures only if we can be sure that they are sustainable, which I do not think the Labour Party figures are. That is the point that I was seeking to make. We can toss that one backwards and forwards all evening—or night, if this goes on—but yes, we will have a look at that and I will write to the noble Baroness about it.
On universal credit, I will pick up the point that she makes, but it is worth noting—I hope that she is not going to be churlish about this—that we have more people in employment than ever before. The evidence is that the impact is very favourable in the north-west, and it is best that we acknowledge this, along with the efforts that are being made by the Government and by local authorities—not necessarily being run by the Conservatives—to make sure that this is a success. The early signs are very favourable.
As I say, I will ensure that any other points that I have not taken up fully or not taken up at all are covered in writing to noble Lords. I hope that I have explained that we are spending an extra £2.5 billion on uprating pensions and other benefits in 2015-16, enabling us to protect key benefits. The order protects pensioners, many of whom have worked hard all their lives and are no longer in a position to increase their income through work, and also benefits disabled people, reflecting our commitment to protect those who are least able to increase their spending power. These are the principles behind the order, and on that basis I commend it to the Committee.
Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the Grand Committee do consider the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2015.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Automatic Enrolment (Earnings Trigger and Qualifying Earnings Band) Order 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the Grand Committee do consider the Automatic Enrolment (Earnings Trigger and Qualifying Earnings Band) Order 2015.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this instrument, which was laid before the House on 19 January. I am satisfied that it is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The order amends the automatic enrolment figures that will set minimum savings levels from April of this year. The automatic enrolment earnings trigger sets the automatic entry point to determine who saves in a workplace pension. The qualifying earnings band then determines how much people save and sets employer minimum contribution levels. These figures must be reviewed annually; indeed, this is the fourth such annual debate we have had.
Given that automatic enrolment is in its fourth year, I think that it is a good time to take stock. To date, more than 5.1 million workers have been automatically enrolled by around 43,000 employers. Automatic enrolment has been a significant success, with opt-out remaining significantly lower than expected, but there are still important challenges ahead. Next year, small and micro employers will be brought into automatic enrolment for the first time. It remains as important as ever that automatic enrolment and the figures we are debating today remain easy to explain, understand and administer. It is also important that we target the right people. There is a balance to be struck between those who should save and those who can decide to save. As such, the Government decided that the timing was right to conduct a formal consultation as part of this year’s review. We wanted to learn about employers’ experience of live running and to test whether it remained right to maintain alignment between the earnings trigger and the income tax personal allowance in the light of proposed increases to the allowance and lower than expected earnings growth. The earnings trigger is key to targeting and striking the balance that I have outlined.
Automatic enrolment is a tailored policy. It does not force pension saving on to everyone, regardless of earnings. Our overall aim in setting the figures in this instrument is to maximise the number of people saving who can afford it, while excluding those who cannot. The new state pension full rate of nearly £7,900 per year is a significant factor in determining who should save. The Pension Commission suggested that for those earning around £10,000 a year, a sensible replacement rate in retirement would be 80%. As my honourable friend set out in another place, once you disregard national insurance, those earning under £10,000 will already receive around an 80% replacement from the new state pension. Therefore, this order does not amend the earnings trigger and it remains frozen at £10,000 for 2015-16.
As part of the consultation and review, we considered some alternative options for setting the trigger, including increasing it in line with the income tax threshold, as we have done in previous years. This option has the benefit of administrative simplicity for some but, given the above inflation rises to the tax threshold, we did not believe it was the right approach in 2015-16.
In the recent debate in the other place, it was suggested that the trigger should be lowered. We disagree. Automatic enrolment should continue to exclude low earners for whom saving, on top of the pension they will get from the state, may not make economic sense, and they should be relied on, instead, to opt in. It is important to stress that we are not excluding people from pension saving; people earning under the threshold can choose to opt in or join a pension scheme. It has also been argued that we should enrol everyone and rely on opt-out instead. Again, there is a balance to be struck. As I told noble Lords earlier, opt-out is currently somewhat unusual. The risk of having a much lower threshold is that opt-out will become much more common and start to undermine the principle of automatic enrolment. Opt-out also comes with an administration overhead. Employers have to refund moneys and unwind membership. High opt-out rates increase nugatory work, so we firmly believe that it is better not to enrol people who are likely to walk away.
I am aware from previous debates on this issue that noble Lords will be interested in the impact that this instrument will have on the number of women savers. Freezing the trigger at £10,000 represents a real-terms decrease in the trigger, resulting in around 20,000 extra people being brought into automatic enrolment in 2015-16. Fourteen thousand, or 70%, of these are women.
The automatic enrolment earnings trigger does not exist in isolation. It is the entry point to pension saving that works alongside the qualifying earnings band. The band sets a minimum definition of pensionable pay. If you earn £10,000 a year, you will pay pension contributions on anything over £5,824. The qualifying earnings band also needs to cap minimum employer contributions for higher-paid staff and let existing arrangements cater for this market. The Government believe that aligning the qualifying earnings bands with the national insurance lower and upper limits remains the right approach.
The Secretary of State has a lot of discretion to determine the right level for the automatic enrolment thresholds and what factors to consider. This year, we consulted on these factors and on a number of options for setting the earnings trigger. Freezing the earnings trigger in 2015-16 strikes the right balance between administrative simplicity for employers and ensuring that the right people are brought into pension savings. Continuing to align the qualifying earnings band with national insurance thresholds ensures that people continue to build meaningful pension pots. It is straightforward to administer and caps minimum employer contributions for higher-paid staff. I commend this instrument to the Committee.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, each year with some predictability, I am sorry to say, I contribute to the debate on the relevant statutory instrument to express my concern that in linking the earnings trigger for auto-enrolment to the income tax threshold it is being set too high, and that too many women are excluded such that only one in three workers targeted for auto-enrolment is female. So many women are excluded because their earnings are below the level required to trigger the new employer duty to auto-enrol a worker into a pension scheme.
Given my persistency in raising this issue, it would be lacking in grace not to say that I am therefore pleased that the Government have chosen to freeze the trigger at its current level and not increase it further. I understand that as a consequence 20,000 people, 70% of whom would be women, will no longer be excluded from auto-enrolment when they otherwise would have been. Therefore, the Government’s decision to break the link between the earnings trigger and the income tax threshold is welcome.
I am also pleased that the Government’s decision supports the argument that it is wrong always to say that simplicity for employers, by linking the trigger to the tax threshold, is worth the price of excluding yet more thousands of women from the benefits of auto-enrolment.
I also welcome the Government’s decision that it is not right to maintain the alignment between the earnings trigger for auto-enrolment and the income tax threshold in the light of the proposed increases and the relatively low earnings growth. Low earners are likely to have lower earnings growth, and the UK has a greater concentration of low-wage jobs than some other advanced European economies, so the earnings trigger remaining linked to a rising income tax threshold would exclude even more workers over time. Those excluded, who are mostly women, would suffer a loss in lifetime pay because they would not have received the employer contribution, but they would still lose out due to any general reduction in wage levels that flowed from the cost to the employer of automatic enrolment contributions. Those are my positives, and they are three or four things that I welcome.
However, I remain concerned that, even with the freeze on the trigger at £10,000, far too many people will still be excluded from auto-enrolment. I would have liked to have seen it decreased under Section 14 of the Pensions Act 2008, as is permissible. I do not agree with some of the arguments which have been deployed by the Government for retaining it at its current level. The Government have argued that low earners for whom saving on top of their state pension does not make economic sense, and because the state pension gives them a high replacement income in retirement, should be excluded from auto-enrolment, but earnings are not static for many workers—men or women. They can change significantly over a lifetime. Most low earners go on to earn more—a point confirmed in the Johnson review commissioned by the Government. Therefore, auto-enrolment would be beneficial because it would increase persistency of pension contributions over their working lives.
Millions of women have a life pattern in which periods of full-time work are interspersed with periods of part-time work when caring responsibilities are at their greatest. But the effect of a high earnings trigger is a policy which asserts that women should not be auto-enrolled when they are working part-time and caring. That is in fact the consequence, and the figures confirm it. Almost half of those in the lowest earnings group are in couples where one works part time and the other full time. Most very low earners are women who live in households with others on higher earnings and they are receiving working tax credits. As the Johnson review confirmed—it is his analysis as much as my observation—these are precisely the people who should be automatically enrolled in saving, yet they are excluded.
The Government argue that if people on low earnings are auto-enrolled, they will build up their pots in pennies, not pounds, and that anyway the state pension gives them a sufficient replacement rate. But the problem with that argument is that pension savings are no longer reserved for pensions or replacement income. Freedom of choice means that the purpose of private pension saving is wealth accumulation. People can do what they wish with their money. There is now a complete separation between pension saving and securing a replacement income, which makes the Government’s support for a high earnings trigger even more tenuous. Why should low earners not be allowed to accumulate assets to build up their pot of wealth for their personal use? Why should an asset accumulation facility be available only to the better off?
Talking about “pennies, not pounds” resonates with that outdated and now unacceptable argument that women working part time are doing it only for pin money. It is possible to lower the earnings trigger below £10,000 without running up against the pennies argument. If, for example, the lower value of the qualifying earnings band is £5,824 and the earnings trigger is £8,000, then on a default contribution of 8% this would produce pension savings of £174 per annum. Taking a nominal value, this would produce £1,740 after 10 years and £5,220 after 30 years. For persistent low earners, that is a pot worth having, and it is arrogant to apply an analysis that because you are on low pay, asset accumulation even of that modest pot—which to them will not be modest—should not be available. That is simply a base case. It assumes a persistent low earner with no other changes but ignores that many employers are contributing above the minimum statutory level and that most low earners go on to earn more. I am sure that, over time, the employers’ statutory minimum contribution will rise. Excluding so many low-paid workers from auto-enrolment is another example of the weakness of public policy in assisting low-paid workers to accumulate capital or assets.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of this order and my noble friend Lady Drake for a characteristically forensic and impressive contribution. Like her, I welcome the fact that the Government have seen the light—there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner returned, et cetera. I am delighted that they have accepted our long-standing argument that the trigger threshold for auto-enrolment should not simply be tied to the personal allowance, as it has been hitherto under this Government.
We on these Benches have argued for many years that the problem with the approach taken by the Government is that it undermines the basic consensus on which auto-enrolment was built: that it should be a mass pension system encompassing as many people as possible, a point made clearly by my noble friend Lady Drake. It should encompass the low-paid as well as the better off, women as well as men and those in multiple part-time jobs as well as those in single, steady employment in one job. Viewed from that perspective, the Government’s tying of the auto-enrolment threshold to the personal allowance has had significant weaknesses.
When we debated these orders last year, my noble friend Lady Drake built a completely damning indictment of the effect of the Government’s approach to setting the threshold, which I suspect may have contributed to their change of heart. We recalled last year that the original idea proposed by the Pensions Commission, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Turner, and of which my noble friend was such a distinguished member, was that the qualifying earnings band should start at the primary threshold for national insurance purposes and finish at the NI upper earnings limit. The previous Government said in their 2006 pensions White Paper that they would adopt broadly that approach, so the lower and upper limits of the qualifying earnings band were set at £5,035 and £33,540 respectively, with provision for them to be increased in line with earnings.
When this Government brought in the Pensions Act 2011, though, they introduced an earnings trigger for auto-enrolment at a level higher than the lower equivalent of the qualifying earnings band, and every year since then we have seen more and more people excluded. For 2011-12 the trigger was set at £7,475 rather than the planned threshold of £5,035 and 600,000 people were excluded, 75% of them women. The next year 100,000 people were excluded, 82% of them women. In 2013-14, 420,000 people were excluded, of whom 72% were women. Last year, when the threshold rose to £10,000, it excluded another 170,000 people, of whom 69% were women. So although I genuinely welcome the decision to freeze the threshold, and the confirmation from the Minister that the measure will bring 20,000 more people into the system, 14,000 of them women, does he accept that by tying the threshold to the personal allowance for the last four years more than 1 million low-paid people, most of them women, have been excluded from auto-enrolment?
I want to ask the Minister about the coverage of women by auto-enrolment. Can he remind the Committee how many people the Government now estimate will be covered by auto-enrolment, when it is fully rolled out? Does he accept the figure given by my noble friend Lady Drake that one in three of the target enrolment population are now women? If so, do the Government regard that as a problem? Last year I noticed that the Government had offered the defence that so many women are affected because they work part-time and are likely to earn less than men, so they are disproportionately represented. That is true, of course, but it is not a defence; it is simply a description. Do the Government regard it as a problem that so many women are excluded?
The other defence offered by the Minister was that workers paid below the earnings trigger, as the Government have set it, were likely to be able to achieve their target replacement rates through the new state pension if they remained low earners. Presumably, therefore, it is not beneficial to direct income from working life into workplace pension savings—and, presumably, that applies particularly to low-paid women. But, as has recently been widely discussed, when it kicks off in 2016 only 45% of those who reach state pension age will get the new state pension, so there is a significant issue there.
I will not detain the Committee any further at this point. Labour invented auto-enrolment but the Government deserve credit for having rolled it out. We all think it is a good thing. I am very pleased that the Government have broken their ill advised link between the trigger threshold and the personal allowance, but I look forward to hearing from the Minister a better account of how the Government will ensure that the benefits of auto-enrolment can reach the masses for whom it was designed.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated in this debate on the clearly important issue of auto-enrolment and the trigger. I shall seek to deal with the points made by the noble Baronesses in the order in which they were raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, was extremely gracious—at least initially—in welcoming the change, and I welcome her welcome. I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, would want to go on a historical journey rather than review the current good news in the present order, but 20,000 more people being brought within auto-enrolment, 70% of whom are women, is of course good news.
On the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, of whether the trigger should be set at a lower limit, such as the national insurance limit—I think that she used £8,000 as another example—it is worth restating that this does not prevent people opting in to a pension. Auto-enrolment means that they will not be automatically enrolled, but it does not stop them saving. If they are above the national insurance limit they can opt in to their scheme and their employer will be obliged to contribute the 1%, as they currently are. Those figures are on an upward trend. I will ensure that I write to noble Lords about the percentage figures in future years because they are set to go up for employees and employers. That is an important point to nail. Also, if your earnings go above the threshold in a particular year, you will of course be automatically enrolled. The assumption is then that you can opt to stay in the pension, even if your earnings dip. You are not automatically de-enrolled; if you want to stay in, you can. That is a significant point to make, and one that I am perhaps able to clarify here.
On the fluctuating income argument, if you are above automatic enrolment in a particular year you can stay in the scheme if you want to do so, provided that your income does not dip below the national insurance limit. You could even stay in then, but you would not be entitled as a right to the employer contribution—although, anecdotally, quite a few employers pay it if an employee is in the scheme. It is a relatively low cost and while that is not a statutory obligation, it is happening. There is some good news there. We have clearly broken the link with the income tax threshold, so there is of course no question about whether we can break it. We will look at the experience of this.
We should restate that auto-enrolment has been a massive success. It has been supported by all parties; I pay tribute to the support that has been given. The priority now is to make sure that small and micro-employers are brought within the system. As noble Lords would expect, we will look at the evidence on how it is progressing. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on how many people will be covered by automatic enrolment, we estimate that 8 million to 9 million will be newly saving or saving more. I will write to her on the percentage of women; of those, I think that it is roughly 3 million.
Baroness Drake
I think that the Government’s figures will show that their estimate is now 37%. Allowing for error, I am not far wrong with one-third.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I think that is borne out. I will write with a more detailed figure if we have it. I thank the noble Baroness for her helpful intervention. As I was just saying, we believe that it is roughly 3 million, which I think would be consistent with the figure that she presented.
With that, if there is anything that I have missed I will write to noble Lords who have participated in the debate. I thank them for the general support and welcome for what we have done this year and commend the order to the Committee.
Employment Allowance (Care and Support Workers) Regulations 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Newby
That the Grand Committee do consider the Employment Allowance (Care and Support Workers) Regulations 2015.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce the two regulations and the order standing in my name on the Order Paper. I can confirm at the outset that the provisions in them are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The changes to the NICs rates and thresholds and the extension of the employment allowance covered by these three instruments were announced as part of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement on 3 December last year. In the Budget on 23 March 2011, we announced that for the duration of this Parliament the basis of indexation for most NICs rates, limits and thresholds would be the consumer prices index instead of the retail prices index. I can confirm that the basis of indexation used to calculate the changes follows that approach. The exceptions to this are the secondary threshold and the upper earnings and upper profits limits.
I will start with the Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds) (Amendment) Regulations. These are necessary in order to set the class 1 national insurance contributions lower earnings limit, primary and secondary thresholds and the upper earnings limit for the 2015-16 tax year. The class 1 lower earnings limit will be increased from £111 to £112 per week from 6 April this year. The lower earnings limit is the level of earnings at which contributory benefit entitlement is secured. However, NICs do not need to be paid by the employee until earnings reach the primary threshold.
The class 1 primary threshold will be increased from £153 to £155 per week from 6 April. The secondary threshold is the point at which employers start to pay class 1 NICs. In line with the commitment in Budget 2011, this is being increased by RPI from £153 to £156 per week.
From this April, the income tax personal allowance for people born after 5 April 1948 will be increased above indexation from £10,000 to £10,600, and the point at which higher-rate tax is payable will be increased from £41,865 to £42,385 in the 2015-16 tax year. As I mentioned, the upper earnings limit is not subject to CPI indexation. This is in order to maintain the existing alignment of the upper earnings limit with the point at which higher-rate tax is paid. The upper earnings limit will be increased from £805 to £815 per week from 6 April.
Employers have to pay NICs at 13.8% on earnings above the secondary threshold. In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a zero-rate earnings band for employers’ NICs for earnings of employees under the age of 21 from 6 April. The introduction of the zero-rate earnings band for employees under the age of 21 is expected to benefit about 340,000 employers, helping to support the jobs of almost 1.5 million young people currently in employment.
The zero-rate earnings band applies only to earnings up to the equivalent of a new threshold called the upper secondary threshold, which is to be set at the same level as the upper earnings limit for the 2015-16 tax year. These regulations introduce the upper secondary threshold and set it at the same level as the upper earnings limit of £815 per week from 6 April.
Finally, these regulations also set the prescribed equivalents of thresholds and limits that I have mentioned for employees paid monthly or annually. Apart from the introduction of the zero-rate earnings band for employees under the age of 21, there will be no other changes to NICs rates in the 2015-16 tax year. Employers will continue to pay contributions at 13.8% on all earnings above the secondary threshold. Employees will continue to pay 12% on earnings between the secondary threshold and the upper earnings limit, and 2% on earnings above that.
The social security order sets the class 3 contribution rate for those paying voluntary contributions and the class 4 profits limits for the self-employed, as well as providing for a Treasury grant.
Starting with voluntary class 3 contributions, the weekly rate will increase from £13.90 to £14.10 a week for the 2015-16 tax year. Moving on to the self-employed, today’s order also sets the profit limits for class 4 contribution liability. The lower profits limit on which these contributions are due will increase from £7,956 to £8,060, in line with the increase to the class 1 primary threshold.
At the other end of the scale, the upper profits limit will increase from £41,865 to £42,385 for the 2015-16 tax year. This is to maintain the alignment of the upper profits limit with the upper earnings limit for employees. The changes to the class 4 limits will ensure that the self-employed pay contributions at the main class 4 rate of 9% on a similar range of earnings as employees paying class 1 contributions at the main rate of 12%. Profits above the upper profits limit are subject to the additional rate of 2% in line with the 2% paid by employees on earnings above the upper earnings limit. For completeness, I mention that the weekly rate of class 2 NICs, which are also paid by the self-employed, will increase from £2.75 per week to £2.80 per week from 6 April.
From 6 April, class 2 contributions will be due only if taxable profits for the 2015-16 tax year are at or above the small profits threshold of £5,965. This threshold replaces the class 2 small earnings exception and, along with the class 2 rate, was set in the National Insurance Contributions Act 2015.
The Government need to ensure that the National Insurance Fund can maintain a working balance throughout the coming year, which the Government Actuary recommends should be one-sixth of benefit expenditure for the year. The re-rating order provides for a Treasury grant of up to 10% of benefit expenditure to be made available to the fund for the 2015-16 tax year. A similar provision will also be made in respect of the Northern Ireland National Insurance Fund.
Lastly, I turn to the regulations relating to the employment allowance for employers of care and support workers. The Government wish to support individuals and families with the cost of care. These regulations will allow employers of care and support workers to claim the NICs employment allowance. As a result, they will be able to reduce their employer NICs bill by up to £2,000 a year. Claiming the NICs employment allowance is quick and simple. Employers, or their agents, simply tick a box in their payroll software to confirm that they are eligible for the allowance and wish to claim, and their employer NICs liabilities will be reduced accordingly. Employers need to tick the box only once and this will be transferred to future years as well.
In the first six months since its introduction, the NICs employment allowance has already been enjoyed by more than 850,000 businesses and charities. We estimate that a further 20,000 employers of care and support workers will benefit from the extension of the allowance. I commend the order and regulations to the Committee.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the regulations and order. This is something of an annual feast, and I commend him for the speed at which he read out his speech. The same three statutory instruments were debated yesterday in the Seventh Delegated Legislation Committee of the other place, where the Opposition put their traditional questions and got detailed responses. I am going to give everyone encouragement by saying that I do not intend to ask exactly the same questions to receive exactly the same answers. I commend the Commons report of the proceedings to anyone present who is interested in those detailed questions.
I have a couple of questions on the first of the three instruments that we are considering—the Employment Allowance (Care and Support Workers) Regulations. Three questions asked in the Commons were detailed in nature, but the fourth question asked by my colleagues in the other place was: why have the Government made this change? They introduced the NICs employment allowance to aid small businesses, and we did not oppose that. At the time, there was a debate about the care issue. The Government resolutely set their face against that but then, rather suddenly, they changed their mind. I am genuinely curious as to which road to Damascus the Government went down to come to this conclusion. It is not a conclusion that we particularly dissent from but we are interested in whether there is any further logic behind the reasoning.
As far as I can see, the only problem with these regulations is that the decision to make the change seems to have been reasonably recent. I worry a little, as do my colleagues in the other place, about the extent to which it might induce tax avoidance, which both sides of the House are firmly against. It seems to me that the simplicity with which this allowance can be claimed, as the Minister outlined, is essentially, in tax avoidance terms, also its intrinsic weakness. The difference between a personal servant and a care worker seems somewhat semantic. I have read the regulations, and of course the employer or the person being cared for has to fall within the definition in them. Nevertheless, those definitions could be rather nudged by people who are seeking to avoid NICs. I would value some further comment from the noble Lord as to the extent to which the Government expect this to be used for tax avoidance, because somebody is going to use it. It is inevitable that any new tax or national insurance regulation will be exploited by tax avoiders. Somebody will use it. What are the Government going to do to make sure that does not happen? What additional resource is that likely to cost HMRC?
The other thing about this is that, as far as I can see, it does not have an impact assessment and I am curious as to what the Government’s assessment is of the cost of this move. They estimate 20,000 may qualify for it and stress that it could be up to £2,000 per annum. I can do the arithmetic and I think that is £40 million per annum. I do not think there is an expectation that all will be at the maximum by quite a margin. I would value the Government’s estimate of the cost of this policy move.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for his welcome of these SIs. He asked me a number of specific questions. Why did the Government change their mind? We saw the error of our ways. We listened to our stakeholders and they thought that this was a very strong idea, so we decided, in line with our general commitment to reducing the cost of care and helping with care needs, that we would make this change.
The noble Lord asked whether this opens up a big new scope for avoidance. Given the scope of the change, we do not anticipate that it will really broaden the scope for avoidance. HMRC uses its routine compliance checks to identify and tackle potential avoidance and we have an anti-avoidance rule in the primary legislation. The incentive for avoidance here is relatively small and we think that the benefits of introducing the scheme more than outweigh any small potential for avoidance.
The noble Lord’s final question was about the cost. We estimate it will cost about an extra £10 million a year. I hope I have answered his questions and that he will now be happy to support the measures.
Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating and National Insurance Funds Payments) Order 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Newby
That the Grand Committee do consider the Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating and National Insurance Funds Payments) Order 2015.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds) (Amendment) Regulations 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Newby
That the Grand Committee do consider the Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds) (Amendment) Regulations 2015.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Childcare Payments (Eligibility) Regulations 2015
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Newby
That the Grand Committee do consider the Childcare Payments (Eligibility) Regulations 2015.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the regulations before the Committee today were laid on 13 January under powers set out in the Childcare Payments Act 2014, which introduced the new tax-free childcare scheme. They were announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the 2013 Budget and will provide financial support to working families with their costs of childcare. Once the scheme is in place, the Government will meet 20% of eligible working families’ childcare costs up to an annual maximum of £2,000 for each child. Support will be delivered through childcare accounts, into which a parent will deposit their funds to pay for childcare and into which the Government will add a 20% top-up payment.
The regulations before us today were published for consultation between 14 July and 3 October last year, and I would like to put on the record my thanks to all those organisations and individuals who responded. As I will explain in a moment, the Government listened to the suggestions which were made and introduced some small but important changes to the way in which some of these regulations operate.
There are 18 regulations in all, but I am pleased to say that I do not intend to describe each of them in detail. However, I would like to give an overview of who will qualify for support once the new scheme is introduced. First, a person must be in the UK, over the age of 16 and have responsibility for looking after a qualifying child. It does not matter whether they are the child’s biological parent; they simply need to be responsible for their care. Secondly, the person responsible for the child must be in paid work, either for an employer or self-employed in their own business. If they have a partner, both partners will need to be in work. Providing support to the self-employed with their childcare costs is a significant, perhaps the most significant, advantage of the new scheme over the one it replaces; namely, the employer supported childcare scheme. As its name implies, that scheme was available only to people in employment.
The third eligibility condition is that the person’s income, and that of their partner if they have one, must be below the level which would make them liable to pay income tax at the additional rate of 45%. This currently applies to individuals with an income of more than £150,000 per year. Finally, someone will not be able to qualify for this scheme if they are already in receipt of support with their childcare costs from other government-funded schemes, most notably tax credits, universal credit and employer supported childcare. These are the eligibility conditions as they are set out in the Act. However, it is essential that the Government should retain the necessary flexibility to make adjustments to these conditions to ensure that the scheme remains properly targeted where it is most needed. This is why some of the detailed rules determining eligibility for support are set out in these regulations rather than in primary legislation.
I would like to draw the attention of noble Lords to some specific aspects of the regulations. First, regulation 5 sets out what is meant by a “qualifying child” for the purposes of the scheme. In broad terms, this is any child under the age of 12 or, in the case of a disabled child, under the age of 17. Regulation 9 defines what is meant by being in paid work for the purposes of the scheme. This is that a person will meet this condition if they receive as little as what someone would earn if they worked for one day a week at the prevailing rate of the national minimum wage, equivalent to around £52 a week, or £676 a quarter. Regulation 10 defines income in the case of self-employed parents. This broadly follows the well-established approach used for income tax purposes and is based on the net profit they generate from their business over the relevant period.
I will turn briefly to the ways in which the regulations have been amended following the consultation. Two significant amendments were made to the regulations as they apply to self-employed parents. The first concerns the requirement to generate a specified amount of profit every quarter. The point was rightly made that this had the potential to exclude self-employed people in very seasonal businesses where they are able to make a profit only at certain times of the year. To address this, the regulations were amended to give self-employed parents the option of meeting the minimum income level across a full tax year rather than in each quarter, as had been the case originally.
The second change applies to newly self-employed parents and again concerns the minimum income rule. The point was made that it is very common for new businesses not to make a profit immediately and that therefore it would be unreasonable to require them to reach the minimum income rule straightaway. The regulations were therefore changed so that someone starting out as self-employed will not be required to reach that level in their first entire year of trading. This will mean that they will not be disqualified from using the scheme as they struggle to make a profit when they are starting to establish their business.
A further change to which I would draw your Lordships’ attention concerns parents who are about to return to the workplace. The point was made during consultation that such parents need sufficient time to put suitable childcare arrangements in place before they start working. As originally drafted, the regulations provided a seven-day window during which a person could apply to open a childcare account in anticipation of starting a new job. The argument was made that seven days is simply too short to allow parents to make adequate childcare arrangements before they take up work after an absence. The regulations were therefore amended to allow someone to be treated as being in paid work where they have accepted the offer of a job up to 14 days before they actually start work. This will help to smooth the transition back to work and encourage parents back to the workplace.
Finally, I would like to refer to the position of those with responsibility for disabled children. As both the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield rightly pointed out at Second Reading of the Bill, such parents can face significantly higher childcare costs than other parents. The Government are keen to ensure that this is reflected in the way that the new scheme will operate.
As I said at that time, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury made a commitment in another place to consider whether it would be possible to increase the maximum amount which families with disabled children could receive from the Government. I am glad to confirm that the Minister has honoured that commitment. She has said that such parents will be able to receive up to double the amount of support that other parents will be entitled to. This will mean that they will be able to receive support of up to £4,000 a year for each disabled child, rather than £2,000 a year as is the case for other parents. This change, which has been warmly received by the childcare sector as a positive step for disabled children and their families, does not feature in the regulations which we are considering but will be brought into effect by a separate instrument. However, given the interest shown in the matter at Second Reading, I thought that it would be appropriate to mention it now. I beg to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining the regulations. I particularly thank him for the way in which the Government have reacted to the consultation by introducing some detailed changes. I also thank him for what he has said about disabled children, in giving us notice of further regulation to follow. I have only one or two points to make about these regulations, which we are not going to oppose as we see value in more money being put into the whole issue of childcare. First, I have a couple of detailed questions about them and then some questions about whether the right balance has been achieved in terms of the distributive effect that the Act has.
Of the two questions about implementation the first is about NS&I, which has been the chosen instrument for these accounts. If I have read the impact assessment properly, I believe that there could be 2 million such accounts. I understand that when NS&I introduced what I think were called pensioner bonds in the new year, it processed 30,000 accounts and its systems failed. Can the Minister assure me that by the time this scheme is introduced, the NS&I systems will be robust enough to cope with the volume?
Secondly, the choices that people will have to make between this, the current scheme which is being phased out and other potential state sources of support are really quite complex. The Government acknowledged this by assuring us during the debate on the primary legislation that there would be an online calculator to help individuals. I wonder whether the Minister can give us some indication of progress on the online calculator. I think that these regulations are expected to be rolled out in the autumn which, in terms of delivering things, is relatively close.
The substance of my concern is in regulation 15. The Minister does not have to look it up; it is the £150,000 regulation. These regulations existed in draft when the original primary legislation was debated.
I think this is the order that specifies that it will be £150,000. That is a large figure. Perhaps this is because of the paucity of my friends, but I do not know a lot of people on £150,000. Indeed, the figure could rise to £300,000 in a household with an affluent wife and an affluent husband together. That seems to be a pretty high figure. I wonder why the Government have chosen such a high figure, because of the subsequent distributive effects.
In effect, the order was debated when the primary legislation was debated in the other place. I draw attention to the Public Bill Committee in the other place on 16 October 2014, when Vidhya Alakeson, then deputy chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said in evidence;
“Our analysis shows that 80% of families that will benefit from tax-free child care are in the top 40% of the income distribution. The evidence on how parents respond to child care investment is reasonably limited, but we know from self-reported surveys that parents with a family income of more than about £60,000 a year are not predominantly making work decisions and suchlike on the basis of the affordability of child care. The vast majority of this funding is targeted at those families, which suggests to me that you are unlikely to see much of a change in behaviour, but you will get a cost shift from parents to Government”.—[Official Report, Commons, Childcare Payments Bill Committee, 16/10/14; cols. 100-01.]
Does the Minister accept the Resolution Foundation’s analysis that 80% of the benefit will go to the top 40% of households? If not, does he have some Treasury-based analysis to counter that claim? I know of no other analysis. So far, the Government have not revealed any analysis that they have done; there is certainly no distributive analysis in the impact assessment. Therefore, I have to take the Resolution Foundation’s statement as the best analysis available.
The scheme will cost, say, £600 million a year—it varies by year in the impact assessment, but it is £600 million-plus. Well, 80% of that is half a billion pounds, which is a not inconsiderable sum. Is it true that half a billion pounds is being directed at the top 40% of households? Was that the Government’s intention, was it a mistake or do they not know?
The position that we took in the other place during the passage of the Bill is that if the upper limit had been lower, money would have been saved that could have been used to increase the percentage relief to those who qualify. Therefore, the distributive effect would not have been this apparently amazing situation where half a billion pounds is going to the top 40% of the income distribution. The Minister’s colleague in the other place, Priti Patel, was pressed on the matter of distributional analysis. At the end of one of her responses—before she was interrupted—to the Public Bill Committee on 21 October, 2014, which is now some time ago, she said:
“Officials are discussing with colleagues across Government the possibility of considering the matter in more detail and of carrying out distributional analysis of all Government child care support. Much child care support is outside the Treasury’s remit and lies with the Department for Education, and many of the schemes that exist have been touched on in the Committee”.—[Official Report, Commons, Childcare Payments Bill Committee, 21/10/14; col. 164.]
That seems to me like a promise of a report about the distributional analysis of government childcare support. Am I right in interpreting it as such a promise? If so, when do the Government intend to produce such a report, which I think we would all find very interesting?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the noble Lord asked me a number of questions about these regulations. First, is NS&I up to it, given the teething problems with the pensioner bonds? NS&I is up to it. It is an established provider of payment processor services within government. It manages the premium bonds. The difference between this and pensioner bonds is that those bonds suddenly became available and there was a great rush. These provisions will be introduced on a phased basis and there will be no incentive for hundreds of thousands of people, even if the phasing worked that way, all to want to do it within an hour or two of each other.
The noble Lord asked about the online calculator. As he pointed out, the scheme is due to be introduced from the autumn. The online calculator will be introduced in good time before implementation. It would be of no particular benefit to anybody if the calculator were available now, but it will be available well before the scheme is implemented.
I think the main burden of the noble Lord’s comments is about whether the £150,000 cut off is appropriate. It is worth pointing out two aspects of the context here. First, this scheme replaces one that has no limits to the income at which people can benefit. It also does not cover the self-employed, many of whom will not be high earners. In that respect, it is a more inclusive and fairer scheme. The other element of context is that the Government’s overall system of childcare support remains focused on people with lower incomes. Families in receipt of tax credits already receive more generous support with childcare costs than under universal credit. Support will be intended to cover up to 85% of the cost of childcare and will be available regardless of the number of hours worked. It is not a scheme about helping the wealthy. There is a question about where you put the cap. The only two logical places would be at the thresholds for the 40% or 45% tax rate. Any other limit between those two would involve a disproportionate amount of effort and administrative change. The Government took the view that, given the history of this scheme and the fact that the cap on those who can benefit is being reduced, the 40% threshold was too low. We want to support people with childcare at incomes above that level. Therefore, we went for this limit. An intermediate limit would have been complicated and confusing.
The noble Lord’s final question concerned what had happened to the commitment given by my colleague in another place, Priti Patel, to carry out a cross-departmental distribution analysis of all childcare support. I reassure him that officials across government are currently examining the feasibility of carrying out distributional analysis across all childcare support schemes, but this is taking time because of the complexities involved.
House of Lords
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Small Businesses: Finance
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Harrison
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken in the past year to increase access to finance for small businesses.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, it was announced in the Autumn Statement that the Government are providing further funding to two British Business Bank schemes, the enterprise capital funds and enterprise finance guarantee schemes. Additionally, the Funding for Lending scheme will be extended and focused on lending to SMEs, and furthermore, the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill ensures that SMEs which are rejected for finance by banks are referred to alternative finance providers and that those providers have access to the credit data they need.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
My Lords, according to the Federation of Small Businesses, credit availability and affordability has declined in the past quarter and indeed the Government’s own Funding for Lending scheme has sputtered and spluttered into reverse over the past two years. Will the Government take heed of Keith Morgan, the leader of the British Business Bank, who has said that there are market failures which need to be addressed if our small businesses are to grow and to provide jobs for the future?
Lord Newby
That is why we have created the British Business Bank specifically to deal with these market failures. The bank aims to unlock £10 billion of new finance by 2017-18. On lending to small businesses, the noble Lord should be aware that gross lending has grown by 25% in the past year and by 41% over the past two years.
Lord Cotter (LD)
My Lords, recently the Business Minister wrote to the FTSE companies which are not signed up to the Prompt Payment Code. More than £39 billion is owed in overdue payments to SMEs, so this is a very important issue. Can the Minister tell us what progress has been made on encouraging the many FTSE companies which are not signed up to the code to do so and on ensuring that we carry on pursuing this matter? SMEs are saying that late payment of bills is the main bar to their growth.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I agree absolutely with my noble friend. We are looking at this in the context of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill and tightening up the speed with which the Government pay their bills. We will keep bearing down on businesses to make sure that they improve their performance in this area.
Baroness Sharples (Con)
Can my noble friend say whether government ministries are paying their bills on time as that would surely help small businesses?
Lord Newby
My Lords, I think that the track record of government departments on paying bills is significantly better than that of the private sector, but we are always keen to improve performance.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
What steps have the Government taken since the Insurance Bill Special Public Bill Committee to make sure that the insurance industry signs up to its own scheme to deal with the late payment of bills? This is a cause of great concern to many of the people who otherwise would use the British insurance industry.
Lord Newby
My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the insurance industry has a payment code and we are encouraging all firms in the industry to abide by it.
Lord Scriven (LD)
What action will the Government take on non-traditional funding for small and medium-sized businesses such as crowdfunding, which is becoming a far more important route to gaining funds for small and medium-sized businesses?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the Government have been supportive of the peer-to-peer and crowdfunding lending sectors and have removed barriers to ordinary people making investments while limiting their exposure to risk. So far this support has included allowing peer-to-peer lending to be included in ISAs and to be eligible for bad debt relief, channelling investment from the British Business Bank towards peer-to-peer, and helping investment crowdfunding take off through the enterprise investment scheme.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
The Minister’s initial Answer suggests that he is utterly oblivious to the fact that we have a productivity crisis in this country, a massive balance of payments issue, and that small businesses are constantly emphasising that their access to finance is very limited and difficult for them. Does the Minister not agree that Labour’s commitment to a British investment bank is the next Government’s solution to this Government’s failure?
Lord Newby
The noble Lord will be amazed to discover that I do not agree with him at all. He has failed to point out that since this Government came into office private sector employment is up by well over 2 million and the majority of that is likely to be in small and medium-sized businesses.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)
May I commend to my noble friend my experience in running a small business where I found that our bills got paid significantly faster if we asked our auditors to call up the company that owed us money?
Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)
Can the Minister explain why the British Chambers of Commerce has stated that small and medium enterprises are being increasingly left out in the cold by lenders?
Lord Newby
As I explained, gross lending to small businesses was up by 25% last year. That is the figure, my Lords. The noble Lord shakes his head, but that is the figure. Banks have not been as open-handed to small businesses as they were before the crash, partly because at that stage in some cases they were lending irresponsibly and partly because they have had to strengthen their balance sheets—something which the noble Lord has been very keen to encourage.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Was finance for small businesses discussed at any of the 56 meetings Ministers had with HSBC over the past five years?
Broadband
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Holmes of Richmond
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of broadband speeds, capacity and coverage in rural areas of the United Kingdom and in city technology hubs such as the Old Street roundabout.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, UK broadband coverage is near universal. Superfast broadband, capable of speeds over 24 megabits per second, is available to 78% of UK premises. This compares with superfast coverage of 33% in rural areas and 90% in Greater London. The average overall download speed is 23 megabits per second—10 megabits in rural areas and 27 megabits in Greater London. Tech City, the hub around Old Street roundabout, is well served by business connections. The coverage of residential superfast broadband varies.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that broadband must be seen as a utility, with high-speed, high-capacity access for all? Allied to this, does he also agree that we must ensure that everyone has the skills to transact, to interact and to fully participate in this digital future?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, this issue was raised by the Select Committee on Digital Skills, which reported on 17 February—last week. The Government are considering the report and will reply in due course. I completely agree with my noble friend that broadband is increasingly seen as an essential service. That is why we are committed to providing universal broadband coverage by the end of 2015, and by 2017 in Scotland. Whether it should be a utility requires careful consideration. The commitment for universal coverage referred to is non-regulatory, and we would need to consider the implications of making it a utility. I completely agree with my noble friend about the importance of digital skills. Broadband is the infrastructure, and the important thing is what happens at either end of the infrastructure. In order for people to use it correctly, and to take advantage of the infrastructure we have put in place, they need digital skills.
Lord Mitchell (Lab)
My Lords, I think the Minister is living in some sort of cuckoo land. Last Friday, I was in Plymouth, looking at some very interesting and exciting technology companies. Their biggest complaint is that the broadband they are getting is totally insufficient. A few months ago I was in Norwich, where it is the same story. If you go to Tech City, which is the hub of what we are doing in this country, you will find time and time again the complaint that we are not getting the speeds that are required. Can the Minister say when, instead of being complacent about what is happening, there will be some degree of urgency about improving coverage and speed?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
What I was referring to mainly with essential services was the basic broadband service. Superfast broadband, which is what I think the noble Lord is referring to for business, is necessary. At the moment, 78% of premises in this country have superfast broadband. By the end of 2016, it will be 90% and in 2017 it will be 95%. The remaining 5% will be dealt with later.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister please put a rocket under Ofcom with regard to broadband speeds? The service providers boast of speeds of up to 15, 20 or 30 megabits per second, and I suppose you might just get that on a wet Sunday morning at 3 am, if you are the only person online. The vast majority of people do not get those speeds. Will he please tell Ofcom that we, the consumers, are fed up being misled about speeds and being ripped off, and that we want action on guaranteed minimum speeds?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, every local authority area will have at least 90% at superfast levels by the end of 2017. The rest will be 95%, but there will be an absolute minimum of 90% superfast coverage by the end of 2017.
The Lord Bishop of Carlisle
My Lords, many small rural schools, for instance in Cumbria, where I come from, struggle to access a high-quality broadband connection. That results in pupils missing out on educational opportunities through not having a good internet-based information supply. Can the Minister tell us what assessment the Government have made of this situation and how they intend to address it?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate makes a very good point. We are obviously concerned that schools have the benefit of superfast broadband, which is important if schools are to take advantage of the opportunities offered by learning technology. However, not every school is the same. Schools have the autonomy to buy a connection that meets their needs. Schools’ connectivity needs will vary depending on the size and type of school. The Government’s £780 million investment programme in broadband infrastructure will increase the broadband options available to schools, including to rural schools.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
Order, order. Thank you. It is the turn of the Labour Benches.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, the Minister mentioned rural areas and whether broadband is deemed an essential service. The Government are saying one thing about broadband while those in the rural economy, particularly farmers, are being told that they need broadband to complete forms and participate for VAT. On the one hand, the Government require it; on the other, they are not delivering it.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I have already said that we have made a commitment that universal coverage will be in place by the end of this year, and 2017 in Scotland. I accept that that is at the lowest end of the scale—up to two megabits per second. However, it is possible—and I speak from some experience, living in an area in which you are unable to get superfast broadband; although I should inform the House that the government website says,
“but it could be coming to you soon through government and local authority investment”,
so I remain optimistic—to upload forms, such as farmers have to do, on that speed of broadband. As I say, it will be in place by 2015 in the UK.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, the Government have put into place a potentially valuable broadband connection voucher scheme for companies in our major cities. However, there is concern about the level of take-up of that voucher scheme. I wonder whether my noble friend can give the House the accurate figures on that.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, nearly 80% of homes and businesses have superfast broadband, yet only 22% of all broadband connections are superfast.
Baroness O'Cathain (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of how great a social exclusion issue this is becoming? Only today the Carnegie UK Trust and Ipsos MORI brought out research showing that it is now a serious issue, particularly in Scotland. What are we going to do? It is not the speed of broadband that matters in this case but the actual access to it.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I completely agree with my noble friend. As I said, a bare minimum of two megabits per second will be in place by the end of this year and in Scotland by the end of 2017. As I said to my noble friend Lord Holmes, we, too, regard this as an essential service today.
Soil Quality
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the soils in England will sustain food production at current levels in the long term.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)
My Lords, we are committed to delivering the natural environment White Paper aspiration of ensuring sustainable management of all soils by 2030. We have introduced new cross-compliance rules to protect soils while reducing paperwork for farmers. Through our agri-tech strategy and sustainable intensification platform we will help farmers to take advantage of the latest techniques, to help them improve productivity while protecting the environment.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s commitment to this issue, because of course no soils equals no foods. He will know that 2015 was designated the International Year of Soils to help to highlight this fact and the enormous soil loss, which in the UK is 2.2 million tonnes of topsoil alone per year. He mentioned the new rules that have been introduced. Perhaps he could tell me how farmers will receive practical advice on their soil management from people who are not seeking to sell inputs. Could he also tell me—given the rate of the loss of soil and microbial health, and even the loss of soil scientists, as they are not being replaced at the rate they need to be—whether he thinks that the actions being taken are urgent and effective enough to ensure the continued and, indeed, increased production of British food?
Lord De Mauley
My noble friend asks a number of questions. The Farming Advice Service is a service to help farmers understand and meet the requirements of cross-compliance, greening and the European directives on both water protection and sustainable pesticide use. It has a helpline, newsletters, guidance and technical articles. During 2015 its priorities will be to give advice on the changes to the cross-compliance rules, which include the new soil standards, which go to the prevention of erosion, which she mentioned; maintaining soil cover; and the protection of organic matter.
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the study of the soil, its microflora and microfauna, and its interactions with trace elements is both fascinating and essential? In view of the shortage of soil and plant scientists, will he tell us what the Government are doing to increase the numbers of those scientists, and impress upon them how important it is that we have them?
Lord De Mauley
I very strongly agree with the noble Countess. She might be comforted to know that we are investing £10 million through NERC and BBSRC programmes specifically to investigate soil security, with a strong focus on soil biology, which she referred to. We are also undertaking research on soil management approaches to stimulate soil organisms.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, everybody is frisky today. Having heard from the Back-Bencher from the government side first, we have had a Cross-Bencher, and it is now time to go to the main Opposition—rather, the only Opposition—on the Labour Benches.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Then we will come back to the government Benches.
Lord Clark of Windermere
I thank the noble Baroness. Does the Minister accept that tree planting plays a critical role in stopping the erosion of soil? As this problem gets more and more acute, what plans do the Government have to engage with the Forestry Commission to allow it to get more in touch with farmers to point out the advantages of tree planting and the disadvantages of removing hedges?
Lord De Mauley
Yes, I strongly agree with the noble Lord. He will be pleased to know that over the past five years not only have we planted 1 million trees, principally in urban areas, through the Big Tree Plant, we have also planted 10 million trees, funded through Pillar 2 of the CAP. We think it is extremely important and I agree with him very strongly on that.
Lord Tebbit
My Lords, does my noble friend think it is entirely wise to cover good-quality agricultural land with solar panel farms producing electricity at an enormous cost to the taxpayer and the user of electricity?
Lord De Mauley
I take my noble friend’s point entirely. The Government’s position is that farmers should not be subsidised twice. They should either take the subsidy for the solar panels or take the subsidies through the common agricultural policy.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a farmer receiving CAP payments. Healthy soils were also identified in the Pitt review, which recommended,
“water retention through management of infiltration”,
to reduce flood risk and delay water flow during flash-flood events. Given the pressures for efficiency in farming, with the ever increasing use of heavy machinery leading to soil compaction and run-off, what were the principal reasons behind the Government’s recommendation that the EU withdraw its proposed soil framework directive to establish a common framework to protect soils, bearing in mind that none of us wants excessive bureaucracy and regulation?
Lord De Mauley
The noble Lord makes an important point. He is right that matters such as compaction affect flood risk. The proposal from the EU lacked flexibility and it was overly prescriptive for member states that already have effective soil protection measures in place, such as the United Kingdom, where we have cross-compliance rules that specifically have measures in place to stop erosion, to maintain a minimum level of soil cover and to protect soil organic matter. There is already a large tranche of existing EU legislation that addresses soil protection.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that some of the healthiest soils in this country are to be found in allotments? Will he therefore encourage local authorities to avoid building on allotments wherever possible and, when they cannot avoid it in the public interest, to ensure that the land that is given in compensation is of similar quality? Not any old piece of land will do—it takes 20 years to develop a good soil.
Lord De Mauley
I certainly take my noble friend’s point and I will take it back. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, reminded me that I should also have declared an interest as a recipient of CAP funds.
Leisure Industry: Turban-wearing Sikhs
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Thornton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking with the leisure industry to support turban-wearing members of the Sikh community.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, the Sikh community is a vital part of our vibrant nation. The Government are committed to ensuring that people are protected against discrimination because of race or religion and we always seek to balance individual freedom with our responsibilities to keep citizens safe. Legislation is in place to allow for exemptions for turban wearers where appropriate and the Government expect businesses, including those in the leisure industry, to comply with the law.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. It is indeed good that the recent Deregulation Bill sought to deal with issues of turban-wearing Sikhs on building sites and in other workplaces, but it also threw up some anomalies. A turban-wearing Sikh may help to build a new sports facility and work in that new sports facility but may be barred from membership or sporting activities in that facility—sometimes just through ignorance. The Sikh Council reports inconsistencies across the country. There may be an Olympic talent out there in the turban-wearing Sikh community who is not able to get sports training, so will the Minister undertake to have discussions with the sports organisations, the EHRC and the Sikh Council to unlock and solve these issues?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
The noble Baroness is quite right to point out these anomalies. Through Sport England the Government are investing just over £1 million in Sporting Equals over two years. Sporting Equals provides expertise in encouraging more black and minority ethnic people to play sport. It has produced fact sheets with issues relevant to particular cultures and religions, including Sikhism. Of course, the Sikh Council would be very welcome to speak to Sport England and the Secretary of State would be pleased to take part, too.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, I have played cricket and rugby to a respectable level without mishap. Will the Minister remind the leisure industry and assorted health-and-safety and conformity fanatics who argue that we cannot even change a light bulb without protective clothing that the Sikh turban is not cultural headgear but a religious requirement to remind us of a commitment to ethical living, gender equality and a respect for all faiths and beliefs?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
Indeed, my Lords, there is a very rich and valuable tradition, culture and religious faith behind the turban. We are aware of that. The fact that the noble Lord has taken part in those sporting activities is evidence of the fact that the turban need not be a barrier to sporting prowess.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend is aware that the Government have made legislative concessions in the past to make sure that the religious requirements of the Sikh community are met. The classic example is the wearing of crash helmets when riding a motorbike. If it is good enough for the Government, why is it not so for some of the leisure industry? Will the Minister meet the Sikh organisation in this country with people from the leisure industry to make sure that the matter is fully discussed and that concessions are made in that respect?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My noble friend has great expertise in these areas and he is quite right. The legislation is there and it is for individual organisations to ensure that they comply with it. Sometimes problems arise because quite small organisations—leisure centres and sports facilities—may be unaware or unwilling to take the risk of moving outside the very strict legislation, so getting messages to them will be a very important factor, as will meetings with the Sikh Council.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, the Minister should tell us why the Government have not taken any action to stop this discrimination. It is discrimination. Sikhs are allowed to ride motorbikes and work in industry with a turban. Sikhs have fought two British world wars wearing turbans, not helmets. This is nothing. The Government must take action and we would like to hear what action they are going to take.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, again, my noble friend speaks with great experience of this. There is legislation in place that discrimination cannot take place on spurious grounds, so it would be discrimination under the Equality Act if the provider of a leisure centre were to require a turban-wearing Sikh to wear a safety helmet when head protection is not justified. Of course, it is sometimes a matter of balance because there are some sports where head protection is required. It is for individual sports to take that decision, but they must not debar people from sports because they are wearing a turban; it has to be on other grounds.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, health and safety is one excuse being used to discriminate against Sikhs wearing turbans. Insurance is also being cited by some leisure facilities. Given that legislation is in place, is it not important that all the leisure industry starts to act within the law and that there is consistency throughout the industry? It is unacceptable that individuals should be turned away and deprived of the opportunity of using facilities.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I agree with my noble friend; that is absolutely the case. It is probably a matter for Sport England, possibly working through Sporting Equals, to ensure that the information is disseminated. I come back to the point that a lot of these sporting and leisure organisations are quite small and may not be fully informed of all the facts and figures. We need to get that information better disseminated.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
Are the Government not being rather complacent about this? The Minister told us that anomalies arising from the passage of the Deregulation Bill will mean that turban-wearing Sikhs can be involved in the construction of a leisure facility, but acknowledged that those leisure organisations may none the less ban turban-wearing Sikhs from using those leisure facilities. Surely it is time that the Government did something. The Minister mentioned the fund used by Sport England. How much of that £1 million will be devoted to issues around turban-wearing Sikhs?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I can only apologise if I gave the impression that leisure centres can ban turban-wearing Sikhs. I was trying very carefully to say that they could not. There may be some sports that require protective headgear. For instance, in competitive riding it would be important to wear protective headgear. The noble Lord said he played cricket. Many cricketers cover their head with a smaller version of the turban—a patka—and play with that. It is important to get the message through that there should be no barriers to people wearing turbans playing the sports that they wish.
House of Commons Commission Bill
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Ukraine
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever) (Con)
“The Government’s position has been from the outset that we deplore Russian aggression in Ukraine. We do not believe that there is a military solution. There needs to be a diplomatic solution that should be enabled by sanctions and pressure and the economic weight of Europe and America, but as the Prime Minister said, obviously where we can help a friend with non-lethal equipment, we should do so.
The second Minsk agreement on 12 February provided a framework for stabilising the situation in eastern Ukraine. We want it to succeed, and we urge all sides to take the necessary steps to implement it. In light of continued Russian-backed aggression in Eastern Europe, the UK is committed to providing additional non-lethal support to the Ukrainian Government to help their forces deal with the pressures they are facing. As the Prime Minister confirmed yesterday in Parliament, we are providing additional non-lethal support by sending advisory and short-term training teams. This support, provided at the request of the Ukrainian Government, will help their armed forces develop and maintain the capacity and resilience they need, and reduce fatalities and casualties.
Support to the Ukrainian armed forces is not new; the UK has been providing advice and training support to Ukraine for some time and has well established relationships. Over the last year the UK has also provided personal protective equipment, winter fuel, medical kits and winter clothing to the Ukrainian armed forces.
As part of wider government effort to support Ukraine and ensure a robust international response to Russia’s aggression, UK personnel will now provide training in medical, logistics, infantry and intelligence capacity building from mid-March to the Ukrainian armed forces. Most of the advisory and training support will take place in Ukraine but well away from the areas affected by the conflict in the east of the country. The number of service personnel involved will be around 75.
In terms of medical support, we will be providing combat life support training through a “train the trainer package” to multiply the numbers trained. The logistics team will identify and help improve deficiencies within Ukraine’s logistics distribution system. The infantry training package will focus on protective measures to improve survivability. The intelligence capacity building team will provide tactical-level analysis training.
We are considering further requests from the Ukrainian Government for support and assistance and we will work closely with key allies through the Ukraine-US-UK-Canada joint commission. In the mean time, Russia must abide by its commitments at Minsk. That means making the separatists withdraw their heavy weapons, stopping continued separatists attacks so that an effective ceasefire can hold and allowing effective monitoring to take place.”
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer to the Urgent Question. We agree that the international community must continue to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Russia and we endorse the non-lethal support for Ukraine just set out by the Minister.
I wish to raise a few points. On what basis was the conclusion reached that up to some 75 military personnel should be deployed in Ukraine as opposed to a significantly higher or lower figure than that? For how long are we committing to deploying members of our Armed Forces in Ukraine? Can the Government confirm that our Armed Forces will not be deployed under any circumstances anywhere near the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine and that, as a result, issues of force protection should not arise?
In what circumstances, if any, would the Government decide to either withdraw these military personnel from Ukraine earlier than intended or, alternatively, significantly increase their numbers in Ukraine? When do the Government envisage making a decision on the further requests from Ukraine, to which the Minister referred, for additional assistance and support?
Finally the deployment of our Armed Forces in Ukraine is not, as I understand it, being done under the NATO umbrella. Is that regarded as a potential strength or a potential weakness by the Government, and which other NATO countries are also deploying, or have committed to deploying, members of their armed forces in Ukraine, and in what numbers and capacities?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I am grateful for the Opposition’s support for non-lethal support for Ukraine.
The noble Lord started by asking me about the 75 military personnel. Up to 75 UK service personnel will be based in Kiev to provide the training advisory support in four areas, as mentioned in my speech. In practice, lower numbers of personnel will be in country initially, and the numbers of personnel required to train in each area will be assessed according to Ukrainian requirements and capacity to absorb the training.
The noble Lord asked for how long the deployment will last. The length of training will be dependent on the Ukrainian capacity to absorb this. We will work closely with them to continuously refine the length and forms of the training packages.
The noble Lord then asked for a commitment that there will not be any deployment near the conflict zone. I can confirm that UK service personnel will only be training well away from the conflict in the east. Most of the trainers will be around Kiev in the west, which is an area that we know very well. It is peaceful, and we do not expect our troops to be armed, but obviously we are keeping that under review.
The noble Lord asked under what circumstances we would withdraw our troops earlier or possibly increase them. Training will be tailored to meet Ukrainian requirements; for example, the medical teams will initially deliver short combat life-saver courses to Ukrainian students.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House whether the United Kingdom Government’s position that we are not contemplating shipments of defensive weapons to Ukraine still stands, and what the arrangements will be as regards the short campaign and the period thereafter if the situation on the ground, particularly with respect to Mariupol, changes significantly?
Lord Astor of Hever
I can confirm to my noble friend that the last point she made could be a game-changer, and obviously, we are keeping that under review. We are getting requests for equipment from the Ukrainian Government, and we are considering that seriously. At the moment we feel that it is best to give only non-lethal equipment.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that Her Majesty’s Government are cognisant of two very grave dangers in this connection? One is what historians call “mission creep”, bearing in mind how the United States of America, from the deployment of a handful of advisers, found itself sucked into the war in Vietnam, deploying millions of conscripted troops. Secondly, will he also confirm that the problem is of course much wider than Ukraine itself? The presence of strong Russian minorities in so many other parts outside Russia means that the Sudetenland game can be played ad infinitum by Putin.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, we are aware of mission creep and the history here. This is a closely defined training and advisory mission, and we are well aware of the other point that the noble Lord made.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, as is the practice where British troops are engaged, will rules of engagement be agreed with the law officers that will ensure that they remain well away from the areas affected by the conflict to avoid the slippery slope situation or mission creep?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, we will consider the rules of engagement very seriously. However, as I said earlier, we anticipate that our trainers will be in a peaceful area, and they will not be armed. We will keep this under review, but we are optimistic on that point.
Lord Hurd of Westwell (Con)
Since my noble friend referred to the second Minsk agreement, which we all hope will be effective, can he tell us what his latest information is about that? The first reports were that implementation was only partial, and there were bits of Ukraine which we thought were covered by the agreement but which according to the Russians were not. Can he tell us if that is still the position?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, we welcome the diplomatic efforts that the French President and Chancellor Merkel brought to the Minsk meeting. There is concern that the situation is breaking down in places, and we are watching it very carefully.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, a surprising omission from the Statement is any reference to NATO—it mentions only Canada and the US. To what extent has the new provision been dovetailed and co-ordinated with our NATO allies? Given the danger in the Baltic states, is there not a serious argument for revisiting the definition of Article 5, because of hybrid warfare, cyberwarfare and economic warfare, beyond the direct military incursion which was in mind when Article 5 was drafted?
Lord Astor of Hever
I took a question yesterday from my noble friend Lord Howell on hybrid warfare. It is an area that NATO is looking at very carefully. The noble Lord mentioned the UK/US/Canada commission. The UK formally joined this commission earlier this year. The commission provides a framework for co-ordinating our support to Ukraine with allies, ensuring all support provided is consistent and complementary.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
What reaction does the Minister expect from the Russian propaganda machine to this very loud announcement of the deployment of 75 people, particularly should one of the 75, God forbid, fall into their hands? Secondly, have there been any discussions with the Greek Parliament to see whether they could let us have 300 Spartans to help out?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I cannot answer the second part of the noble Lord’s question. As for the first part, we would obviously rather avoid the path of confrontation with Russia. We hope that recent diplomatic efforts will bring lasting peace; the choice lies with the Kremlin. Russia faces a clear choice. If the destabilisation of Ukraine continues, there will be further sanctions and increasing isolation.
Baroness Rawlings (Con)
Is this aid coming out of the defence budget or the international development budget?
Lord Astor of Hever
I can confirm to my noble friend that the costs of this mission are coming out of the defence budget.
Lord Hylton (CB)
Will the Minister discuss with his colleagues the use of Britain’s soft power, with the help of the world’s media, to establish the truth of what has happened in Ukraine and to point out Russia’s many internal weaknesses?
Lord Astor of Hever
The noble Lord makes a very good point. There are a lot of weaknesses in Russia. Their economy is in a very bad way, the rouble is falling and it is very important that this message is given out. We will endeavour to pass this on to the media.
Modern Slavery Bill
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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18:59 - Division on Amendment 90 - Ayes: 183 / Noes: 176 - Amendment 90 agreed.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 53, 56, 58, 59 and 71. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, and I have fought a battle with two separate Governments over the past six years or so to be able to create a situation in which child victims of human trafficking, from overseas, in particular, have someone as a mentor, or to monitor them, outside social services. We fought that battle—it took a long time—and I am absolutely delighted to be able to say that I strongly support Amendment 61, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bates. It is for that reason that I think, for the first time, that the battle the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and I have fought has achieved, with the existing part of Clause 48 together with these amendments, nearly everything that we both want—certainly that I want. However, it would be helpful, when regulations and guidance are given, if the other matters in various amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and with my name on them, were to be found somewhere, in secondary legislation or guidance. But for the time being I am delighted with the result that has been achieved.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely pleased that Clause 48 is part of the Bill. It recognises that trafficked children have particular needs and experiences that make them especially vulnerable. It has been a great pleasure to work with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, over these years and it is great that the Minister has been so co-operative and helpful. I am also particularly grateful that he arranged the very helpful meeting with officials from the Home Office and Barnardo’s, which operates the child trafficking advocacy scheme.
The Minister’s amendments to Clause 48 deal precisely with the key areas of concern that we raised in Committee, and they are a testament to the Minister’s willingness to engage constructively on those issues—and I am very pleased to speak today in support of the majority of his amendments. I shall not go into great detail on matters contained in the amendments, trusting that my views are well known to your Lordships, and I shall focus my remarks on areas on which I would appreciate further clarification from the Minister.
Amendments 62 and 64 address the power to make regulations about details of the advocate scheme and will now require that regulations are made and cover the functions and appointment of the advocate. I strongly urge your Lordships to support Amendments 62 and 64, which will require the creation of regulations ensuring a robust statutory foundation for child trafficking advocates.
I have one question for the Minister. In previous amendments that I have brought to the House on this issue, I have always ensured that the functions of the role were based on internationally recognised best practice guidance from UNICEF and, more recently, from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Can the Minister assure me that such international guidance and recommendations from other British studies such as the Still At Risk report will be considered in drawing up the functions in the regulations, as well as from the trials currently being undertaken?
I particularly welcome Amendment 61, in the name of the Minister, which gives child trafficking advocates the power to assist the child in obtaining the legal advice and power to appoint and instruct legal representatives. As I mentioned in Committee, I have met a number of lawyers who represent trafficked children and who have all told me that they have great difficulty in taking instructions from trafficked children. They have therefore recommended that the advocate should have the power to fill that gap.
I welcome the Minister’s Amendment 72, which states that regulations about the advocates will require public authorities to,
“recognise, and pay due regard to, the advocate’s functions, and … provide the advocate with access to such information … to carry out those functions”.
We have heard in the past various stories from organisations such as Barnardo’s where advice from charity workers supporting trafficked children has not been heeded by a local authority, resulting in a child going missing and no longer receiving the help that they need.
Amendment 72 would help to prevent this happening. I have one question for the Minister about that amendment: which bodies and agencies will have this duty? During the meeting with Barnardo’s arranged for Peers by the Minister, I was disappointed to hear the story of a child whose college did not accept the child’s valid reason for missing classes, which had been to attend official immigration appointments. It was frustrating to hear that the advocate had had to make repeated representations to the college explaining the child’s situation before it heeded her advice and removed the negative attendance report from the child’s records. I hope that such a scenario would not be possible in the future, as a result of Amendment 72.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I simply want to ask a question relating to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord McColl. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me; I will be brief and then I will not need to intervene again.
Following the very useful meeting that the Minister called with Barnardo’s, he subsequently wrote to us explaining that local authorities had, in fact, taken proper action. This again raised a concern that I would like to put on record and for the Minister to speak to regarding the line of accountability between the local authority and the independent advocate. At the meeting, he made it clear that ultimate responsibility for the oversight and care of the child remained with the local authority, and that the independent advocate was, if you like, a help in terms of that. Something clearly went seriously wrong with communication but not with action, and the Minister subsequently told us that. My only question is to ask him to put on record that the respective roles of the independent advocate and the social worker are absolutely clear. Otherwise, we will have subsequent confusion. I was reassured at the meeting. I am no longer reassured about this and remain doubtful about the way in which this will work. I apologise but that was the only point I wanted to make.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I wish to speak to my Amendment 59A in this group. First, however, I would like to commend the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for his perseverance in bringing this issue before the House over so many years. I hope your Lordships would agree that his work and that of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have been recognised in the amendments to Clause 48 that we are discussing today.
In Committee, I said that I was disappointed that the Government would not “be bolder” in their statements of the principles that would underpin the role of the advocates. I am glad to see that today they have gone some way towards meeting my concerns. At Second Reading, I said that we needed,
“a proper definition of child trafficking advocates”.—[Official Report, 17/11/14; col. 307.]
Again, I am glad to see that the Government have put forward some helpful clarifications in the series of amendments tabled by the Minister. In particular, I welcome the addition of the word “independent” in eight of his amendments.
However, as was said about the anti-slavery commissioner, adding the word “independent” does not mean that the role really is independent. I am grateful that the Government have recognised the strength of the argument in the case of the commissioner and amended the Bill to ensure that there really is independence with budgets and staff. I feel the same way about the use of the word “independent” in relation to child trafficking advocates.
Clause 48(2) currently says that the Secretary of State,
“must have regard to the principle that, so far as practicable, a child should be represented and supported by someone who is independent of any person who will be responsible for making decisions about the child”.
I know that the Minister said in Committee:
“Our provision sets out key principles in the Bill, such as that the advocate must be independent”.
He also said that,
“we are very clear that these advocates need to be independent in order to support and protect the child effectively”.—[Official Report, 8/12/14; cols. 1683-84]
The noble Lord said that the principle of independence was set out in subsection (2), so it was therefore unnecessary to include the word “independent” in the title of the clause or the title of the role.
I welcome the Minister’s change of heart on the use of the word “independent”, but there are so many new references to “independent” included in this clause that Clause 48(2) remains unamended. I am left perplexed about what “independence” might actually look like if it was only to be “so far as practicable”. It is for that reason that I tabled Amendment 59A, which would amend Clause 48(2) and clarify what “independent” means in this subsection, thereby removing the uncertainty that the words “so far as practicable” engender.
The need for an independent person was recognised in the 2013 report, Still at Risk, produced by the Children’s Society and the Refugee Council. That report recommended that,
“a system of protection needs to be developed which includes an independent trusted adult appointed to a separated child as soon as they come to an authority’s attention”.
The handbook on child trafficking advocates published last year by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights has independence and impartiality as one of its six fundamental principles, saying that advocates must,
“be in a position to make independent and impartial decisions, assessments, actions and representations guided by the best interests of the child”.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, one of the most important aims of the Bill is undoubtedly to better protect children from the scourge of slavery and trafficking. I have welcomed from the outset the enabling provision for specific child trafficking advocates but have also joined other noble Lords in pushing for such advocates to be given greater clout and full independence in working to protect the children they are assigned to. To that end, I am heartened by the Government’s proposed amendments which seek to do this.
At Second Reading I was also clear about the need to assign full and proper legal powers to advocates. Again, I welcome that the power to appoint and instruct legal representation on behalf of the child is now being proposed by the Government in Amendment 61.
I would, however, emphasise the importance of the constructive working relationships between the advocates and other professionals working with the child. It is important that this should be a fundamental part of their roles. I am still a little concerned that there is not enough clarification on the definition of their responsibilities. Perhaps the Minister would comment on this when he responds.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I support the government amendments and Amendment 60, which stands in my name and that of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. At the outset, I, too, pay tribute to the battles, as the noble and learned Baroness put it, fought by her and the noble Lord, Lord McColl, to bring about child trafficking advocates with the appropriate powers. I have always been pleased to support their powerful advocacy.
As noble Lords have said, we are grateful for the Minister’s efforts in securing these important amendments, which significantly strengthen the role of child advocates in the Bill. In Committee, we pushed for changes to be made to Clause 48, and specifically to give advocates the legal powers that they would require in order to carry out their role effectively. This is the purpose of Amendment 60—but, of course, I am delighted to see that the same powers are outlined in government Amendment 61. Alongside the legal powers, we are pleased that government Amendment 72 gives child trafficking advocates the ability to co-operate and work for public authorities. These are important steps in securing the protection of vulnerable children who have been, and are, the victims of the most heinous crimes.
Guardians will be able to effectively and successfully act in a child’s interests only if they have the appropriate powers to instruct solicitors and have access to the required information from public authorities. Evidence from members of the Refugee Children’s Consortium, the Children’s Society and the Refugee Council demonstrates that local authorities have, unfortunately, failed on many occasions to respond adequately to the needs of the trafficked child.
While I give the Minister the warmest thanks for the amendments that he has brought forward today, I am rather disappointed that between Committee and Report we were not given sufficient information on the interim outcomes of the pilots that are being undertaken. I am grateful for the letter sent out by the Minister on Monday evening, but there is not quite enough detail to tell us clearly what needs to be improved, what is working in the current trials and what is not. The trials started in September 2014 and it would have been helpful if, five months on, we could have had more details and information to inform our debate today. So I have a few questions for the noble Lord.
It would be helpful if he could tell us how many children each advocate represents at a time, what services are available to help with any potential language barriers the children may have, and—as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said—what the difference is between the role of the advocate and that of the social worker. Do the trials demonstrate that there is a clear enough definition between those two very specific roles? Have any areas been identified thus far where more work needs to be done or where there are potential problems? I wonder, for example, why there has been a slower rate of uptake than may have been expected.
With that, I say again that I am very grateful to the Minister for all that he has done on these issues, and I look forward to his response.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, while welcoming very much the enormous progress that has been made—I have no doubt that a lot of that is due to the Minister’s personal efforts—I have two points that I should like to raise. I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, was going to ask about independent reviewing officers, but I suppose that that is subsumed within the question of accountability.
My first point, highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, concerns the use of the term “reasonable grounds to believe” which the government amendments apply in place of “reason to believe”. On Monday when we discussed legal aid, the Minister said that he thought it was important that no one should be deterred from applying to be referred to the national referral mechanism, and therefore that it would be better to have “reasonable grounds to believe” as the catalyst or prompt for various things to follow. It would be ironic if that were to be a reason for the change today in the case of child trafficking advocates.
I wonder whether there is in fact any difference between the terms. Is one more subjective than the other, or is one a harder test than the other? I ask this because if they mean the same, would it not be better to retain a non-technical term in order to anticipate any change there may be in the arrangements for the national referral mechanism? We know that consideration is being given to having a single stage going straight to conclusive grounds. Are we constraining a change which a lot of NGOs are calling for by including a technical term in the legislation? This is a question that goes to quite a number of the amendments that we will be considering today.
My second point is about legal representation. I think that on pretty much every occasion when we have discussed this issue I have argued for its importance. I did wonder whether the instruction should be given by the child or by the advocate. Is it the advocate’s role to assist, which is the Government’s amendment? I think that perhaps it is. The lawyer needs to hear from the child, but I am not even sure whether a child—I hesitate to ask this question in the presence of the noble and learned Baroness—has the capacity to give instructions to a legal representative. Should they instead be given by someone on the child’s behalf? However, that is not the main thrust of my question.
Government Amendment 61 states:
“The advocate may (where appropriate) assist the child to obtain legal or other advice”,
and so on. Can the Minister flesh that out? If a lawyer is approached and asked for advice, but legal advice is not appropriate in the circumstances, the lawyer is going to say so. We do not need legislation to put a block in the way—and, indeed, there should not be a block in the way of that approach.
I would not want to think that the advocate would be in a position to stop the question to a lawyer: “Is this a legal issue that you can help sort out?”. I would not want to think that the term “appropriate” in this context is because it is appropriate to the trafficked position of the child—because a child victim may have much wider needs than those which are directly related to his or her having been trafficked. Again, I think it would be a great pity if those who are involved are made to question whether seeking legal advice is the right thing to do.
If the Minister can flesh out and get rid of my concerns about Amendment 61, it would be very helpful to have that on the record. If he cannot, I will really wish that I had not raised them, because I would not want the negative points to be on the record, either.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for moving her amendment. I will speak to my amendments as well. I begin by joining others in paying tribute to the noble and learned Baroness and to my noble friend Lord McColl for eventually securing the amendments that they are looking for. I am grateful that we have been able to do that.
A hallmark of the way in which this Bill has gone through is that it has drawn upon the incredible level of expertise in your Lordships’ House in these particular areas. We have tried to distil that into strengthening the Bill, which enjoys cross-party support and which we all want to see passed. That expertise is also reflected in the 23 amendments that the Government tabled in Committee and by the further 72 amendments, 27 of which we will be considering on the second day of Report. I was reminded by officials that this is something of a record. I do not know if they meant that as a compliment—equating the number of amendments to the effectiveness of the Bill. However, as we have gone through this process, time and again, new pieces of evidence—new gaps—have come to light and, where at all possible, the Government have sought to respond to them.
I will speak to my amendments first and then deal with the questions which were raised. The government amendments reflect the European Union fundamental rights agency’s key functions for such a role and the Northern Ireland human trafficking and exploitation Act. These amendments have been drafted following significant consultation with NGOs and Peers on the precise wording necessary to seek the overall objective of ensuring that we have set out the fundamental principles of these roles in statute.
The government amendments clarify beyond doubt the independence of the child trafficking advocate’s role; ensure the advocate promotes the child’s well-being as well as acts in the child’s best interests; and give the advocate the power to assist the child in obtaining legal advice, as referred to by my noble friend Lady Hodgson. I will return later to the question raised by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I know that this has been at the very forefront of the debate on this issue and is reflected in the amendments tabled by noble Lords today.
These amendments also remove the Secretary of State’s discretion to make detailed regulations and replace this with a duty to do so. We are also ensuring, through these amendments, that the regulations provide for advocates to be appointed to potential child victims of human trafficking as soon as possible.
The government amendments will also place a requirement on public authorities to co-operate and share information with child trafficking advocates, where any disclosures do not contravene a restriction. This will place beyond doubt the status of the advocate across the criminal justice, care and immigration systems. Again, these government amendments closely reflect those made by noble Lords, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I thank the Minister but I did not get that letter, and I think that many other noble Lords did not get it. It would have been helpful because I tabled the lead amendment.
Lord Bates
Of course; that goes without saying. A copy was placed in the Library. I readily accept, having been on the Back Benches and followed legislation, that that is meant as a get-out clause. However, the noble and learned Baroness should have had that letter as a courtesy, and I will make sure that she is furnished with one within the next few minutes.
The University of Bedfordshire has been appointed to undertake an independent evaluation of the child trafficking advocates trial. That evaluation will establish what difference the specialist advocate scheme made for child trafficking victims compared to the existing provision. The success of the trial will be measured by assessing the impact of advocates on the quality of decision-making in relation to the child trafficking victims’ needs by key professionals—for example, social workers, immigration officials and police officers—the child trafficking victims’ well-being; their understanding, experience and satisfaction of the immigration, social care and criminal justice system; and their perceptions of practitioners. The evaluation will include a process assessment to show how the advocate process operated in practice and what might be improved. The early findings show that in the first four and a half months, 59 children were allocated to the child trafficking advocates trial. The advocates are largely perceived by stakeholders to be doing well, and there is emerging evidence of advocates’ positive impact in individual cases.
The point was raised about the college case, where one individual who was being helped by an advocate was having problems being released by their college. The very fact that the advocate was there and was able to make representations to show that the individual’s college record was not being damaged as a result of the necessary meetings she had to attend is a good example of the work that is being done.
I have a copy of the letter for the noble and learned Baroness and I will make sure that she receives it. I am aware that a number of other specific points were raised. I will look very carefully at those and will be happy to write to all noble Lords, particularly the noble and learned Baroness, following this. But I hope that on the basis of those reassurances, the noble and learned Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
The Minister is being very clear that there is no difference between “reason to believe” and “reasonable grounds to believe”. Many people who will encounter these provisions will have been used to the “reasonable grounds” formula through dealing with the NRM. This point is relevant to other parts of the Bill as well. Can he reassure the House that the guidance that will be published will make it crystal clear that there is no need to get to that point in the NRM procedure in order for the provisions to bite and to be applied?
Lord Bates
I totally agree with that. I also recognise that the guidance will be a key part of filling in some of the gaps in the information. When the guidance is released, it will be informed by the results of the trial. That will strengthen still further the operation of the role going forward.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I just wondered why the Minister had not made any comments about my Amendment 59A. I was hoping that he would reconsider the wording in Clause 48(2).
Lord Bates
I am sorry about that. I do not appear to have a note relating to that amendment. Just looking at Amendment 59A, which says:
“Page 37, line 27, leave out from beginning to ‘be’ in line 28 and insert ‘For the purposes of subsection (1), a child must’”,
perhaps I could come back to the noble Baroness on that. I am sorry I did not deal with it specifically. If she wants to raise a specific point about the effect of that amendment, which I could perhaps respond to, I would be very happy to deal with that.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I am happy to await any sort of further answer the Minister may have to my point. I was just somewhat surprised that there was no mention at all of what I was saying.
Lord Bates
I can say that the response was given in my answer but I did not highlight it as being in response to Amendment 59A. The government amendment to allow for independence when practical was drafted to give some flexibility for the basis of a future national scheme depending on what was learnt from the evaluation of the trial. We are clear, however, that the advocates will be independent. Although not tagged as such, that was our response to Amendment 59A.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I wanted to make a small number of points. First, I add my thanks to those offered to the Minister, who has listened with enormous care to the various points that we have made throughout this Bill and particularly on the issue of child advocates, both in meetings that I have had with him and other Ministers, and within this Chamber.
I think that Clause 48 is good enough. It is not as good as perhaps some of us would like, but it is important to have it in place, to look at how the independent child advocates perform, to watch with interest on the guidance and then to come back, either privately or publicly, to say if we are not satisfied with it and how we would like it to be changed. That seems to me better than pushing any further amendments on Clause 48.
I have two points on the advocates. First, I would assume that an advocate for a child victim of human trafficking who is almost certainly a foreigner in this country would be likely not only to be sympathetic and compassionate but robust and effective. That will not only be with lawyers but with everybody else, from the immigration officials through to mental health and physical health issues and so on. That is the most important part of the advocate’s role: to be the friend, the mediator with organisations and the mentor from the beginning to the time when the child has settled. That is what we now have in the Bill, and I look forward to seeing how well it will work.
The issue of capacity of a child was probably best defined by Lord Denning many years ago, on whether—I forget her name; she was the good lady who was a devout Roman Catholic and who did not want her teenage daughters—
Baroness Butler-Sloss
Yes, Gillick. She did not want her teenage daughters to receive advice on either the pill or other forms of contraception. What Lord Denning said, which has reverberated around the courts more perhaps than anywhere else, was that a child may have the capacity to do all sorts of things much younger than the age of 16 and, in many ways, some capacity at the age of 10, 11 or 12 in relation to the particular issue on which the child is being asked to give an opinion. Being a child, their capacity may mean that they can be decisive or that the opinion will be listened to but not necessarily agreed to. That is another aspect of the robustness of the child trafficking advocate. They will come to a view as to whether what the child wants is actually what is best for the child, because, at the end of the day, for child victims as well as all for other children, it is their welfare that is the paramount consideration.
I think that this will be an interesting problem from time to time with 14 year-olds and 15 year-olds—it might be an interesting problem with the 11 year-old—but it will have to be dealt with. The guidance in relation to Clause 48 will be of enormous importance, and I hope that those around the House who have expressed an interest in how the independent human trafficking advocate will work might be given the opportunity to express views on the guidance when it comes forward, which would be helpful. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
“( ) A person appointed as an independent child trafficking advocate for a child must promote the child’s well-being and act in the child’s best interests.
“( ) The advocate may (where appropriate) assist the child to obtain legal or other advice, assistance and representation, including (where necessary) by appointing and instructing legal representatives to act on the child’s behalf.”
Lord McColl of Dulwich
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
“( ) requiring an independent child trafficking advocate to be appointed for a child as soon as reasonably practicable, where there are reasonable grounds to believe a child may be a victim of human trafficking;”
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
(i) recognise, and pay due regard to, the advocate’s functions, and(ii) provide the advocate with access to such information relating to the child as will enable the advocate to carry out those functions effectively (so far as the authority may do so without contravening a restriction on disclosure of the information).”
Lord McColl of Dulwich
Lord McColl of Dulwich
I speak to amendments to Clause 49. First, I have tabled Amendment 74 because I am keen to ensure that there is joined-up thinking between different sections of the Bill. Part 4 has created the position of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner and has charged the commissioner with encouraging good practice in the identification of victims. It seems logical, therefore, that the commissioner be involved in the production of statutory guidance directly relevant to promoting good practice in the identifying of victims—namely, the indicators of trafficking and the process of deciding that a person is a victim of trafficking and entitled to receive assistance.
The commissioner will have a great deal of expertise and will gather a lot of information from front-line professionals about the challenges and good practice in identifying victims in the course of carrying out his work. That expertise and information will be key to determining what the guidance produced under Clause 49 needs to cover. We must ensure that the commissioner’s knowledge and findings are incorporated into the development process for the guidance. Amendment 74 would make that a requirement of the guidance provision. I urge the Minister to accept Amendment 74 to guarantee a role for the commissioner in drawing up the statutory guidance. Can the Minister also confirm that the guidance produced under Clause 49 will go through public consultation processes to enable NGOs and other groups with relevant expertise to make an input into the guidance?
I am pleased to introduce Amendment 74 in my name and in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Morrow. I am extremely thankful to the Minister for the new measures that he has introduced on Report to strengthen protection for child victims and bring victim support into the consideration of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. However, I feel that there is still a gap in the centre of the Bill: the lack of a guarantee of assistance and support for victims. Amendment 82 creates a power for the Secretary of State to introduce regulations about providing assistance and support to victims, which I welcome as far as it goes—but I do not believe it goes far enough. An enabling power provides no assurance to victims and makes no commitments about what victims are entitled to. Amendment 78 is a better way forward. My Amendments 75, 79 and 80 are consequential on Amendment 78.
It has been noted by the Minister and others that the Bill before us today has vastly more measures to address the needs of victims than the draft Bill. This is undoubtedly true, and I welcome all the improvements that have occurred here and in another place, but on the specific matter of victim support, the Modern Slavery Bill comes up very short when we compare it with the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, which was steered though the Assembly by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill proposed by the Scottish Government. Amendment 78 would insert a new subsection (1A) which would require support to be provided and a new subsection (1B) which would require the Secretary of State to provide guidance on the provision of support and assistance.
There are three key elements in Amendment 78 which echo the provisions of the Northern Ireland Act and the Scottish Bill but are missing from both Clause 49 and the amendments proposed by the Minister. The first is putting in statute a basic duty for the state to provide victims with,
“support and assistance for physical, psychological and social recovery”.
Setting out in the Bill that victims are entitled to a period of support and assistance will help give them confidence to come forward and seek help. It should also give them confidence to engage with police officers and talk about what has happened to them—and perhaps even to give testimony in court against the perpetrators of these horrible crimes.
During the very helpful meeting with Peers arranged by the Minister, the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner spoke about the many victims he had encountered in his time as a police officer who were too fearful to speak to officers. It was only after they had been brought to a place of safety in the care of people outside the law enforcement apparatus that they felt confident to speak. In Committee, the Minister drew attention to the assistance provided under the victim care contract, which is a very positive thing. However, unless we establish in law a duty to provide that assistance, I fear that the victim care programme will not be protected for the long term when budgets become squeezed or departmental priorities change. In Committee, I mentioned that GRETA, the Council of Europe’s group of experts, recommended in 2012 that the convention right to a recovery and reflection period for victims should be enshrined in British law, and my amendment would do exactly that.
Establishing victim support in law will also provide a basis for achieving a greater level of consistency in the support provided to victims across the care programme. Paragraph (d) of new subsection (1B) inserted by Amendment 78 additionally promotes this by requiring the establishment of minimum standards for victim support, while paragraph (g) of that new subsection requires the service to be audited, as recommended by the NRM review.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, I will speak in favour of Amendment 78 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, to Clause 49, to which amendment I have also added my name. I commend the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for putting forward this important amendment today.
Some noble Lords may be aware that I brought forward legislation in the Northern Ireland Assembly on human trafficking. It took over three years to get from the genesis of the legislation to the granting of Royal Assent last month, but to my mind it was worth every minute. Noble Lords will undoubtedly agree with me that victims of human trafficking are some of the most vulnerable people within the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland most certainly is not exempt from the impact of human trafficking, and I brought forward the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Bill to improve the response to the crime of human trafficking in Northern Ireland, crucially with regard to this amendment, to ensure that victims of trafficking are effectively supported.
The statutory requirement to assist and support victims of trafficking is a crucial part of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act. The relevant section was the product of a collaborative effort between the Minister of Justice, David Ford, and me, alongside our respective support teams. We were determined to ensure that victims of human trafficking who have entered into the NRM process have a statutory right to access support including: appropriate and safe accommodation; material assistance; assistance in obtaining health care services, counselling, translation and interpretation services; assistance in obtaining legal advice or representation; and assistance with repatriation.
That section was supported unanimously by the Northern Ireland Assembly. Northern Irish society may be divided on many issues, but the need to effectively support victims of human trafficking is not one of them. The NGO community in Northern Ireland also overwhelmingly supported the introduction of this section. In my opinion it is vital that the requirement to provide assistance and support is in statute. It makes it crystal clear to victims of trafficking, the NGOs supporting them and state agencies what victims are legally entitled to. It gives victims and those seeking to support them the ability to challenge the actions of the state if it has failed to provide effective support. It also ensures that the support and assistance provided to victims cannot be withdrawn or restricted by government if, for example, it faces challenges, particularly a challenging budgetary situation.
I have added my name to Amendment 78 because I believe it fills an important gap in what is otherwise an excellent Bill. First, it will help to ensure that victims of human trafficking are effectively supported in England and Wales. I appreciate that the Bill requires the Government to issue guidance to public authorities setting out,
“arrangements for providing assistance and support to persons who there is reason to believe may be victims of slavery or human trafficking”.
This requirement is better than nothing but in my opinion does not go far enough. There are no directions or guarantees about the content of the guidance, which can be varied at the will of the Secretary of State. Guidance also does not have the same status as legislation and cannot be relied on in the same way. It would be far better for victims if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, were adopted. It would ensure that there is a legal guarantee of support for victims.
Secondly, it seems clear to me that if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, or something like it is not accepted, victims of trafficking in Northern Ireland—and in Scotland once the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Bill has passed—will have more legal rights than victims of trafficking in England and Wales. This would be a rather unfortunate situation. Surely, most of us here and most of the public would think that victims of trafficking, regardless of where in the United Kingdom they have been identified, should have the same or similar legal rights. Of course, it is Parliament’s prerogative to decide whether this will be the case.
I urge noble Lords to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl. It rectifies a significant omission in the Bill and will help to ensure that victims of trafficking in England and Wales are effectively supported.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendment 78, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, to which I have added my name.
I have been watching the passage of the Bill with great interest. I recognise that many noble Lords who have spoken on Report have much greater knowledge and a longer history of raising these issues than I have. In particular, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for his tireless efforts in bringing the needs of vulnerable people to the attention of your Lordships. It is listening to his contribution that has encouraged me to step forward.
I do not doubt that the Government take victim protection very seriously, but I have concerns that the Bill itself does not yet provide the necessary framework for victims to receive the support that they most desperately need at the time when they are at their most vulnerable—when they are first rescued or identified. Nor does it give a clear enough signal to victims and those who first encounter them that access to immediate assistance is a matter of utmost priority.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I am very pleased to speak in support of Amendment 78, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Morrow.
In Committee, I highlighted the concerns raised by the Council of Europe’s group of experts and quoted in detail from their recommendations 26 and 27 that the UK,
“should make further efforts to ensure that all potential and actual victims of trafficking are provided with adequate support and assistance from their identification through to their recovery”.
I quoted from the Joint Committee on the draft Bill about the lack of consistency in the support being provided to victims of human trafficking. I said then:
“If this Bill contained details of the minimum levels victims should be receiving under our international obligations, it would strengthen the likelihood that all victims would receive that level of assistance”.—[Official Report, 8/12/14; col. 1693.]
I continue to have concerns that provision of support will be patchy and may not reach the standards expected by international treaties if the Bill does not make a specific guarantee that support of particular types will be available to victims, and create a statutory framework to govern how that support is provided.
I understand that an organisation that provides support to victims told the evidence review in the run-up to the draft Bill:
“In order to ensure that victims of human trafficking are confident that the UK will provide adequate protections it is vital that protections, entitlements and support are clearly defined in legislation and are not afforded through a ‘policy’ approach that can be subject to different interpretations .... Clear, legally defined obligations towards supporting potential victims of trafficking will improve confidence in the state to provide protection for them, further encourage cooperation and lead to the successful prosecution of perpetrators”.
I agree, and am disappointed that the amendments tabled by the Minister do not address this issue at all, especially as the Government’s own NRM review revealed that the current provision of support falls short of what we might expect and of the UK’s obligations in international treaties. For example, as the NRM review noted, the use of asylum support accommodation for victims of trafficking who are also making an asylum claim raises concerns with regard to victims’ safety and protection. This has been mentioned by other noble Lords. The report concludes that asylum support accommodation,
“may be suitable for some, but not all. Shared rooms or mixed gender accommodation are not suitable for those who are highly traumatised or who have been victims of sexual exploitation for example”.
Article 11.5 of the EU anti-trafficking directive requires that victims should be provided with “appropriate and safe accommodation”, as does Article 12 of the European convention, which specifically requires countries to take due account of the victim’s “safety and protection needs”. The evidence from the NRM review about the use of asylum seeker accommodation calls into question how well those international obligations are being met. Amendment 78 contains the requirements for appropriate and safe accommodation and for support to be provided with due regard for the victim’s need for safety and protection. Putting these requirements into law would prevent the placement of a vulnerable victim in unsuitable accommodation.
The review also “noted with concern” that there is no formal audit or inspection of services provided. I am glad to see this addressed specifically in Amendment 78, through proposed new subsection (1B)(g) and through the creation of minimum standards in proposed new subsection (1B)(d). The noble Lord, Lord McColl, referred to this. The absence of official minimum standards and independent auditing processes for support services means there is no way to ensure consistency in the type and quality of the assistance provided to victims. Victims of human trafficking are all different: they have experienced different types of exploitation, and their national and cultural backgrounds are different. Men and women can respond differently to the trauma that they have been through. Different needs will mean that different forms and methods of support will be appropriate.
I agree with the recommendation of the NRM review, which states:
“Support should be provided based on an assessment of the individual needs of the victim”.
But, as the Centre for Social Justice report on modern slavery, It Happens Here, notes:
“Whilst a variety of approaches is to be welcomed there is a need for consistency across all organisations which are providing support”.
The report goes on to recommend the establishment of minimum standards, echoing an earlier recommendation from the Council of Europe group of experts report, which I quoted earlier. The Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group has also made this recommendation on more than one occasion.
We must ensure that all victims receive the care that they are entitled to and that they are cared for in a safe and appropriate manner. Amendment 78 provides a foundation to do that. I commend it to the Minister. If he is unable to support it today, perhaps he may reflect on how key elements ensuring consistency in standards of care might be incorporated into the regulations that he proposes in Amendment 82.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I want to speak briefly on what might appear to be a rather discordant note. I support the government amendments for the following reasons. I have great sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, which has been supported. However, when the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, raised the issue about child exploitation, we talked about the spectrum of people with needs.
In local authorities there are individuals with as high a level of need as some trafficked individuals—and I am not saying that trafficked individuals do not need a specialist service. I work with some of the relevant organisations, and a specialist service is needed. There are numerous sexually exploited young people who the local authority is attempting to support—the Children Act 1989 was as special as this legislation is—but because of cuts in local authority spending, children’s services are unable to provide the level of service needed, particularly in mental health support services, hostels for runaways and a whole range of services that we would expect to be given to asylum seekers. It is therefore difficult to set a standard for one group of individuals and say that we are not going to meet it for others.
I would be delighted if the Minister were able to say, “We are going to set this standard, and it should be for all individuals who have these needs”. However, under the 1989 Act, children who are described as being in need—there are thousands on local authority books—are simply not receiving those services. I wanted to inject that into the debate because someone has to speak for the local authorities, which are continually derided as not providing services appropriately. I speak as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, but that is neither here nor there. I simply hear from social workers and people in communities who are attempting to deliver services but against all odds. If there are specialist advocates who can give a high-quality service, such as guardians ad litem—I was eight years in CAFCASS, and I know all about the services such specialists are able to give—we need to look to enabling local authority social workers to give such services to every child in need.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, we dealt in the previous group of amendments with the distinction, or lack of it, between “reason to believe” and “reasonable grounds to believe”, and to which the noble Lord, Lord McColl, referred. Here, just as on that issue, the guidance will be important in making clear the position. That is because the first few days are so critical, as the noble Lord and others have said.
Guidance will also be important as regards our international obligations, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, referred. Looking at Amendment 78, I have been wondering whether it is necessary to detail what are already obligations, or whether one should have simply the general umbrella description, so that we are not stuck on any particular points. It might be necessary because we are, we hope, making quite a step change. It might also be necessary because having them spelt out in primary legislation will be an easier route to a remedy through the courts; but I raise the point because, if the amendment is not accepted, the guidance will be important in that regard.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, we are not directly associated with any of the amendments in this group, but the proponents of Amendment 78 have certainly made a powerful case in support of it. They referred to the Northern Ireland Act and to the Bill in Scotland which are much more specific on support and assistance for victims than this Bill as it is currently worded. We will wait to see whether the Government are going to give a helpful response to Amendment 78 in particular; or, alternatively, whether, when the Minister comes to propose his amendments, he can persuade us that they actually address the point.
There must surely be a need for the Government to say something now at least on what minimum level of assistance and support they would expect would be provided to victims of slavery or human trafficking and in what circumstances. This major question should not be left so much in the air as is the case in the Bill as it is worded. It would still appear to be the case—we will wait for the Minister to speak to his amendment—in government Amendment 82.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 74, moved by my noble friend Lord McColl, to the amendments tabled by him and other noble Lords and to the nine government amendments standing in my name in this group. I shall speak, first, to the government amendments and then respond to the amendments tabled by other noble Lords and address at that point some of the questions which have been raised. I am grateful to noble Lords for tabling these amendments relating to the identification and support of victims, particularly through the national referral mechanism. I shall move government amendments on this issue.
The quality of the identification and support of victims is an essential issue. As I have said before, the victim is at the heart of the Government’s approach to tackling modern slavery. It is right that we had a thorough debate in Committee on issues relating to victims and we are very grateful that so many noble Lords took part in the excellent discussions we had outside the Chamber ahead of Report. Given the importance of identifying and supporting victims I entirely understand the sentiment behind Amendment 78—tabled by the noble Lords, Lord McColl, Lord Anderson of Swansea, and Lord Morrow, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson—which would place support of victims on a statutory footing immediately.
At this point I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, in introducing this important, ground-breaking legislation in Northern Ireland. We have been following closely the excellent work by the Assembly—by the noble Lord and David Ford—in bringing this forward. It is an example of the way in which we can learn together. There is the potential for the role of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner—who I know has had constructive meetings in Northern Ireland—to be UK-wide. This would help ensure consistency of standards and support as we move forward. I want to place on record my thanks and our respect for what the noble Lord has done.
As I set out in the debate on a previous group of amendments I have some concerns about moving immediately to a statutory footing for the NRM. We have just had a review of the system which found that major changes are needed, and we have, in principle, accepted all its recommendations. Many have referred to the NRM and Jeremy Oppenheim’s excellent review, which has received widespread approval. However, he stopped short of recommending that there should be a statutory element to the NRM at that stage.
Some of the changes in the national referral mechanism reflect key concerns raised in Parliament through the pre-legislative scrutiny process and since, for example, changing the decision-making process so that final decisions are taken by multiagency panels rather than UK Visas and Immigration or the NCA alone. We are setting up pilots to test out the new arrangements. I do not believe that an immediate move to a statutory footing while the system is in flux would be appropriate. I am also concerned that we need to consider the conclusions of the review of the national referral mechanism, which raise concerns that a statutory footing could lead to a loss of flexibility.
However, the Government have listened carefully to the debates on the issue, particularly the imaginative and practical idea put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in Committee; and under Amendment 48, which we have already debated, we have brought forward that change. Given the changes being made currently, an enabling power which allows for the Government to place the national referral mechanism on a statutory basis once we have a more settled and effective system is an excellent idea. That is why I am bringing forward today government Amendments 76 and 77, 81 to 87 and 107, which place an enabling power in the Bill to make regulations in relation to the support and assistance of victims of modern slavery. The amendments will allow for regulations to be made about accommodation, financial assistance, assistance in obtaining healthcare—a question that was raised by my noble friend Lady Hamwee—the provision of information, and translation and interpretation services where a person is a victim of modern slavery or there are reasonable grounds to believe that they are. These are exactly the types of support that were previously covered by Amendment 78.
Amendment 74, tabled by my noble friend Lord McColl, seeks to require the statutory guidance set out in Clause 49 to be developed in conjunction with the commissioner. We are determined to involve the commissioner fully in the development of the statutory guidance set out in Clause 49, and have also committed to a formal public consultation. One of the commissioner’s core functions is encouraging good practice in the identification of victims of modern slavery. Given that we already have a clear intention to involve the commissioner in the development of the guidance, I do not believe that the amendment is necessary, although I think that we are very much in the same area on the points made by my noble friend.
I turn now to some of the specific questions which have been raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, talked about minimum standards. As part of our work to retender the adult victim care contract, we have included minimum standards of care which will ensure that the care provided through the contract is routinely inspected.
On average wait times, individuals who need support immediately will be accommodated under the adult victim care contract from the point they come to the attention of the first responder and are referred for support. There will be no gaps, 48-hour delays or anything like that; it comes into play as soon as they come to the attention of the first responder. Of course, a huge section of the NRM dealt with the effectiveness of the first responder system, and clearly some were much better than others. Most of the referrals to the system were coming via the Home Office, perhaps fewer than one might expect were coming from local authorities, a small number were from NGOs and an even smaller number were from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. One of the key elements that we need to look at is the quality of the training that people are provided with, and this was recognised by Jeremy Oppenheim. We need to make sure that the first responders are more able to deal with these issues.
My noble friend Lord McColl said that we need the words “the right to support” in the Bill. The Government are under a duty to provide support services to victims under the Council of Europe convention and the EU directive on trafficking. Placing this phrase on the face of the Bill would not change this duty, as the NRM review set out. In fact, Jeremy Oppenheim said in the review that:
“Any process put on a statutory footing can become inflexible and unresponsive to changing demands and indeed improvements, due to the requirement to further legislate before making changes. Pinning the National Referral Mechanism down now would not be an effective methodology particularly when the National Referral Mechanism is going through a period of significant change”.
I simply repeat that to demonstrate that neither here nor throughout the Bill are we objecting out of hand to the proposals. We are trying to move forward on the basis of the evidence and the advice that we are getting from various expert groups, and that was a clear recommendation. The fact that we have tabled these amendments is a good indicator of that.
My noble friend Lord McColl also asked about support prior to the reasonable grounds decision. The NRM pilots will be implemented as soon as possible. They will include testing the amalgamation of the referral and reasonable grounds decision, which will allow victims to access support and accommodation immediately. Currently, support and accommodation can be provided to the individual prior to receiving a reasonable grounds decision, which I know was at the heart of the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Where there is a need, this is provided for on a case-by-case basis, recognising of course that the local authority has the first responsibility to provide immediate care, particularly in the case of vulnerable children.
I am happy to reflect on those outlines and explanations further, and indeed to look again at the comments made in this debate—as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser has invited me to do; I am happy to continue doing that, as I have done throughout. With that, I hope that my noble friend Lord McColl will consider withdrawing his amendment.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
Before the noble Lord sits down, does he happen to know whether the Northern Irish legislation includes the person who has the obligation to provide the support? This amendment does not seem to have that. I wonder whether the Minister knows whether the Northern Ireland legislation says who must provide the support.
Lord Bates
I always slightly quake in my boots when my noble and learned friend asks me a question, because if I think I have actually understood the question, I am probably overreaching myself in terms of my understanding of it. I think that we are talking about the individual—the noble Lord, Lord Morrow can respond, should he wish, on the specifics of Northern Ireland—and making it clear that the support to be provided is through the care contract, which is currently provided through the national referral mechanism. In addition, there are particular statutory duties, of course, on the part of local authorities to provide social care for vulnerable individuals. I will, again, reflect on that and if there are any changes I will certainly write and clarify the remarks that I have made.
Lord McColl of Dulwich
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contribution, and I especially thank the Minister for his and for many of the explanations that he has given. I also thank him again for the many ways in which he has accommodated us. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 74.
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
“( ) If the Secretary of State makes regulations under section (Regulations about identifying and supporting victims), the references in subsection (1) to “arrangements” include arrangements under the regulations.”
Lord Bates
“Regulations about identifying and supporting victims
(1) The Secretary of State may make regulations providing for assistance and support to be provided to persons—
(a) who there are reasonable grounds to believe may be victims of slavery or human trafficking;(b) who are victims of slavery or human trafficking.(2) The Secretary of State may make regulations providing for public authorities to determine (for the purposes of regulations under subsection (1) or other purposes specified in the regulations) whether—
(a) there are reasonable grounds to believe that a person may be a victim of slavery or human trafficking;(b) a person is a victim of slavery or human trafficking. (3) Regulations under subsection (2) may in particular make provision about the public authorities who may make such determinations, and the criteria and procedure for doing so.”
Lord Bates
“(a) any regulations made under section (Regulations about identifying and supporting victims)(1);(b) ”
Lord Bates
“(a) may provide that a public authority which includes information in a notification in accordance with the regulations does not breach any obligation of confidence owed by the public authority in relation to that information;(b) may not require or authorise the inclusion of information which contravenes any other restriction on the disclosure of information (however imposed).”
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 89 and 108 in this group. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s excellent report on the Modern Slavery Bill recommended specifying on the face of the Bill an initial list of public authorities which will be subject to the duty to notify potential victims of modern slavery to the Home Office and ensuring that authorities could only be removed from the list through the affirmative procedure.
I welcome the Committee’s balanced and constructive consideration and agree that these measures would give Parliament the appropriate level of scrutiny of the new duty. We are therefore tabling amendments to reflect these recommendations. On commencement of this provision, the duty to notify will apply to the police, the National Crime Agency, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and local authorities. These are the key public authorities that make referrals into the national referral mechanism and have a key role to play in tackling modern slavery. They are most likely to encounter victims and also have the expertise effectively to identify them.
However, we are determined to improve the identification of victims, including through the statutory guidance provided for in the Bill. We will work with other public authorities to improve their knowledge and, should it become clear that other public authorities should also be made subject to this duty, they can be added via regulations. In line with the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, such additions will be made via the negative procedure. Amendment 108 ensures that any removal of an authority would be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Government Amendment 88 clarifies what information can be provided as part of the duty and takes a similar approach to information safeguards as govern the disclosure of information provided to the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner under the duty to co-operate. We have looked again at the detail of this provision to ensure that the duty to notify respects existing restrictions on the disclosure of information, including those set out in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Crime and Courts Act 2013, and is pertinent, given that the duty will now apply to the National Crime Agency.
These amendments place the duty to notify on a wide group of key public authorities and ensure that Parliament has appropriate oversight of this provision. I hope that noble Lords therefore feel able to support them.
“(5) This section applies to—
(a) a chief officer of police for a police area,(b) the chief constable of the British Transport Police Force,(c) the National Crime Agency,(d) a county council,(e) a county borough council,(f) a district council,(g) a London borough council,(h) the Greater London Authority,(i) the Common Council of the City of London,(j) the Council of the Isles of Scilly,(k) the Gangmasters Licensing Authority.(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend subsection (5) so as to—
(a) add or remove a public authority;(b) amend the entry for a public authority.”
Lord Hylton
“Protection from slavery for overseas domestic workers
All overseas domestic workers in the United Kingdom, including those working for staff of diplomatic missions, shall be entitled to—(a) change their employer (but not work sector) while in the United Kingdom;(b) renew their domestic worker or diplomatic domestic worker visa, each such renewal being for a period not exceeding twelve months, as long as they remain in employment and are able to support themselves without recourse to public funds;(c) a three month temporary visa permitting them to live in the United Kingdom for the purposes of seeking alternative employment as an overseas domestic worker where there is evidence that the worker has been a victim of modern slavery.”
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for the absence from this debate of my noble friend Lady Cox. She is overseas on one of her many expeditions. I thank those noble Lords who have put their names to the amendment, perhaps in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, with her expert knowledge of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where, sadly, so much abuse of domestic workers has taken place. In moving the amendment, I thank the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Bates—for his constant efforts to be constructive. He has seen me and other noble Lords twice since Committee, and has sent me two letters, totalling 12 pages. I am also grateful for another letter, from Karen Bradley MP, a Minister in the Home Office.
The issue of domestic slavery may be new to Ministers but I have been working with it and on it with, I am sorry to say, only very partial success, since the early 1990s. The sad fact is that many people, mostly women, have suffered greatly during these long years. The Minister wrote that there would be an independent review, which is to report by the end of July. There may be a new Government by then, and we have no idea of their future plans for legislation or their willingness to change the Immigration Rules. Either course would take time and thus prolong workers’ suffering. We currently have a legislative opportunity, so let us grasp it.
The noble Lord also wrote about the new visa-linked contract and the cards to be given to both employer and worker. These may help slightly, perhaps most of all with the majority of decent employers. However, the caseworkers at the point of departure overseas have to be satisfied that the national minimum wage will be paid. How, in practice, can they do that when the employer is bound to say yes to their questions? The letter from the Minister also said that,
“an extensive package of support is available to trafficked Overseas Domestic Workers”.
This has not, I am sorry to say, proved very effective so far for other categories of people, such as those forced into prostitution. How will it protect domestics who are here legally but may be prisoners in their employers’ houses? Have any of them, I wonder, benefited from discretionary leave to remain?
There is a hoary old theory in the Home Office that allowing domestics to change employers would create a pull factor, enticing extra people to come here. I reply that they cannot come at all unless their employer brings them here. The Home Office may be thinking of domestics from the European Union, but they can come here anyway and register for work with all the employment agencies in London. Furthermore, our amendment specifies an extension of 12 months—it could perhaps be 15—so that the worker cannot stay indefinitely. Nothing in the amendment encourages extra immigration.
The amendment should be seen in the context of forced labour and gross abuses of tied workers worldwide, but perhaps especially in the Middle East. I am glad to know that the Government are ratifying the ILO protocol to the Forced Labour Convention. That makes it all the more disgraceful that they should tolerate a loophole which has allowed exploitation and abuse to take place here. Ministers have called for changes to the kafala system, which ties huge numbers of workers to their employers in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. There migrants may require employers’ consent for an exit visa, even for a holiday. Human Rights Watch has documented widespread abuses in the Emirates, and conditions are similar in other parts of that region. The mentality that sees nothing wrong in exploiting workers and domestics then comes to England, in particular to London. Compensation cases, both here and in Ireland, have shown the scale of the wrongs, crying out for redress.
There can be no doubt that domestic workers tied to one employer and living on his premises are extremely vulnerable. They are almost all sending remittances to support children and families in their home countries, where, it is most important to know and understand, there is no welfare state. This therefore makes them reluctant to complain of hardships or to leave their employer, whether that is in the Middle East or here in Britain.
The key protection that is needed is access to our civil courts and to employment tribunals. This was available between 1998 and 2012. During that time, some 50 cases were brought, securing between £1 million and £2 million in compensation. That is roughly £30,000 per case. My noble friend Lady Cox showed on 10 December how conditions have got worse since 2012. The victims often cannot run away; or if they do, they become illegal immigrants. I conclude with a quotation from an unnamed Filipino domestic in London. She said:
“It’s worse than Saudi Arabia. They treat me like a prisoner. They never even give me a single pound. I’m starting work around 4.30 in the morning, until 1 o’clock in the morning”—
the following day—
“I’m sleeping only in the kitchen. I’m crying the whole time that I’m sleeping on the floor”.
The Government rejected the advice of two Joint Select Committees on this subject. They only defeated the relevant amendment in the other place by the casting vote of the committee chairman. They have since had time to think again and to digest not only the parliamentary problem in both Houses but also an ITV documentary and Radio 4 and other press coverage. I urge them to accept this amendment or to improve it for Third Reading. If they do not like that course, they have the option to change the Immigration Rules, as was done in 1988 and again in 2012. If they prefer the second option, we must have a cast-iron guarantee today that this will be done. This is a modest amendment, because it does not revoke the original concession, it just helps to prevent its worst consequences. In particular, it will prevent domestic workers who escape from going underground in complete illegality. I commend the amendment to your Lordships and beg to move.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I support Amendment 90, which would end the unacceptable situation regarding the current visa system for overseas domestic workers. In Committee we heard many passionate speeches. Since then, the Minister has announced a review and a package of other changes that the Government will be bringing forward to ameliorate the situation. As helpful as these may be, they do not tackle head-on the current desperate plight of many domestic workers who are subject to exploitation, slavery and forced labour.
The Government have had nearly a year since the pre-legislative scrutiny committee published its report in April 2014 to look into this and review the visa system for ODWs. So I have to ask why they have left it so late to commission a review. I have no doubt that James Ewins, who will undertake the review, will do a splendid job: he is superbly qualified. However, the review is both too late and, I believe, unnecessary. Time and again we have been told by the Government that there is insufficient evidence and that the numbers do not show that the 2012 visa changes have had any effect on the abuse that some overseas domestic workers have had to endure. I beg to differ. Indeed, I have had no contact with any organisation or any individual who shares the Government’s view. Kalayaan, which has been leading the way in advocating and representing these workers, has first-hand experience and the case studies of numerous workers whom it has helped to escape. Human Rights Watch has carried out an independent review which took over a year to complete. One therefore has to wonder how the Government’s review can be completed by the end of July this year. As the noble Lord himself said, by that time this piece of legislation, excellent though it is, will be done and dusted.
The Joint Committee on the draft Bill said that since the tied visa was introduced there have been high levels of abuse among migrant domestic workers entering the UK. They said that the current bondage arrangement has,
“unintentionally strengthened the hand of the slave master against the victim of slavery”.
The committee, together with the Joint Committee on Human Rights and numerous NGOs, has called on the UK Government to reverse the relevant changes to the Immigration Rules and to reinstate the pre-2012 protections in the Bill. They all base their views on evidence. How much more evidence do we need? How many more cases do we need to uncover to reach the threshold where a change will happen? Clearly, getting more evidence will be particularly hard if workers are imprisoned and then driven underground.
In his letter of 9 February, the Minister outlined some actions that the Government have committed to taking immediately. Some of these are welcome but, frankly, they are woefully inadequate and do not remedy the root of the problem—that is, untying the visas. The pilot visa interview programme in Africa might sound superficially attractive, but realistically these overseas domestic workers are not going to admit that their employer does not treat them well. Indeed, they might not even be aware of the real horrors that await them until they start work in this country. Their employer is hardly going to tell them beforehand that they are going to work 19 hours a day, sleep on a floor, have little food, no pay and no access to their passport. In any case, workers are already meant to be interviewed separately from their employers, so this is not a new measure. Likewise, an employer is hardly going to provide a contract giving the truthful details. Indeed, contracts are required currently, yet Kalayaan frequently finds cases where domestic workers’ terms and conditions of employment, including salary, are not in accordance with their contract. To be effective, contracts of employment must be easily enforceable in the UK; but as the noble Lord himself has said, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said so forcefully in Committee, this is way out of the bounds of reality.
I welcome the reintegration plan with the FCO which will support overseas domestic workers who wish to return to their home country and rebuild their lives, but it does not help those who are currently enslaved. In the case of domestic workers employed by diplomats, diplomatic immunity makes it particularly hard for them to access justice. Earlier this month the Court of Appeal found that diplomatic immunity trumped trafficking when it refused the claim of two domestic workers found by the UK’s national referral mechanism to have been conclusively trafficked by their diplomatic employers.
We are now on the last day of Report on this landmark Bill. In this amendment we are not talking about huge numbers of people; we are talking about a few miserable, poor, abused people—usually women—who often have dependants relying on their support, who have been lured to employment here by ruthless and exploitative employers. These workers need a change in the law, and Peers today have an opportunity to make that a reality. As Kalayaan said in one of its excellent briefings, we need to protect, not to review. Today we have an opportunity to do that by passing this amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Carlisle
My Lords, several of the amendments to this important Bill have been introduced as filling a gap in the legislation. That is especially true of Amendment 90. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, have said, it will assist all private and diplomatic domestic workers by providing a measure of protection and flexibility otherwise lacking in the Bill. It will also enable those who have been victims of modern slavery to remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period while seeking alternative employment. That is why I am glad to have my name attached to the amendment.
On Monday my noble friend Lord Judd, when speaking about the global dimension of modern slavery, referred to a crisis of values suggested by the recent bishops’ pastoral letter entitled Who is My Neighbour? In this amendment we have one interesting example of a relatively small number of people who are our neighbours—namely, overseas domestic workers—as well as one means of taking a principled and value-based stand by offering them this modest help. The humane and sensible rationale for this amendment has already been so well argued that I have no need to detain your Lordships further, except to say that I am happy to be associated with it and to offer it my enthusiastic support.
Baroness Hanham (Con)
My Lords, my name is also attached to this amendment and since the start of the Bill it is one of the areas of this legislation that I have been most concerned about. Nobody could have failed to be moved by the television programmes that we have seen, the reports that we have heard, and the work done by Kalayaan, which has been very much hampered by the fact that the changes to the visa system took place in 2012.
In this 21st century it is absolutely unacceptable that people are coming in to this country tied to an employer, unable to do anything for themselves and absolutely under the instruction of the person for whom they are working and who has brought them into the country. We would not stand for this for a second if things were otherwise. It is time that we stopped standing for it. We desperately need to make the changes that will enable people who come here to feel reasonably free, reasonably able to live in this country and reasonably able to know that if things go horribly wrong with their employer—as so many of these cases clearly do—there is some redress to somebody who can help them and there is some way out.
When talking to Kalayaan, which deals with the forefront of the work that goes on, it is clear that under the current situation it feels completely helpless to ensure, first, that people can get to it and secondly that if people do come, it can do anything to help them. In Committee, I pointed out that one of the systems in place to help domestic workers know what to do if they run into trouble is a card that is delivered to them if they are lucky—if it does not go into the pocket of their employer—at London airports. It gives them the telephone number of ACAS and a couple of other telephone numbers that they can ring up if they are in trouble. Most of these people have their telephones taken away from them. They do not have access to a telephone. They do not know people in this country. They cannot get out of the premises or the property in order to find other people.
The Minister has a reputation for having responded sympathetically, pragmatically and sensibly to all the issues that have been brought up. The number of government amendments that have come through over the past few weeks has been amazing. I pay tribute to him for the fact that he and the Minister in the other place have listened. I say now, please, will the Minister do this one further thing and listen to this particular problem? It is absolutely germane to modern slavery. It is one of the elements of modern slavery that we cannot overlook. I think this House will really not have shown itself at its best if we do not manage to pass this amendment, which will help—it will not do the trick but it will help other organisations help those who need it.
The mischief, of course, was the change to the visa system in 2012. I understand why—I understand the need to control immigration—but I do not think that we are going to break the bounds of numbers if we help and look after these people. We are not asking that they should stay in the country for ever. What we are asking is for the Government to say that this country does mind about what happens to people who come into it, particularly when they have no means of helping themselves. I very much hope that in his response to what has been put forward today, the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Government will take this amendment on board.
Finally, I think a review is splendid. It is one of the ways of shifting responsibility off to another day. I can see that it would be very nice to have a perfect review of all the implications but there are at least two, if not three, very well thought-out reports already. The Joint Committee on the Bill, on which I sat, went into this in great detail. I do not think we will miss very much if the Minister says that the review could take place but in the mean time agrees to the amendment, which I support.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of the amendment. Rereading our debate in Committee, I was struck first by the unanimity of your Lordships’ House in support of the amendment but also by the tone of the debate, which was very different from the very positive tone there has been throughout the rest of the debates on the Bill. There was an air of exasperation, expressed particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who is not able to be here today, and my noble friend Lady Royall.
I think the frustration was partly because the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, claimed to share our concerns—and I am sure she does—yet responded with a series of totally unconvincing arguments. In particular, she seemed to be making the case on the basis of a hypothetical possible increase in abuse as a result of the amendment while seeming to discount the actual evidence of what, according to Kalayaan, happened after 1998 when similar rights were first introduced, which was a clear decrease in abuse reported to it, and then what happened post-April 2012 when those rights were rescinded, which was a significant increase in abuse reported. The Minister twice invited Members of your Lordships’ House to offer suggestions as to what we could do to prevent the abuse. The unanimous suggestion from all over the House, as well as from the Joint Committee on the draft Bill and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, was that we should restore the status quo ante—pre-2012—or something like it.
As has already been argued, there is no need for a review. We have no guarantee of what will happen as a result of that review after the election. How many more women will be subjected to forced labour and exploitation and the kind of suffering so movingly expressed in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, before we are prepared to act? We have the opportunity to act today to remove an injustice that is totally against the principles underlying the Bill. I hope we will seize that opportunity.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I fear that I am going to be speaking against the very powerful speeches that have already been made. Of course, I share the concerns of those who know about the abuse of overseas domestic servants by those who employ them and treat them as slaves. As a member of the Joint Committee on the pre-legislative scrutiny, I shared the concerns of the other members and of course put my name to the recommendation.
However, I have had the opportunity to discuss this at considerable length with the commissioner-designate who, in his former position as head of the anti-trafficking agency within the Metropolitan Police, had actual experience of what had gone wrong under the previous visa set-up. What he told me, and I share with the Committee, is that some women were actually being trafficked from one employer to another. When the first employer had had sufficient use of that person, she was taken on to another employer under the opportunity to do so under that visa, and he said he had several examples of it. We know that there have been other abuses under that former visa situation.
The commissioner-designate then told me about some of the work that he is doing, particularly with the Filipina women who are coming over. He has been working with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines and the Philippine ambassador to see what they can do in the Philippines to stop these women coming over to these sorts of slave owners. A centre has also been set up in London which will house women who manage to escape from their slave-owner employer. As the Minister told us on the previous occasion, the woman will not be automatically deported if she is identified as a potential victim. She can—and should—be treated like any other victim of slavery. Obviously, the problem for these women is getting from the abusing employer to someone who will help. That is a matter which the commissioner-designate is passionate about trying to deal with. I think Nigeria is another area, but he is particularly concentrating on the Philippines at the moment.
Therefore, far from thinking that a review is a waste of time, too late and just trying to push the matter into the long grass, I actually believe, along with James Ewins of the Centre for Social Justice, who has already been responsible for an excellent report on slavery at an early stage of our deliberations, that the commissioner will be tenacious in looking at how the previous visa worked and how the present visa is working, or not, and will be giving, I have no doubt, robust advice to the Government—whichever Government. Since everybody in this House supports the Bill and the concept of trying to help those who are enslaved—it does not matter what the colour of the next Government is—each Government, whoever it may be, will have an equal obligation, as Members of this House will certainly remind them, to do something practical about slaves under the domestic workers visa. It does not require—I will be corrected by the Minister if I am wrong; I do not think I am—primary legislation. What it requires is changes to the Immigration Rules and the immigration visa. I urge the House to reflect whether it would not be better to let James Ewins use his tenacious ability to get at what is actually happening. I have now been on two committees: the one chaired by Frank Field for the Home Secretary and then the pre-legislative Select Committee. We heard basically only one point of view. We need to know how the previous visa worked and whether there is another way of providing a visa, together with proper help—which those poor women are not getting—before we pass this primary legislation, which is not in my view appropriate at this moment.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, was speaking, I began to feel a little sympathy for the Minister and could not think how he would be able to respond. He has now had some comfort from my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, but it does not take away from the necessity for the amendment.
The Minister will remember that I spoke with some passion at Second Reading and in Committee, and then more recently when he kindly agree to speak to us with his officials. He will already know the strength of feeling among the NGOs, which my noble friend Lord Hylton mentioned—notably Kalayaan and Human Rights Watch. I pay tribute again to my noble friend for the long time that he has been working on this amendment. It is more than 20 years and I have been there for most of that time. I have long advocated this cause during successive Bills. I of course recognise the asylum concerns that face every Government, but this is not a relevant factor. As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out, it is a different situation, a special situation, that does not concern very many people.
The Home Office aggravated the problem by introducing the single employer visa, which in some cases at least ensures that slavery becomes a permanent affliction. That means that it is moving in the opposite direction from this Bill, which it has itself introduced. Two Select Committees have deplored it, yet here we are again, unconvinced that anything has changed. Of course, we have to welcome the Minister’s commitment and the Government’s latest offer of the review—I hope that my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss is right that the review will produce some more truths—but we have a lot of evidence already from the NGOs and from a Joint Committee, so I fail to see why we should wait for that.
The only really new item on the agenda is my noble friend’s amendment, which I hope as many noble Lords as possible will support. Does the Minister feel that this country is fulfilling all its obligations under the European convention? We would be grateful for some update on that.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger
My Lords, it is clear that protection from slavery for overseas workers is an enormously important issue, and I am sure that we all mind very much about what happens to them.
However, it would appear that opinions differ on how to tackle this. While some claim that tying the employee to the employer who brings them into the country leads to abuse, I understand that others who have looked into this matter are not necessarily of that opinion. It is important that, before putting anything into legislation, we try to understand the best way to deal with this.
As we have heard, the Home Secretary has announced an independent review, which will examine all the facts around this issue carefully. In particular, it is important that it looks at the effects of the terms of the visa. I understand that the review will look also at how effective are the protection and support for overseas workers who are victims and, as we have heard, that it will report by the end of July this year. I therefore support the views expressed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.
Meanwhile, I understand that steps are being taken that will help with the protection of workers, including a package of support. Therefore, this issue will definitely not be forgotten and will be given the attention that it rightfully deserves after the review has reported. However, I think that it will be much better dealt with when we have all the information to hand and should not be put into this legislation. While I have enormous sympathy with the reasons behind the tabling of the amendment, I cannot support it.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I support the amendment. I think that anybody who heard the recent Radio 4 programme and listened to the first-person testimony of people who are in this situation could not fail to be moved by it. A question was raised during the programme where the Government were invited to answer why they had not signed convention 189 on decent work for domestic workers. Not every country has signed it—I would not attempt to mislead the House on that—but it is interesting that countries such as Finland, Ireland and Germany have done so. I fail to understand why we should not be in that progressive group. I share the view of those who have said that there is a lacuna in the legislation which the amendment fills. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, I support much of what has been said on all sides. It is clear that this is a matter which will not go away and which the House wishes to be resolved. I came across it repeatedly during my 18 years as a London MP—I probably had similar experiences to those of my noble friend Lady Hanham. It is clear that situations which are simply appalling are happening today in London and they have to be dealt with as soon as possible.
I am afraid that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, put her finger on it: I found that the problem was not the law; the problem was making the law effective. The problem was, as she said, how one got a person out of the hands of an abusive employer into some sort of help. They had no information; they had no knowledge of their rights; they came here in total ignorance of the situation. Practical enforcement is what we have to concentrate on. I am afraid that the law will not help here; it is the reality of the situation on the ground floor. Therefore, I want to ask my noble friend what is really being done about a new contract which goes out with the visa. If a contract goes out with the visa all the time, you are beginning to tackle the problem. If you also have a commissioner who concentrates on those areas—the Philippines, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and so forth—where the problem mainly originates, you are beginning to tackle it. Unless you do that, all the law in the world will not avail you.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, at the previous stage, I commented on the irony that the history of the arrangements for overseas domestic workers was a concession introduced for humanitarian reasons, so that the worker could accompany the family with whom they had been working and would not lose their job. In hearing the experiences that have been related to us, I found it particularly distressing and concerning to learn that a number of workers were informed that, if they were to escape and start work for someone else, they would be working illegally or would be here illegally if they did not approach the authorities. Virginia Mantouvalou in the work that she did in conjunction with Kalayaan reported in her conclusion that the single fear that interviewees who participated unanimously voiced, now that they were undocumented, was a fear of the authorities, of imprisonment and of deportation.
I agree that this is a matter for the rules but what is available to us is primary legislation because noble Lords do not take part in constructing immigration rules. I also agree that a review will not be a waste of time. As my noble friend Lady Hanham said, this amendment will not be a complete solution but it is an interim step and it may give workers who are abused the confidence to get away and seek the help which the noble and learned Baroness has told the House is available. I do not say this lightly, but if I were not to support this amendment, I would feel complicit in slavery and servitude.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)
My Lords, it is no coincidence that I should be following my noble friend Lady Hanham in so far as she was in office in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for the whole of the period in which I was the Member of Parliament next door for the Cities of London and Westminster. The experiences that she had in the Royal Borough were totally matched by the experiences I had as the local Member. The frequency with which cases came up is something which I remember vividly from that period and I have seen my fair share of television films about this issue and listened to radio programmes, such as those cited a moment ago.
I do not propose to go over the ground which has been gone over by others. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in his place, not least because of his notable speeches on this subject in Committee. It was he who drew attention to the fact that the issue was settled in the Commons committee by the chairman of the committee taking a vote to leave the Bill as it was. A more significant confession appeared in a speech made in Committee on 10 December by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who sadly cannot be here tonight. She referred to the fact that the vote was tied in the Public Bill Committee, losing only to the chair, and then the Conservative Member of Parliament and former Deputy Chief Whip John Randall explained at Report why he would vote for a Labour amendment to protect domestic workers. He said that there had been too many victims for him to be able to say that it was a matter for another day. I say that simply to indicate that in another place the issue was very closely divided on and therefore that the Government have only a narrow margin to defend their position.
I realise that Her Majesty’s Government are pressed for time. However, on the basis of my experience, I find it difficult to believe that any Government could have expected to take this Bill through Parliament without this issue coming up. The fact that we are now out of time reflects backwards on to how much preparation there was in terms of time for this to occur. I am sorry that the Minister has been saddled with the task of defending the Government’s position at this stage in the Bill.
I was patently impressed by the speech of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, but this does not protect the Government from the need to produce a more decisive defence for the period before the promised review is completed. I very much hope that my noble friend can be convincing in explaining the validity of the Government’s interim posture on this issue. So far as my own vote is concerned, much hangs on what he says in his speech to wind up this debate.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I would like to comment very briefly on the speeches of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson. I do so cautiously. Anybody who questions the argument advanced by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, should proceed cautiously like Agag. I also admit that I have no particular expertise in the area of domestic slavery—except that I am married.
The argument that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made seems to me to be a very encouraging one. Developments are taking place. I was particularly encouraged to hear about the work being done with and for the Filipino community. That seems to me very good news. It may reduce the scale of the problem we are talking about; it may partially mitigate the problem; but it will not eliminate the problem. The review that the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, talked about is obviously very important, and nobody who supports the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, will be against the review. They are not alternatives. It seems to me that this amendment cannot do harm; it must do good. I do not know how much good it will do and the noble Lord, Lord Horam, may be completely correct that it will do very little good, because so many of these poor people will be unaware of their rights and, unless there is a path of enforcement, not much will change—but no harm will have been done and some good must, by definition, be done. So I very much hope that the amendment will be pressed to a vote.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee and a member of the council of the campaigning organisation Liberty. I rise to speak in support of Amendment 90 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. As I mentioned in Committee, victims should be at the heart of this Bill. We cannot waste the opportunity we have here to improve protection for these victims of modern slavery. As has already been mentioned, migrant domestic workers who are tied to their employers are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The inability of overseas domestic workers to change their employer leaves them powerless to escape their abusive situation and to bring a case against their perpetrators. Instead of protecting victims, we have a current visa system that facilitates trafficking, undermining the very purpose of this Bill.
I regularly come into contact with families and individuals who have been victims of crime and injustice. My first piece of advice is that they must speak out and seek help. The Minister for Modern Slavery and Organised Crime in the other place agrees. In a Radio 4 programme the Minister said:
“I want them to come forward. I want them to come into the system. I want to give them the help and support they need and I want to catch that perpetrator”.
But how do the Government expect workers to come forward in a system that ultimately criminalises them rather than recognising them as victims? That is exactly what is happening. Many domestic workers will not come forward for help or escape because they are aware that they would be breaking the law if they did. Therefore, numbers on the system are low and workers are driven underground and remain hidden. Those who do come forward are usually unaware of the visa rule. Many charitable organisations encounter clients who, after hearing that they have broken the conditions of their visa and are at risk of deportation, never return to them or consent to official help.
Kalayaan, the migrant domestic workers charity, provided me with some telling statistics. In 2014, it identified 54 clients as trafficked victims, but only 25 referrals were made to the national referral mechanism, so less than half of those identified as trafficked consented to being transferred to the NRM or the UK authorities.
The questions we must ask are: why was that and what can we do to ensure that victims are not afraid to come forward? Expert organisations such as Kalayaan and Anti-Slavery International, and numerous parliamentary inquiries into this issue, have all concluded that this visa rule is one of the biggest barriers to support and justice. This is a huge problem and we should address it in this Bill. Employment tribunals are not an effective route to justice, either. How can we expect a domestic worker to stay with their abusive employer while they are bringing a case against them? How can we expect a domestic worker, who is usually paid very little, to afford the legal costs of a case—a situation which is made all the worse with cuts to legal aid?
In his letter of 16 February to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the Minister spoke of the Home Office’s independent review and listed further arrangements to strengthen protections. While measures to increase awareness of domestic workers’ rights and to assess their situation upon entering the UK are welcome, I fear that they will have a limited effect as it not clear how the Home Office will ensure that those rights are upheld when the worker actually begins work in the UK. Will the Minister say what was lacking in the examination of this issue during pre-legislative scrutiny such that a further review is needed?
The Home Secretary is currently addressing the importance of protecting the rights of those who are most vulnerable to abuse of stop and search. She recently stated that if the stops-to-arrests ratio does not improve, a Conservative Government will not hesitate to bring in primary legislation to make it happen. Surely in the same way this Government can commit to protecting the rights of overseas domestic workers. I believe that Amendment 90, by reinstating the original migrant domestic worker visa, will empower these workers once again with the most basic rights and effectively protect them from abuse and exploitation.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I did not intend to take part in this debate. Having listened to the passionate speech by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and his examples and the various other aspects that were put before us, I was particularly moved by what the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said. I remember some of the issues that took place at different stages of the Bill. Of course we can wait if it means putting it off for four or five months or something like that—but God knows how many more wretched trafficked slaves will pass thorough in that time, so I share the view of my noble friend Lord Kerr. What harm can it do if we make the decision today? So let us make the decision today.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for moving his amendment. I appreciate wholeheartedly his commitment to the cause over many years. I thank him for his courtesy in the way he has raised this matter with me. He has been very persistent on the issue—and rightly so because it is an area where we need to be absolutely convinced that we are on the right side of the argument.
However, given that this has been a wide-ranging debate, I think there is possibly a slight conflation of issues here: the overseas domestic worker visa and the treatment of people in domestic servitude who have been trafficked here from overseas. They are two distinct issues.
The overseas domestic worker visa was introduced by the previous Government in 1998 essentially to facilitate particular groups of people who travelled to the UK frequently, brought their own household staff and did not wish to hire people in the UK for short visits. The average length envisaged then was a matter of a couple of weeks and today 15 days is the average time for which someone comes in. It may assist the House to know that about 80% of the people who come under the overseas domestic worker visa scheme come from a very small number of countries in the Middle East: 4,894 from the United Arab Emirates; 3,996 from Saudi Arabia; 2,581 from Qatar; 1,005 from Kuwait; and 257 from Oman. A particular group uses the overseas domestic worker visa. It was never intended that the overseas domestic worker visa should somehow translate itself into a visa to work for someone else. It is tailored for a visitor.
The amendment before us would open the opportunity for the visa potentially to be used as another way in which workers can enter the UK, repeat their application indefinitely and after a period of five years have the right to remain. The overseas domestic worker visa is a particular issue which we are seeking to address. In 2012, we felt there was some evidence that the visa was being abused and that people were coming here with one employer and were being moved on to other employers and other areas. Therefore, we said that if you come in on that visa to work for that employer, you ought to stay with that employer.
I have set out what the overseas domestic worker visa is and how the discussion and debate is very different from the broader issues of trafficking which this legislation addresses. We are dealing with about 15,000 applications per year. When Kalayaan, which I, like others, respect, undertook its review over a period of two years, there were some 32,000 overseas domestic worker visa applications. Kalayaan took a sample of 120 which had been drawn to its attention. By most estimations, and, I think, by its own admission, that is a small sample.
So what is the appropriate action to take? Is it simply to revert to the previous visa regime or is it to take some interim steps? The notion that the Government are not doing anything in the light of the evidence is simply not the case. We have introduced a new template contract. The contract must stipulate the sleeping arrangements, the minimum wage, the holiday pay and that the employer cannot withhold an individual’s passport. The clearance officer must be satisfied under a test of credibility that the employer will pay the national minimum wage. The person will now be interviewed by an officer directly and individually so that, should it be the case that when they were previously granted an overseas domestic worker visa to come to the UK they were not treated in accordance with their contract, then that could be made known and of course the visa would not be granted. We have that safeguard in. We also have the information card which is going to be made available to people who come to the UK advising them where to go for help.
This is where we get to the crucial element, which is this. If someone is on an overseas domestic worker visa and they feel their treatment by their employer is something amounting to servitude or abuse, they are able to come themselves to an organisation like Kalayaan or the police or the national referral mechanism. The national referral mechanism will take that issue very seriously. It will offer them protection and advice as to what to do. They will be granted, if there are reasonable grounds when they enter the referral mechanism, a 45-day period of reflection. If it is proved, or there is a reasonable belief, that they have been abused by their employer, then they could be allowed to remain in the UK for a period of one year and one day to assist with the inquiries being undertaken by the police.
So where someone is in an abusive relationship, I would hate your Lordships to go away with the impression that such people should somehow sit there and suffer because they have no option but to do so. If they are on an overseas domestic worker visa or any other visa—or even here illegally within the UK—and they are being mistreated, that is not tolerated. That is the whole point of the Modern Slavery Bill and that is what the national referral mechanism is for—to offer them that help. Overseas domestic workers generally have the protection of UK employment law. Anyone who believes they are mistreated by their employers has access to a number of organisations who can help, including the police, ACAS, the pay and work rights helpline as well as the employment tribunals where the tribunal or the court has jurisdiction in their circumstances.
Although the overseas domestic worker visa is a scheme that is quite distinct from the general issues to which we are referring, we considered what would be the best way forward, given the concerns which had been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and others. We decided that the best route forward was not simply to say that we did not think that the evidence was sufficient—we are talking about the Kalayaan report which referred to a relatively small number of cases as a proportion of the total. We said that we needed to have better information, not just about the treatment of overseas domestic workers but about the visa scheme itself. In other words, is the visa scheme which was introduced in 1998 still fit for purpose? Is it something which should be retained? Should it actually be scrapped altogether if it is being abused in that way?
To do that, we need to have evidence. I have to say that this is another example of where the Government have tried to meet the genuine concerns which have been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and many others, including my noble friend Lady Hanham. We have tried to address their concerns by saying that James Ewins—the highly respected legal adviser to the pre-legislative scrutiny committee who is from the Centre for Social Justice, which in many ways was the architect of the present Bill—should be given the time to undertake a review. He does not necessarily, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, mentioned, need to undertake all the research again for himself. He can draw upon the considerable amount of data and information which is held by UK Visas and Immigration in the Home Office and we will co-operate fully with him. He can speak to the NGOs, he can look at the case studies being provided by different organisations and then, after a period of review and with his recommendations, that can be something which can then be acted upon.
The idea that somehow if we do not take action or include this amendment in the Bill today there is no option again for primary legislation to be brought forward is simply not true. The Immigration Rules can be changed at any time. In fact we are changing them tomorrow to reflect the changes to the overseas domestic worker arrangement which we have put in place—the new contracts, the requirement for an interview to take place and the testing and piloting of video links. Change can be done at any time. It does not need to wait for further primary legislation. It can be done, if that is what James Ewins decides needs to be done.
All the way through this process there has been some advantage—for example when discussing the provisions on the national referral mechanism—to be discussing the issues in the context of an exceptional review carried out by Jeremy Oppenheim. He was able to take a wide look at the issues and produce a considered report with a series of recommendations, which have been absolutely invaluable to us in making decisions on what amendments needed to be made. The Government have accepted all those recommendations which were made in that review. All we are saying in our response is to let us allow the same due process to continue. Let us allow James Ewins to get on and do his work—to undertake a thorough review, to consider all the arguments that have been presented and then to come forward with his recommendations.
That is really the argument between us. I know that there are many individual questions which were raised in the course of the debate, but essentially that is what it comes down to. It is a question of whether we seek to pre-empt with an amendment which does not deliver what many people have been arguing they actually want to see. It is whether we proceed with that amendment or whether we actually proceed in a more orderly way, recognising that we need to review the operation of this domestic workers visa arrangement and allow someone who is completely independent of government to undertake that review. It would come back by July—so it is not going to be in the long grass for ever—and then action can be taken in the next Parliament at any stage based on the recommendations which are made. I think, along with a number of other noble Lords, that that would be the more appropriate road to take. I ask the noble Lord to consider removing his amendment at this stage.
Lord Hylton
My Lords, I would like to thank most warmly all those who have taken part in this debate, which has been quite long and complex. As to the Government, I am sorry to say that we have heard really nothing new that was not already known in earlier stages of this Bill or in meetings that followed on from Committee.
The amendment is really a test of the Government’s intentions. Why should they take a massive effort to deal with trafficking—through prevention and risk orders and an anti-slavery commissioner—and supply chains and yet leave this loophole for abuse which has existed for so many years? What do the Government consider that the impact on the reputation of this country will be, following the comments on ITV and Radio 4 and in the press? Surely the knowledge that those abuses and exploitations continue to go on here cannot help our reputation in any way.
The Minister mentioned the Immigration Rules and some tiny changes which are about to be made. Why cannot the Government go the whole hog and, as I suggested earlier, put into the rules the equivalent of this amendment? However, he does not appear to be willing to do that. Further, the national referral mechanism was not designed to deal with this particular problem. Maybe it can be adapted, but that is not its main purpose. Therefore, in view of all those points, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
The Lord Bishop of Derby
“Enforcement agencies
(1) The Secretary of State shall consult on ways to strengthen and improve the resources of enforcement agencies such as the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate using confiscated assets and proceeds of crime recovered under the provisions of section 7.
(2) A consultation under subsection (1) shall end no later than 1 January 2016.
(3) The Secretary of State may by order amend section 3 of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 to include other areas of work where the Secretary of State believes abuse and exploitation of workers or modern slavery or trafficking may be taking place.
(4) An order under subsection (3) may not be made unless a draft of the statutory instrument containing it has been laid before each House of Parliament and been approved by a resolution in each House.”
The Lord Bishop of Derby
My Lords, I thank my colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for their support for this amendment. I also place on record my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Bates. With others, we have been extremely grateful for the patient and kind way he has listened to us, engaged with us and put on special meetings on various subjects. The point of this amendment is to highlight the fact that both the Government and many of us involved in this issue are learning a great deal as we go along. Therefore, there is a proper space for consultation, review and further learning to be done.
The point of this amendment is to seek authorisation for further consultation around two particular things. One is resources for some of the key agencies which will be in the forefront of putting this legislation into practice. There will be an enormous challenge and the resourcing issue, with tight budgets, will be enormous. We have discussed in previous debates the potential for using confiscated assets and the proceeds of crime to help resource the work of some of the agencies that will be putting this legislation into practice and can deliver what the Bill requires. This was discussed by the Select Committee and I hope the Minister will endorse further consultation about the potential for using confiscated assets and the proceeds of crime to help resource the implementation of the Bill.
The second area that the amendment explores is to help us ensure that the agencies which are in place at the moment can develop appropriately and be fit for purpose. I refer in particular to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which needs to have a realistic remit. It has enormous expertise, but it will need resourcing, as I have said, for further engagement in the new context, including how it links with bodies such as the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate. We need to see how those bodies are going to work together: that needs exploring further if the Bill is going to be implemented effectively. The Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate will, of course, have a key role in helping us reach out to those areas where slavery operates through small-scale operations, not just the large businesses we are looking at in those parts of the Bill covering the formal supply chain.
So the amendment covers those two simple things. It explores how best we can use confiscated assets and the proceeds of crime to give resources to key agencies such as the GLA and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, and it looks at how those agencies might co-operate so that we can do educational, proactive work so that the requirements of the Bill get disseminated through those agencies into their constituencies, and so that they co-operate most fully between themselves and cover as many bases as possible. This very simple amendment will build on the work of the Joint Committee and ensure that the principles of the Bill are delivered most effectively. It is about resourcing the agencies and about how they can best work together. It asks for authorisation for that consultation to happen so that we can pursue those two objectives. I beg to move.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I am a signatory to this amendment and am very happy to speak briefly in support of it this evening. I spoke on this issue at Second Reading and in Committee and I moved a separate amendment on the issue of the proceeds of crime. That was based on an amendment that I moved in your Lordships’ House nearly a decade ago and which was supported at that time by a retired Law Lord, Lord Wilberforce, who was a direct descendent, of course, of the great man who has featured so much in many of our debates. That amendment sought to provide a mechanism for the proceeds of crime committed by those who had abused workers, exploited people, put them into servitude or slavery—the very things that the Bill seeks to address—to be used to support and provide assistance for those who had been exploited and to support those organisations that are charged with the responsibility of apprehending those who are responsible for such crimes.
Crimes they are. I recalled in Committee that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority—which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who is in his seat this evening, did such distinguished work in helping to create—was established after the fatalities that occurred in Morecambe Bay when some 23 Chinese cockle pickers, men and women, died while they were being ruthlessly exploited by gangmasters. I made the point that this problem has not gone away. As recently as 2011, an almost identical incident occurred not very far away from Morecambe Bay, in the Ribble valley estuary. I quoted a local fisherman, Harold Benson, who said that what had happened at Morecambe Bay had been wholly avoidable, but it was likely to be repeated at places such as the Ribble valley and Morecambe Bay because of the failure to apprehend those who were responsible and because of the failure to provide adequate safety equipment and to provide support and assistance to those who were being exploited in these unacceptable ways.
As a result of raising these issues I was pleased to be able to attend a meeting with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and the noble Lord, Lord Bates, who has been so helpful on this and so many other issues during the passage of the Bill. I reiterate what I said on Report on Monday, that he and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, have been quite exemplary in the way they have treated all of us who have participated in these proceedings. This is a marvellous piece of legislation and one that I am sure is going to do great good in the future. Although we may disagree on some details here and there, the general thrust of the legislation is to be commended and we must look for other ways to improve it here and there. That is what this amendment does.
The right reverend Prelate has told us that if this is passed, or if the principle is accepted, the Secretary of State will then consult on ways to strengthen and improve the resources of enforcement agencies such as the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. Why do we need to do that? Well, I made the point at earlier stages that until recently only about 37 people were employed by that authority and that resources had been cut between 2011 and 2014. I would be grateful if the noble Lord would share with us some of the detail that he provided during the briefing sessions that we had with him and his officials as to how many people are now employed by that authority and how many convictions they have been able to bring about.
The amendment says that the consultation should,
“end no later than 1 January 2016”.
I think that that is a reasonable passage of time. It goes on in proposed new subsection (3) to say:
“The Secretary of State may by order amend section 3 of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 to include other areas of work where the Secretary of State believes abuse and exploitation of workers or modern slavery or trafficking may be taking place”.
This is reasonable; it does not ask for immediate action to be taken, but it asks the Secretary of State and the department to take a more detailed look at some of the issues that have been raised. I look forward to hearing the response that the noble Lord gives in due course.
Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, rise to support Amendment 92 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, to which I have added my name. This amendment is about prevention and about stopping unscrupulous employers from exploiting workers for personal gain and increasing profits. Without compliance mechanisms and a licensing regime in place, there are no checks on the activities of the corrupt to protect the vulnerable. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate are that check. They give protection, prevent abuse from happening, and work hard to ensure compliance with employment rights. They want to do more and they know that they could do more—we know that they could do more—but they need reform and increased support.
As the organisation, Focus On Labour Exploitation, has pointed out to noble Lords in its recent letter, the GLA is the UK’s only proactive labour inspectorate working to prevent and identify incidences of trafficking for labour exploitation. Therefore, the GLA has a major role to play in tackling slavery and forced labour, and it should be a part of this Bill. That is a point well made, not just today by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, but made in the past by many other noble Lords. It is a point reiterated by the Government, as set out by the Minister in his letter on 18 February, where he recognised the essential role in fighting modern-day slavery that the GLA plays, and could play in future—words that I hope he will reiterate in his reply today.
Like many other noble Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to hold a public consultation on the role of the GLA as soon as possible in the next Parliament. So given that there is an emerging consensus around the need to consult on the GLA to review its remit and functions, and an acknowledgement that the GLA would need more resource to cope with an expanded remit, Amendment 92 should be completely acceptable to the Government, as it is ensuring exactly that—that labour inspection and enforcement authorities have sufficient resources and remit to prevent trafficking and slavery in the UK.
Amendment 92 confirms the commitment to consult and seeks to use the proceeds of crime to provide the extra funds that the GLA and EAS need. It also moves the Government’s pledge of a consultation in the next Parliament from “as soon as possible” to a definite date by the end of 1 January 2016, and it enables any recommendations from the consultation to be put in place quickly and easily. It therefore gives this House an increased level of confidence and clarity. I therefore hope that the Government will take the opportunity provided by this amendment, for this important enabling power to give the House the assurances that it needs.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I take this opportunity to add my thanks to my noble friend the Minister for the spirit of openness and compromise with which he has engaged with this Bill, not least on this issue regarding the future role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The announcement in annexe 2 in my noble friend’s letter this week—that the Government intend to hold a public consultation on the role of the GLA—is particularly welcome and in some ways diminishes the need for many of the elements contained in this Amendment 92.
I think that we are all in agreement in this House that the GLA has and will continue to play an extremely important role in combating exploitation, but there are very powerful arguments that its remit should be widened to include the construction, hospitality, cleaning and care sectors, where migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, modern slavery or human trafficking. There has, however, been understandable concern expressed about placing additional demands and burdens on the GLA, given its finite resources. Can the Minister confirm that the provision of resources will form part of the consultation process on the GLA that he has announced?
Although I support much of the sentiment behind Amendment 92, I note that my noble friend the Minister sets out in annexe 2 that he does not believe that an enabling power is the best way to proceed, and that indeed primary legislation would still be required to extend the remit of the GLA. Perhaps he can expand a little on this point during his response to the amendment.
Finally, I press my noble friend a little more on the timetabling of this public consultation on the GLA. He states in annexe 2 that the,
“work will start immediately and it will be published early in the next Parliament”.
Given the cross-party support for this Bill, as so many other noble Lords have just said, will my noble friend indicate whether he would consider setting down a more precise timetable for the consultation on the face of the Bill?
Lord Judd (Lab)
I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on having introduced the amendment so well, in his characteristic way. Several points occurred to me as particularly important. First, in effect, whatever the intention, to introduce legislation in sensitive and important areas like this and not to properly resource it can be perceived as cynical. It can be seen as a greater desire among legislators to polish their consciences in public without really facing up to what needs to be done. Facing the issue of properly resourcing enlightened legislation is crucial. Far too often, this has not happened.
The second point, which is very important, is education, which the right reverend Prelate picked up and linked rather well into his proposal. I am not a lawyer but, in my perception, law works best when it is in the context of public understanding about why it is necessary—not theoretically but practically available—for those whom it is intended to protect. Facing up to that issue in the amendment is also vital. I hope that the Minister, who has been a model across the House of how a Minister can handle a Bill of this kind, will listen to the arguments and find some way in which to meet them.
Lord Rosser
I shall say a few words in support of the amendment that the right reverend Prelate has moved, as I think that he made a reference to the Joint Committee on the draft Bill. Of course, it said in its report that the:
“Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) has been much praised as an internationally-respected model of good practice. The weight of evidence we received suggested that expanding the GLA’s powers and industrial remit would yield positive results”.
Those views reflect a widely held view: that the authority is an example of an effective body that UK industry helped to establish to manage and mitigate risks of slavery in the food and agriculture sector. What has been pointed out about the amendment is that it has the provision for consultation but also, within it, the power given to the Secretary of State—if the Secretary of State wants to use it; it is “may” not “must”—to amend by order the Act to sectors outside its current limited remit where evidence demonstrates that,
“abuse and exploitation of workers or modern slavery or trafficking may be taking place”.
The amendment does not require the Secretary of State to do that; it gives them the power to do it if they come to the conclusion that it is necessary and desirable to do so.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby for having moved the amendment. He has been an integral part of the cross-party team that has been working so constructively on the Bill and taken us to where we are now. I particularly note, and offer my respect for, the work that he has done in the diocese of Derby in tackling the issues of modern-day slavery. It is an example of what could be done elsewhere as well.
Let me put on record the two difficulties that we have with the amendment. I do not think that, on the general principle, we are a million miles apart. What we had was a Gangmasters Licensing Authority, after the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, introduced legislation in this House in the wake of the awful tragedy that we saw—and it was working rather well. It was targeted at a particular group, where there was a real problem in the food processing industries and that sector of agriculture and fisheries. About 1,200 businesses a year are regulated, and there is a cost to that. They have to get their licence and pay between £1,000 and £2,000 a year, and when they are regularly inspected they also have to pay a fee for the inspection.
There is a discussion about this. I am sure that when the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was introducing the Gangmasters Licensing Authority legislation, he was thinking that we did not want to impose this on everyone unless it were strongly proven that it was absolutely necessary to cover everyone, because there are some serious burdens placed on small and micro-businesses. I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, made about resources. Resources are scarce at present: there is a big debate, which I am sure my predecessors had when they were trying to secure the necessary resources for the changes being made in the national referral mechanism. That would account for a significant amount, and resources also have to follow the child trafficking advocates, the extension of legal aid and the office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner-designate. I accept that.
Let me explain the difficulties to the right reverend Prelate. There are two difficulties with an enabling power on the GLA remit. First, such a power assumes that the main issue is with the GLA’s remit, and may not consider the broader landscape in terms of how we tackle abuse of workers. Secondly, even if we concluded that the answer to the problem was an extension of the remit, the enabling power would almost certainly not achieve its aim of avoiding the need for further primary legislation.
As has been mentioned, it has also been enormously helpful that we have been able to have discussions outside the Chamber, and build our mutual understanding of these issues. It is important that we look at the GLA’s role in the context of our overall approach to tackling abuse in the labour market.
The House will note that sectors not covered by the GLA are already regulated. Last year more than 53,000 callers were helped by the pay and work rights helpline, and more than 23,000 workers were helped to recover wage arrears by the national minimum wage enforcement team. In addition, employment agencies not covered by the GLA are regulated by the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, which between 31 March and 1 April 2014 brought seven prosecutions in the magistrates’ courts and in five cases secured convictions. The Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate also has a unique power to apply to ban those who have shown themselves to be unfit to run any employment agency, and there are currently 16 people on the list of people banned from running an employment agency. We need to make sure, through consultation, that we come to a coherent position and that these bodies work in a co-ordinated way to prevent and stop abuse.
I understand why an enabling power might appear attractive as a way of potentially avoiding the need for future primary legislation after a consultation, but such a power simply would not achieve the objective of avoiding the need for primary legislation. Any significant change to the GLA would be likely to require both reform of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 and substantive changes to wider primary legislation related to how the labour market is regulated, such as the Employment Agencies Act 1973.
The enabling power would be limited to changes in the remit. I accept that it would be hard to justify a delegated power wide enough to allow for the types of enforcement powers the GLA might need in future. But a truly open and evidence-based consultation might well highlight the need for changes in the powers of the GLA that do not relate to the remit.
The amendment also focuses on the use by the GLA and others of the Proceeds of Crime Act. I should point out that the GLA already uses that legislation to identify proceeds of crime—a subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Indeed, since 2010 the GLA has identified over £1.5 million in criminal assets through that route. I am sure that, like me, noble Lords will all applaud the GLA for its achievements in this regard. The GLA already receives a share of the assets recovered under the asset recovery incentivisation scheme: it has received £118,000 since 2010.
I acknowledge the points that have been made. When we prepare the consultation document we will reflect on today’s debate and see whether there are ways in which we can make greater use of the Proceeds of Crime Act, alongside increasing and making better use of our existing resources devoted to worker protection.
I shall now deal with one or two of the points raised in the debate. I have highlighted the problems we have with the amendment, which are technical rather than substantive in terms of the issue that the right reverend Prelate has raised. If he felt able to withdraw his amendment now, I would certainly give an undertaking to reflect further on it and consider whether we should look at this subject again before Third Reading. There are some drafting issues. What the amendment proposes is a review of one area under one Act, whereas we would like to see a wider consultation covering many areas and many Acts. To do that we need an approach different from that taken in the amendment. If the right reverend Prelate will take that into account, we shall be happy to come back to the subject.
The Lord Bishop of Derby
I thank the Minister for what I take to be an encouraging response. I do not know a lot of the details about delegated powers and primary legislation, and, as he said, there are possible technical issues with our proposals. However, I take heart from the fact that we are in the same direction of travel. We want to increase the resource potential for this work and to look carefully at how agencies such as the Gangmasters Licensing Authority can best perform. On that basis, and in the hope of further thought being given to this matter before the next stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Mental Health Services
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve mental health services for infants, children and young people, for care leavers, and for adults with care experience.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to have this opportunity to discuss the mental health needs of children and young people in care.
I am grateful to the people I have worked with—the young people who are in care and leaving care who have shared their experiences with the parliamentary group; the clinicians, academics and practitioners who have made time to talk to me; and all those who have equipped me to speak to noble Lords today. I am grateful, too, for the lessons I have learnt from MPs who have chaired the parliamentary group for young people in care or who have campaigned in the area. They include former MP Hilton Dawson, Timothy Loughton MP, Edward Timpson MP, Craig Whittaker MP, Ann Coffey MP and the late lamented former MP Paul Goggins.
I have learnt that a cornerstone for mental health is to be able to make and keep relationships, and that family breakdown can destroy or impair that ability. Much of our job in repairing the mental health of abused or neglected children is to provide them with an opportunity of at least one enduring, consistent and benign relationship. Ten years ago, the charity Voice consulted young people on a blueprint for the care system. The children told us that they wanted one adult who would consistently follow them through their experience of care. They called him the Big Friendly Giant, after a character by Roald Dahl.
I hope that many of your Lordships present may attend future meetings of the all-party parliamentary group for children and young people in care. I know that it would mean a lot for the 60 or so young people who visit us each couple of months to see your Lordships there. There you will hear how young people have valued their relationships with foster carers, social workers and teachers. You will also hear children speaking of having more than 20 placements of fostering or more than five different social workers in a year and a half. From the care-experienced adults, you may hear from successful broadcasters who still see their social worker for tea today, or family men who now visit their children’s home to celebrate the manager’s birthday.
I am always pleased to hear the Minister say that he recognises the importance of an infant’s attachment to his mother. When key relationships fail, young people need to find someone else to be that reliable parental figure. A clinical psychologist, Sylvia Duncan, recently described the process of trauma in a seminar for the Institute of Recovery from Childhood Trauma. Many of us experienced trauma as a child—the loss of someone we love, a serious illness, even perhaps sexual harm. In the context of a loving family, where the trauma is not repeated, where one has not been betrayed by someone one trusts, where one can speak immediately about the trauma, recovery may be quick and leave no scars. Where the harm has been undertaken by one who one trusts, where that harm is repeated over years, where there is no one to discuss the harm with, serious trauma of the kind most young people entering care have experienced results.
Therefore, the finding of the Office for National Statistics survey of the mental health of looked-after children from 2003 should not have been a surprise. Mental disorders in children among the general population stand at 10%, half of which are conduct disorders. In the care population overall, 45% have a mental disorder and 37% of those are conduct disorders. In residential care, 72% have mental disorders and 60% of those are conduct disorders.
What does this mean for the experience of those working in children’s homes and foster care, and for adoptive parents? I will try to describe it. One may be caring for a strong, tall and beefy 15 year-old boy. Yet, for weeks or months, he may behave like an infant. He may not be prepared to leave his bed, may never show any gratitude for help given, may never clean up in the kitchen, and may not wash himself or cut his fingernails. Over time he may move towards his chronological age. Then one may be faced with rages from nowhere, with the fear that he may throw himself under a train when he next leaves the house, or that he may attack oneself or another child. One may be worried that he could set fire to the building.
Should the child be a girl, one may be worried about her sexual exploitation by men—although that might also be a concern for a boy. All this may leave one feeling bitterly resentful against the child; after all, he is 15 years of age. How can any trauma justify such selfish behaviour? One might say: “Next time he misbehaves, I will call the police, exclude him from the home, shout at him and see how he likes it, give him a slap in the mouth, the little wretch”.
This is where clinical group supervision is so important. Residential workers and foster carers need a space where they can vent the frustration, anger, fear and despair they feel about the children they work with. They need a clinician who can remind them that the child has regressed to an earlier stage of development, remind them how lonely and bereft that child is, and remind them that the most important thing that they can do for that child is to be reliable and tolerant, and continue to care. Without such support, carers are likely to burn out, quit, emotionally withdraw, or possibly even—we know this happens—attack the child. The most important thing for the recovery of that child is that there is nothing he can do to break the relationship with his carer.
It is therefore vital that the Minister is involved in ensuring that staff in children’s homes receive regular supervision or consultation from an appropriate mental health practitioner. I am very disappointed that in neither the guidance nor the new quality standards does there seem to be a stipulation on this. The psychiatrists who gave evidence to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for his report on children’s homes in the mid-1990s advised that such an ongoing relationship with a mental health professional was the norm on the continent. Yet I am advised that this multidisciplinary approach may be applied in only about half our homes, even today. Does the Minister agree that such supervision or consultation is necessary? If so, what means will he use to see that it is implemented uniformly? I suggest that some of the payment for this—perhaps 50%—should come from the Department of Health.
A great deal of good work has been undertaken by this Government on reforming residential care. Serious consideration has been given to staff qualifications and staff are now better qualified. I commend the education Minister Edward Timpson MP, his predecessor Timothy Loughton and their officials on what has been achieved in a very difficult financial climate. However, I would urge whoever is responsible in the next Government to push further on qualifications as soon as possible.
If one of your Lordships’ children was deeply troubled and you were seriously troubled about their health and whether they would self-harm, would you wish to put them in the care of staff required to have only one A-level qualification? Would it satisfy you that the managers of these homes are required to have only a foundation degree—one year of higher education? The contrast with the continent is stark. There the status and qualification of staff is higher, yet they care for less challenging children.
Professor Berridge’s research on staff training is oft quoted by those who prefer the status quo. Yet in his recent blog for the NSPCC he emphasises the challenges of residential care, particularly in the light of the Rotherham experience, and the need by the next Government to raise the professional status of these people by raising the required qualifications.
Much of what I have said applies equally to foster care and adoption. While their children might be less trouble if they are with them 24/7, excellent social work support for foster carers and adoptive parents is vital, and I am grateful for the Government’s additional funding to support work with fosterers and adopters; and to my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss for her committee’s work in achieving this. Much training is offered to foster carers; consultation to groups of foster carers is rarer, but should be the bread and butter of specialist looked-after CAMHS. Access to individual therapies, including child psychotherapy, is important. I much look forward to the report of the taskforce that the Government have set up, due in March; I hope that it might refer to these therapies.
The last meeting of the parliamentary group discussed access to CAMHS for young people who are care leavers. We heard from one young woman who faced long delays in beginning therapy, and met her therapist once and only once because she was about to turn 18. A group of about 50 young people from all parts of England voted on the move from a 15 to a 25 year-old CAMHS service. All but one supported it. The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust currently provides such a service to all young people. How is the Minister addressing the transition from child to adult mental health service for care leavers?
Finally, the Royal College of Psychiatrists points out that we can prevent so many children being taken into care each year by investing in parenting programmes. Does the Minister recognise the value of such programmes in keeping children out of care? So much good work has been undertaken by this and the previous Government on the education of looked-after children. I very much hope that in future, Governments will give as much attention to the mental health of looked-after children as to their education. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and to the contributions of your Lordships.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for securing this debate; I am especially pleased that he has specifically referred to young people with experience of being in the care system. I declare an interest in that I am the chief executive of Tomorrow’s People and a fellow of the Centre for Social Justice.
I want to start by saying more generally that broken relationships lie at the heart of so many people’s mental health difficulties. Research suggests family breakdown and early separation are risk factors for the onset of severe mental illness, including psychosis, in populations where there is a greater prevalence of these factors. Moreover, even in seemingly intact families, inadequate and neglectful parenting often contributes greatly to various emotional and behavioural problems, such as panic disorders, ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder and reactive attachment disorder. With around two-thirds of children coming into care having done so due to abuse or neglect, looked-after children have often been at the sharpest end of these adversities. Unsurprisingly, the emotional and behavioural health of half of looked-after children is borderline or a cause for concern.
What is perhaps even more troubling is that, according to a recent survey carried out by the Centre for Social Justice for its report Finding their Feet, half of care leavers still found coping with mental health problems “difficult” or “very difficult” at the point of exiting the care system. Things also seem to worsen during early adulthood: one study found that self-reported mental health problems doubled in the 12 to 15 months after leaving care and three-quarters struggled with loneliness. Social isolation is a well known risk factor for mental illness, including depression. This points to something seriously wrong with transitions from care. The Centre for Social Justice concluded that the care system very often fails to help young people build the relationships they need; the social isolation that often ensues can serve to compound the trauma of difficult early life experiences.
This need not be the case. For instance, much more could be done to ensure that children do not lose touch with siblings in care, which often means that a potentially valuable, lifelong relationship is lost; they lose what little bit of family they had. A shocking 71% of looked-after children with a sibling in care are separated from a brother or sister. Social workers say that they feel their training does not adequately prepare them for deciding when to place siblings together in care, but also that their options are narrowed by a lack of available foster placements for sibling groups.
Ensuring that broader networks of support are built up and maintained as young people are in the process of leaving care is vital. I particularly point to the recommendation of the Centre for Social Justice, supported by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering, to introduce the practice developed in the USA of “family finding and engagement”. In this model, professionals seek at least 40 individuals with some kind of connection to a young person. Casting the net so wide means there are almost always some reliable adults—perhaps a great aunt, or a former teacher or youth worker—able to make unconditional commitments to support children in care into the future.
The model that we have adopted of giving young people a coach in school to make sure that they do not leave school without a job or a training place could easily be adapted for young people in care. Having a coach—somebody personal to them helping them make the journey from care and the transition to adulthood—would really help young people. Moving into their lives in years 8 and 9, the coaches could help them become work-ready and able to fulfil their potential by instilling them with confidence, self-belief and self-discipline. Some 89% of children in care in the Orange County Family Finding Project made lifelong connections; both President Bush and President Obama ordered this approach to be a nationwide requirement. Let us do the same.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for introducing this timely debate, and for his sustained interest in some of our most vulnerable children and young people. As we await the findings and recommendations of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services taskforce, I welcome this opportunity to consider the disturbing statistics that have prompted its work.
We know that childhood and the teenage years are where patterns are set for the future. A child with good mental health is more likely to develop healthy relationships, to do well at school, and to become an adult with good mental health, able to take on adult responsibilities and fulfil their potential. Yet the pressures of today’s society can be overwhelming. Family breakdown, violence in many communities and the fear of crime can be a real source of distress for young people. Social media and social networking keep up a constant pressure to have the right lifestyle, the right friends or the right possessions. Inequalities in childhood also have a bearing on mental health: young people in the poorest households are three times more likely to have poor mental health than those in wealthier homes.
It is nevertheless a shock to hear that 45% of children in care are suffering from a diagnosable mental health disorder, and that these particularly vulnerable children also have a greatly increased risk of “conduct disorders”, the most common childhood psychiatric disorders. Yet the stigma around mental health means that young people often do not get the right help: disruptive, difficult, withdrawn and disturbed children need to be supported, not ignored or punished. My aim in speaking today is therefore quite simple. Will the Minister reassure us that the CAMHS taskforce will have teeth and that its recommendations for improving access to services more responsive to children’s and young people’s needs—particularly to those for care leavers and those in local authority care—will be given real, urgent consideration?
The importance of early intervention in relation to vulnerable children is something I have spoken about before. The task force’s most urgent priority must be to focus on how to bring about a shift in resources to invest in early intervention, so that no child or young person has to wait two years to be seen, by which time the situation is so dire that they need intensive support. The recent announcement of £8.5 million for schemes to provide families with mental health support and early intervention services is therefore welcome, but we need to know how local authorities, schools, GPs, the NHS and clinical commissioning groups are going to be enabled to work together to target the right, cost-effective actions.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to parenting programmes. The College of Psychiatrists says that up to 60% of the cost of these programmes is recovered within two years, and all costs recovered within about five years. Given that the lifetime cost to society per child with a severe behaviour disorder is about £260,000, that is pretty effective. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to ensure that a cross-departmental strategy is in place to improve the provision and accessibility of parenting programmes? I ask the question in the knowledge that two-thirds of local authorities in England have been shown to have reduced their CAMHS budget since 2010. The stark reality is that funding has been cut by both local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, with the catastrophic effects that we have heard outlined today already.
I was shocked last week to learn that during 2013-14 there were 17,000 visits to hospital emergency departments by young people in mental health crisis. That is almost double the figure for 2010-11. How can the Minister ensure that effective children’s mental health services are not compromised by cuts to local government?
We need to be able to provide support to children, young people and their families when they start to struggle. Only then will we avoid the costly and intense suffering that entrenched mental illness can cause.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, in a rapidly changing world, children and young people face a wide range of risk factors for mental health problems, both now and later in life. It is salutary to note that in an average classroom, 10 children will have witnessed their parents separate, eight will have experienced physical violence, sexual abuse or neglect, and seven will have been bullied.
Those in the particularly vulnerable group, children in care, are typically in care precisely because they have experienced neglect or abuse, and these traumatic experiences can affect them for the rest of their lives. The recent Barnardo’s report, The Costs of Not Caring, showed that children in care are five times more likely to develop childhood mental health problems and, shockingly, are five times more likely to commit suicide later in life.
Despite the widespread concern about the current state of mental health services for children and young people, it is important to acknowledge what the Government have done to improve things, including investing £54 million into the children and young people’s IAPT programme and the recent announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister that £150 million will be invested over the next five years to improve treatment for eating disorders. It is welcome, of course, but nothing like enough.
We are all aware of the impact of budget cuts on CAMHS services. As a consequence, children have too often been transferred far from home or placed in adult wards that are ill equipped to take care of them. Services provided by the voluntary sector have picked up some of the slack, but there is often a lack of awareness about these services and they may be ill equipped to deal with serious mental health problems.
In reality, the help that is available can be hard to find. A 2013 YoungMinds study found that one in three young people does not know where to turn for mental health support; and, as the National Children’s Bureau pointed out, only a quarter of five to 15 year- olds with anxiety or diagnosable depression are in contact with CAMHS. By the time young people do get support it can be too late. More than 80% of parents said that children and young people were at crisis point before they managed to get support.
What is to be done? I greatly look forward to the findings and recommendations of the Government’s Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce. What is on my wish list? First is far more joined-up commissioning for CAMHS, with young people’s voice at the heart of service design. Secondly, counselling in schools can provide an alternative and valuable route for young people to get therapeutic help. Schools in Wales and Northern Ireland are already required to provide counselling. In my view, children in England should have the same opportunity. Can the Minister say what practical steps the Government are taking to ensure that all children have access to school counselling?
Thirdly, as already stated, children in care are not only more likely to experience mental health problems in childhood, they are also more likely to experience the sorts of problems—emotional instability, substance abuse, self-harm—that lead to worse outcomes later in life. That is why I think that CAMHS, IAPT and school counselling should explicitly prioritise the needs of children in care as part of the corporate parenting role that government plays.
When we think about children’s mental health we should think not only about the 10% who already have a diagnosable condition. Relatively minor problems in childhood often snowball and develop into fully fledged mental health disorders in adulthood. There are good examples of effective early intervention, such as specialist support to help parents develop a healthy connection with their young babies, and parenting programmes, as we have already heard.
I believe that schools should have a responsibility to prepare children not only for exams but for the difficulties they may face in later life. That is why I would like to see PSHE programmes to address issues such as bullying, drugs and alcohol, and mental health being compulsory for all primary and secondary schools.
Finally, preventive mental health support should be offered to all children in care and care leavers so that they can access the support they need to overcome past trauma and achieve stability later in life. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for having secured this debate.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, the terrible reality of the effects of mental health could not have been more powerfully illustrated than by the story reported in the press last week of 18 year-old Edward Mallen. He was not one of “those unfortunates”—he had 12 A* GCSEs and was predicted to achieve three A* A-levels; he had got grade 8 piano and a place at Girton to read geography—but he rapidly descended, over quite a short time, into depression and died under a train. Not only is it an affront to think of that young life, with all its potential and opportunities, suddenly being lost with his death, but the scars will stay with all the members of his family for the rest of their lives.
Recently published ONS figures show a worrying rise in the number of suicides in the UK, particularly among men. There were 6,233 suicides of over-15 year-olds registered in 2013, 252 more than in 2012, with the male suicide rate three times that for women. In the UK, suicide is the main cause of death of young people under the age of 35—more than 1,600 every year. Hundreds more attempt suicide and thousands more self-harm.
Much more needs to be done, perhaps drawing on research such as that provided by the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. In last year’s annual report, it identified various key points at which there was much greater risk. For example, the first three months after a patient’s discharge remain a time of particularly high suicide risk, especially in the first two weeks. Between 2002 and 2012 there were 3,225 suicides in the UK by mental health patients in the post-discharge period, 18% of all suicides. The report also pointed to suicide by patients receiving care under crisis resolution or home treatment teams. Such people are much more likely to commit suicide than those in in-patient care. It also pointed to living alone as a common antecedent of suicide by patients receiving care under crisis resolution and home treatment teams.
I welcome the Government’s initiatives in the area of suicide prevention. Indeed, I applaud the Government’s ambition to achieve zero suicides through the NHS adopting the approach pioneered by the Henry Ford Medical Group in Detroit. The dramatic improvements in Detroit will give hope that those who feel such desperation and so little hope in our society can also be reached. They point to the need for rapid and thorough expert assessment of patients who are having suicidal thoughts; for improvement in the care of those who present with self-harm injuries at A&E units; for better education for the families of people deemed to be at risk; and for improvement of data collection on patients to get a better understanding of how and where patients are most at risk of suicide and then to target resources at them.
The charity PAPYRUS has highlighted the need to ensure that children, young people and vulnerable adults receive due attention under this new strategy. It is imperative that the provision of resources is sustainable and adequate to facilitate a wider understanding of people with mental health problems as well as to enable the necessary preventive training and aftercare. I therefore applaud the good work that is going on, not least in organisations such as the Samaritans and the churches. I also ask the Minister whether the Government will respond to the campaign by Mind to guarantee referrals to talking strategies, which have clear benefits for those who receive them, within 28 days.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the commitment to ensuring equity between mental and physical health services is in disarray. The NHS has undoubtedly hit mental health provision hardest, according to a BBC report, with as many as 1,700 beds being cut and patients having to travel huge distances to access care, putting patients and families through significant distress and displacement. Despite the promise of guarantees of parity in funding, the overall proportion of funding going to mental health has been falling, compounding the long-standing underfunding of mental health services which is so costly to human lives and our society at large.
The impact of these cuts on children and adolescents has often been lost in the furore about mental health. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for highlighting this issue, not only through this debate but also through his involvement in Young Minds, which has campaigned so effectively to highlight cuts and freezes to mental health services across most local authorities.
Only yesterday, I and colleagues in this and the other place, heard Sally Burke describe her family’s plight when her daughter Maisie, now aged 13, went into crisis. Suicidal and distressed at the age of 12, Maisie had to be taken by the police—because no GP was available to tend to her—and was eventually hospitalised in Stafford, 130 miles from her home in Hull. Sally Burke has had to fight tooth and nail for her daughter to get appropriate care, including getting her MP, Alan Johnson, to intervene with Norman Lamb and the health commissioner in order to get Maisie moved closer to home. However, she still remained 60 miles away in Sheffield due to the removal of mental health beds for children in Hull.
One of the many distressing features of Maisie Shaw’s case is that she was only aged 13, after being hospitalised, when she was diagnosed with autism. As a high-functioning autistic child, at no point had the health or education practitioners she had come into contact with pushed her towards a diagnosis. Instead, Sally Burke says that she was made to feel responsible for Maisie’s irregular behaviour as a small child. She has had to develop huge resilience to withstand battle after battle with atomised public services. She describes the experience as fundamentally “cruel”. This is one example among many that has come to our attention, particularly from carers struggling to manage their loved ones with mental health and autism as an added dimension.
The figures are stark. NHS England reports that as many as 70% of children and young people with autism have at least one mental health disorder. Some 40% have two or more mental health disorders. The Minister will acknowledge that the condition of autism is associated with significant mental health needs. At present, however, specialist child and adolescent mental health services—CAMHS—for autism are few and far between. As NHS England has acknowledged,
“there is a scarcity of professionals with the necessary levels of expertise to provide this highly specialist service across the country”.
Professionals working within CAMHS say that children are not adequately supported while waiting for psychological therapies and that support for parents and carers is negligible.
Can the Minister assure the House that, to address these challenges, the Government will address autism specifically in their work on mental health, for example through the task force on children and young people’s mental health and via the mental health system board and the ministerial advisory group? Given the complexity of autism, will he agree that this group requires specialised attention?
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is one of those debates where we find ourselves addressing the ground very close to the subject we are covering tonight, because we have been there before.
The primary thread through this is the fact that those who have stressful lives are going to experience a slightly higher occurrence of mental health problems. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, and I have taken part in several debates where we talked about people with disabilities and how they are going to have a slightly higher occurrence of mental health problems because their lives are more stressful. Every time that occurs, we are going to find more mental health problems. The problem is the fact that we have not, until very recently, acknowledged that this is what is going on. We have a historical problem which we are now starting to address. I do not know if we are coming up with more solutions with this Government, but at least we are acknowledging the problem and taking the first step.
Will the Minister give us some assurances about where we are improving training in recognising this problem? We have identified the fact that where people are under greater stress, anxiety and depression are going to be more common. What are we doing to make sure that those who are dealing with this recognise the underlying problems and intervene early? Every time we delay dealing with these problems, behaviour gets entrenched and educational problems become more pronounced.
The problem with the education system is that children and young people are on a conveyor belt. If they slip at any stage, they have to run very fast to catch up. Mental health will account for some of that slippage. When mental health issues occur with a special educational need, a situation is created where the child is under even more stress and dropping out is only the short-term survival mechanism. What are we doing to address this?
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, addressed the point that care workers are undertrained to recognise this problem. They do not know what is going on. I think the Government have recognised that GPs do not have enough training to spot the problem early enough to push clients towards services. It may be the case that, as in many of these things, if you are going to have a problem, choose your parents well, and they will battle through for you. But, without that backing, children do not get that thrust to intervention and we end up with this point of crisis intervention and it tends to be papering over the cracks. Will my noble friend give the House some idea about the general strategy of making sure that there is greater awareness of the importance of early intervention? Without that we will carry on papering over cracks.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Listowel on securing this important debate and once again demonstrating to this House his intense and continuous focus on improving all kinds of services for children and young people.
A number of noble Lords have already mentioned the very welcome development by the National Health Service of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce. I want to build my contribution on a meeting held with the children’s group which is currently considering the mental health of children and young people. I was very struck by the fact that members of the group said that one of the problems they were finding as they were going round the country was a complete lack of co-ordination between what was going on in various ministries. They illustrated this by demonstrating to us that they were conducting eight pilots.
One of the pilots listed was a bid from the Black Country to,
“map and analyse commissioning of CAMHS … and other health funded out of area placements, with the aim of preventing the large numbers of children from the Black Country being placed ‘out of area’. … It will include commissioning urgent care … to include the focus upon delivering a Black Country wide solution to children and young people requiring admission to a place of safety (under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act.”
I thought that at the same time that the Ministry of Justice is developing this appalling idea of building the biggest children’s prison in the western world—called the secure college—which will contain a cohort of these very children from the Black Country, for whom the Black Country services are seeking to find a place of safety. To me, that is an absolute illustration of the lack of co-ordination which is inhibiting the development of satisfactory mental health services for this particular cohort.
I happen to chair three all-party interest groups at the moment: one on speech, language and communication difficulties; one on criminal justice, drugs and alcohol; and the Criminal Justice and Acquired Brain Injury Interest Group. I have had meetings with all three to discuss the agenda that they would like to put to the next Government and to ask them what problems were inhibiting them in achieving what they want to achieve. We have had a fascinating agenda. We are drawing it up with some care. Interestingly, time and again—and this very afternoon with the speech and language people—I was told that at a meeting NICE was not prepared to accept educational research in respect of improving the lot of people with SLCN.
I know the Minister understands this—he is someone whom the whole House respects greatly for the way he looks at things. Will the Government follow this line of looking and seeing how cross-government working can improve the services for this group because, sure enough, out in the field are all the people who want to do the work and are being inhibited in one way or another in a preventable way?
Lord Bradley (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, on securing this very important and timely debate on mental health services, particularly for children in care. As we have heard, it has produced many important speeches. I believe that we are at a time when mental health has never been higher on the political and, more importantly, the public agenda. As such, we must all seize the moment. In my brief contribution, I want to remind the House of some key facts that are behind the barriers that may be stopping improvement in mental health services for children, care leavers and, in particular, adolescents.
As we know, mental health problems affect 23% of the population at any one time, and the economic and social cost of mental ill health was estimated in 2009-10 to be £105 billion. As has been pointed out, that is the entire annual National Health Service budget. Furthermore, three-quarters of people with depression receive no treatment at all. That includes children, and 10% of five to 15 year-olds have a mental health problem. This is especially true of children in the care system, who have a poorer level of physical and mental health than their peers and whose long-term outcomes remain worse. Two-thirds of looked-after children have at least one physical health complaint and nearly half have a mental health disorder.
Although the ambition for parity of esteem between mental and physical health is clearly welcome—nothing could be more important in this ambition than children in care—there are concerns that there are major problems in actually achieving it. For example, a recent survey by the Royal College of Nursing revealed that there are now 3,300 fewer posts in mental health nursing and 1,500 fewer beds than in 2010. These problems were further exposed by the Health Select Committee in October 2014, in its report on child and adolescent mental health services. It concludes:
“There are serious and deeply ingrained problems with the commissioning and provision of Children’s and adolescents’ mental health services. These run through the whole system from prevention and early intervention through to inpatient services for the most vulnerable young people”.
That is not surprising given that we know that only 6% of the mental health budget is spent on children and young people in the mental health system and, as has been pointed out, this has been exacerbated by recent cuts in CAMHS services.
Against this backdrop, what needs to be done to improve mental health services, particularly for children in care? First, we need to ensure that there is an adequate number and proper geographical distribution of in-patient beds for all age groups, but particularly for children, when they are required. This should resolve the problem of children being taken hundreds of miles away from home or ending up in adult psychiatric beds, which is totally unacceptable, as the whole House will agree. I know the task force is undertaking this work, and I would be grateful if the Minister could advise us what progress has been made on this issue.
We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the use of police cells and the inaccessibility of proper places of safety. Linked to that, we must ensure that the liaison and diversion programme is completed by 2017. We heard about the expansion of therapy, particularly the IAPT programme, and therapy services for children, which I support, but we must look in particular at transitional arrangements and the ages at which people have access, in a timely way, to those programmes. It is crucial that we recognise the value of early intervention and the dramatic effect on people’s lives, particularly for young people and their families, if that intervention does not take place.
We need a real focus on schools, with all staff, especially teachers, having some level of training in mental health so that they can identity possible issues and passport children to specialist services. We need to look at the Mentally Healthy Society report that was published today, which recognises the need within schools to have a named CAMHS worker for proper link and access. It also recommends training health workers—we have heard a lot about training today—on mental health issues, because, again, they can be crucial in early intervention.
I recently visited a liaison project in Sunderland and met with parents of children who had a mental health problem. The scheme is excellent and the parents are wonderful, but they need tailored, timely and continuous support. Parenting programmes, which are supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, need to be expanded and must be funded and developed. Finally, we need a clear strategic commissioning framework to ensure that all relevant agencies—health, criminal justice and others, as well as local authorities, particularly for children in care—work effectively together so that we do far better for all children who have mental health problems.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for securing this important debate and for speaking to his Question so powerfully and with such authority.
Improving the mental health of children and young people is a key priority for the Government. It is part of our commitments to achieving parity of esteem between mental and physical health and to improving the lives of children and young people. Since 2010, we have raised the profile of mental health to unprecedented levels. We have produced the mental health and suicide prevention strategies and worked, through Time to Change, to reduce the stigma attached to mental health issues.
Although there has been much progress, the Government have been open about the scale of the challenge and acknowledge that there is still much to do. This includes action to improve outcomes for looked- after children and care leavers. Around 68,000 children are looked after by a local authority. For nearly two-thirds of these, the primary reason for being looked after is abuse or neglect. Although looked-after children have many of the same health risks and problems as their peers, they tend to have poorer outcomes. Almost half have a diagnosable mental health disorder and two-thirds have special educational needs. I can reassure my noble friend Lady Tyler, in particular, that it is the responsibility of the local authority, as corporate parent, to assess each looked-after child’s needs and draw up a care plan that sets out the services which will be provided to meet those needs. It must make arrangements to ensure that the child has his or her health needs fully assessed, and a health plan developed and reviewed.
At the end of last year, we consulted on revised statutory guidance on promoting the health and well-being of looked-after children. In that guidance, which will be published in its final form shortly, we emphasise the need for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. My noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott spoke about the social isolation felt by those leaving care. The guidance stresses the importance of ensuring continuing support for those leaving care, and that suitable transition arrangements are in place so that the young person’s health needs continue to be met.
That leads me to the concern expressed by the noble Earl about the problems that can arise during transition from children’s to adults’ services, a point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley. Indeed, ending the unacceptable cliff edge that some young people—not just those in or leaving care—face of support being lost as they reach the age of 18 is a key priority for action. I am delighted that NHS England has now published new service specifications for child and adolescent mental health that give guidance to local commissioners on how to improve transition practice. The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce, to which I shall return in a moment, is also considering how to deliver more seamless transition built around the needs of young people. Our statutory guidance on promoting the health and well-being of looked-after children stresses the importance of ensuring continuing support for those leaving care and that suitable transition arrangements are in place, so that the young person’s health needs continue to be met.
The noble Earl asked how specialist mental health services for looked-after children, including psychotherapy, can be protected and, indeed, expanded. Rather than mandating mental health services targeted at specific groups such as care leavers, our aim is to ensure that everyone has timely access to evidence-based services when they need them. That is why—as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate—we have invested £54 million over the last five years in the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Programme. This has transformed children’s mental health services throughout the country through the use of evidence-based therapies alongside session-by-session outcome monitoring, so that both therapist and patient know how well therapy is working toward a goal. We are strengthening the statutory guidance to make it clear that service commissioners must make sure that services provide targeted and dedicated mental health support to looked-after children, according to need. How they do that is for local determination, but it could include a dedicated team or seconding a CAMHS professional into a looked-after children multi-agency team.
The Government are clear that lack of investment in children and young people’s mental health services is not acceptable. Last November, we provided £7 million of additional funding to NHS England, allowing more in-patient tier 4 CAMHS beds to open. So far 53 new beds have been commissioned, taking the total to over 1,400 beds, more than ever before. We are well aware that there is variation across the country in investment in services provided by local authorities, schools and clinical commissioning groups. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, and other noble Lords have mentioned funding. We have legislated for mental health to get its fair share of local funding and this year’s NHS planning guidance is clear that spending on mental health services must increase. It is not enough simply to provide more and more beds. In order to ensure that improvements are sustainable, we need to focus on preventing issues arising, or taking action before hospital treatment is required. The task force is considering how best we strike this balance.
In addition, I can tell my noble friend Lord Addington that we have produced MindEd, which is an online platform designed to give those who work with children and young people every day the skills and knowledge to recognise the earliest signs of mental health problems. Health Education England is working with the Royal College of General Practitioners and others to improve training on CAMHS and the task force is also looking at the capacity and capability of the workforce. The Department of Health is commissioning a new prevalence survey of child and adolescent mental health, giving us something that we have needed for years: an accurate picture of mental ill health in youth.
I shall now try to cover as many points as I can that have been raised in the debate. I will of course write to noble Lords whose questions I have not been able to address in the time available. The noble Earl spoke very eloquently about the need for proper supervision of staff. All staff working in a children’s home should receive supervision of their practice from an appropriately qualified and experienced professional. In the majority of homes the supervisor will have experience or qualifications in the mental health field. The national minimum standards for fostering services expect them to ensure that foster carers receive the support and supervision they need. Programmes such as Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care can provide support, both to the child and to its foster carers. We expect to lay before Parliament next week new quality standards regulations for children’s homes in England, to come into force on 1 April. The regulations will require all staff in a home to receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience.
The noble Earl also referred to the qualifications of managers and staff. The Department for Education introduced new mandatory qualifications for children’s home managers and staff from this January. These include requirements to be able to support the well-being and resilience of children and young people.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, referred to the reported drop in investment in CAMHS. As she knows, we have taken difficult economic decisions to protect the NHS budget and there have been no central government funding cuts to children and young people’s mental health services. We have been clear that a lack of investment in mental health services for children and young people is not acceptable, as I have said, and the child and adolescent mental health task force was commissioned to identify how to improve the quality of and access to children and young people’s mental health services.
My noble friend Lady Tyler asked what practical steps the Government are taking to ensure access to school counselling. The Department for Education is producing new guidance on good school counselling. We anticipate that this will be published in March. She also asked what we are doing to promote PSHE in schools. The Department for Education has funded the PSHE Association to produce new guidance for schools on teaching about mental health.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans spoke very powerfully about young people who self-harm and who commit suicide. Indeed, in January this year we issued a call to every part of the NHS to commit to a zero suicide ambition. In addition, the Government announced £150 million over the next five years to improve services for eating disorders and self-harm. He will know, I am sure, that preventing suicide in children and young people is a central part of the cross-government suicide prevention strategy published in 2012. That is backed by £1.5 billion of funding for research on suicide and self-harm.
As regards Mind’s call for talking therapies to be available within 28 days, the five-year plan for mental health sets out the ambition to have new waiting time standards across all mental health services by 2020. The Department of Health and NHS England are working to do this, and I think that introducing those waiting time standards is a landmark for mental health services that we have not seen hitherto.
The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, spoke about the need for CAMHS for autistic children in particular. The new statutory framework for children and young people with special educational needs and disability is designed to greatly improve integrated working across health, education and social care, to deliver improved outcomes for the child and their family. CCGs and local authorities have joint arrangements for assessing, planning and commissioning services for children and young people with special educational needs.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked how best we should address the lack of co-ordination across CAMHS. On 11 December last year, eight pilot projects were announced that will look to accelerate new collaborative commissioning approaches for children and young people’s mental health. These new pilots will be in various parts of the country—I will not read them out—and have each been awarded up to £75,000 to develop their plans. They have until April to get their new approaches up and running.
Time prevents me from covering the questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, in particular. I undertake to write to him and other noble Lords, as I said. But I would just like to touch on the subject of parenting, which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, and the noble Lord, Lord Bradley. The CYP IAPT programme includes a focus on parenting for three to 10 year-olds with conduct disorder. It currently works with services covering 68% of the population and the ambition is for nationwide coverage in 2018.
The task force is a crucial element of our plans. It brings together experts from across health, social care and education to look at how to improve the way children and young people’s mental health services are organised. It has a particular focus on the needs of the most vulnerable children and young people, including looked-after children. We will publish the Government’s report of the task force’s findings shortly. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured that there is much going on in this area. The Government are very focused on the subjects that we have heard about this evening. I very much hope that the progress we have seen over recent years will be continued under the next Government.
Modern Slavery Bill
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Young of Hornsey
Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)
My Lords, we have made some good progress in the area of reporting and transparency. Like other noble Lords, I pay tribute to the Minister for holding meetings outside the Chamber and getting us to talk through with him some of the issues that we have with this part of the Bill. I am pleased to say that I support government Amendment 97, which gives quite a bit more clarity than we had previously on what should be included in the slavery and human trafficking statement.
However, there are still some areas around the subject where we could do with a little more improvement, hence a number of amendments to Clause 52 have been proposed, most of which I broadly support. Although it is not specifically addressed in any of the amendments tabled today, I still struggle with the prospect of a company deciding to face down criticism and continually submitting a statement declaring that it has decided not to examine its supply chain for trafficking and/or slavery. I wish I could say that it is unlikely that any company would do that and that all will swept along by the strong support that so many companies and organisations have demonstrated with regard to Clause 52, but I am afraid that time and again, recently and over a period of time, we have read in the press and seen on our screens too much evidence to the contrary.
I shall make my remarks fairly brief, because the amendments that I am speaking to, Amendments 93 and 94, are largely self-explanatory. Amendment 93 would ensure that government departments and agencies were subject to the same laws as commercial organisations with regard to declaring their actions to support transparency in their supply chains. The amendment is supported both by the British Retail Consortium and by the British Medical Association.
Just to give your Lordships a glimpse of the scale of procurement that is under discussion here, the Government spent a total of £238 billion on the procurement of goods and services in 2013-14. This sum represents approximately one-third of all public spending. Even breaking that down into departments produces substantial figures. For example, if we look at the Ministry of Defence, we see that the Defence Clothing Team, which is part of Defence Equipment and Support spent a total of £64.7 million on uniform and clothing in the financial year 2013-14, which would have put it well within the scope of the £60 million which was one of the figures that have been bandied around as a suggestion for a threshold figure that companies might need to meet to be covered by this clause. That is just spending on clothing.
There is no doubt that the Government have huge buying power and thus are implicated in any number of supply chains which extend around the world. For several years, various campaigners have argued that government should set an example when it comes to good practice in ethical and sustainable sourcing, and we now have an excellent opportunity to make considerable progress.
The social impact of decisions taken by government departments and agencies is no less than that of commercial organisations. Surely it would be difficult to argue that government should be exempt from the laws that it seeks to impose on other organisations similarly involved in the provision of goods and services. It is estimated that the NHS spends in excess of £40 billion per annum on the procurement of goods and services. I mention that specifically because I was struck by the British Medical Association’s briefing, which pointed to,
“an uncomfortable paradox in providing healthcare in the NHS at the expense of workers’ health in its supply chains. There is a risk to the reputation of the NHS through inaction, but conversely the importance and spending power of the NHS presents a real opportunity for it to take a lead in ethical procurement”.
As in other commercial organisations, the supply chains that provide commodities and services to government departments and agencies are global and employ hundreds of thousands of people world wide. If major suppliers of healthcare goods, for example—of uniforms and so on—strove to ensure fair and ethical practices in the manufacture of their products, the potential impact on global supply chains could be substantial.
I would be interested to know from the Minister whether there has been any discussion about government procurement in the context of transparency in supply chains. Or perhaps the Government are so confident that they implement sufficiently robust ethical procurement frameworks that they feel they should not be subject to reporting on their supply chains. While giving overall support to transparency in the supply chain legislation, particularly as it applies to supply chains in UK medical goods and imports, the British Medical Association believes that more can be done to ensure that public sector organisations and the small and medium-sized enterprises that supply them take adequate measures to ensure fair and ethical practice in supply chains.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Young of Hornsey. I strongly support her Amendments 93 and 94 and the government amendments in this group.
Like my noble friend, I thank the Minister for meeting me and other noble Lords and a number of civil society stakeholders earlier this month to discuss transparency in supply chains. Noble Lords will recall that I and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy of Cradley and Lady Mobarik, raised this issue in Committee. I also spoke about it at Second Reading. The Minister kindly said that, unusually following the Committee stage, not only would he have a meeting with colleagues in the House but that he would invite all the interested groups involved in this issue to meet him and the Peers who were able to be there. With the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and others, we were able to have an extremely helpful and useful discussion.
I welcome the amendments that the Government have tabled for Report, and I believe that they could take us a step closer to delivering effective transparency and accountability on action to eradicate modern slavery from the supply chain. Of course, I hope that this evening the Minister can be enticed to take a few more steps down the road that we have been travelling.
While I welcome and am most grateful for the progress that we have made, there are three areas on which I want to speak and on which I am hopeful we can agree some way forward. My Amendments 97A, 98A and 99A each raise an important outstanding issue that we ought to address before the Bill completes its parliamentary passage if we are to ensure that the supply chain clause works effectively in practice as we all want. It might be helpful to the House if I mentioned that the groups that support these amendments include Amnesty International UK, Anti-Slavery International, CAFOD, the CORE coalition, Dalit Freedom Network UK, the Evangelical Alliance, Focus on Labour Exploitation, the Law Society, Quakers in Britain, Traidcraft, Unseen and War on Want. While I pay tribute to them for the support they have given, I link with them Ruth Chambers, who has done an extraordinary amount of work on this. Sometimes the real heroes and heroines behind legislation are the people who do the hard slog.
I heard today from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and had a chance to have a brief conversation with one of its representatives. It subsequently sent me a statement about this group of amendments and, in particular, Amendment 99A. The commission’s recommendation is to:
“Support Amendment 99A … insofar as it would give the Anti-slavery Commissioner power and sufficient resource to take enforcement action”.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, raised the issue of resources in earlier debates, and they will be the make or break for this Bill. If resources are not provided, it will not be worth the paper on which it is written, but I am pretty confident that the Government are going to back up the rhetoric in this legislation with the necessary resources. I hope we will hear more about that when Minister comes to reply. The commission also says:
“In our analysis, extending this enforcement power to the Anti-slavery Commissioner would be desirable as it would strengthen his/her role and ensure that enforcement of the duty to prepare a slavery and human trafficking statement could be carried out independently of government. We consider that the Commissioner should be given a range of further powers, including the ability to require the disclosure of data and information, to conduct investigations and inquiries and to hold agencies to account for non-compliance with laws and policies”.
I am sure the Minister will have seen this statement. It was issued only today, and I am glad to be able to draw it to the attention of the House.
Government Amendment 97, as I have mentioned, is welcome as it sets out a number of areas on which slavery and human trafficking statements may include information, but I stress “may” in this context. The amendment does not go so far as to introduce minimum disclosure measures, which are really necessary if we are going to create a sort of equality of arms. As it stands, government Amendment 97 would still leave it entirely optional as to what companies put in their statements.
I listened very carefully to what the Minister said in Committee on this matter and recognise that different types of businesses will face different challenges in relation to their supply chains. It is a perfectly fair point that he has made, but he also indicated that the Government want a level playing field for industry. This is also something that businesses have called for. Sir Richard Branson, for example, has been supportive, as has Associated British Foods, the parent company of Primark, which I was able to meet in January with my noble friend Lord Patel. I was particularly appreciative of their support. My noble friend Lady Young referred a few moments ago to the tragedy in Bangladesh, and it was partly arising out of what happened there that I felt it would be helpful to have a discussion with Primark. I believe that the wording I have suggested in Amendment 97A strikes an appropriate balance that will allow for some flexibility while ensuring a level playing field between businesses on what they must disclose information about. This will also enable comparison across industry sectors as we will then be able to compare like with like.
One area about which I am particularly disappointed that the Government have not changed their position is the need for a central place in which the slavery and human trafficking statements can be uploaded and scrutinised. This is a very reasonable proposition. My Amendment 98A would introduce a requirement to upload the statements on to a central website maintained by the office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. Significantly the designate commissioner, Kevin Hyland, is supportive of this idea and I am grateful to him for meeting Ruth Chambers last week to discuss this.
Ensuring that each company uploads its own statement is a light-touch, practical way of spreading the administrative costs so it is onerous neither for business nor for government, but I am aware that the commissioner will have limited resources, so if this amendment is accepted then his budget will need to reflect this new responsibility. Why is this central repository needed? Quite frankly, without it the role that the Minister has described on many occasions for civil society, investors and the media to hold businesses to account for their supply chains—as he wants them to do—will be nigh on impossible to achieve. This is because of the time and the effort which would be needed to be spent just working out website by website which companies had reported and which had not. Then of course there are the difficulties that such stakeholders face in accessing the annual turnover information that would indicate which companies fall within the compliance threshold.
Amendment 98A would also require companies to include within the director’s report a fair summary of the statement and the web address of the full statement. This link to the director’s duties in the Companies Act 2006 would ensure that company directors took this provision seriously, and will help to propel responsibility for tackling slavery and supply chains into the boardroom. It would not be burdensome or costly to have this additional reporting and it reinforces a point that my noble friend Lady Young made in her remarks a few moments ago. It will also draw the slavery and human trafficking statement to the attention of mainstream investors who might otherwise not be aware of it and empower them to ask questions of the company. Making directors responsible for reporting on what the company is doing to eradicate modern slavery will ensure that it is part of core business. Boardroom responsibility will also change the culture of businesses and create an environment of a race to the top, thereby increasing the pace at which slavery is tackled within supply chains. I think this would also be good for UK plc, if I can put it that way, as it would promote better business practices which would in turn lead to better profitability and enable UK businesses to play a more leading and competitive role on the global stage.
On Monday the almost ethereal presence of William Wilberforce was regularly drawn to your Lordships’ attention and he was cited on a number of occasions. It is significant that when William Wilberforce was campaigning for an end, first, to the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, and later to all slavery, some argued that to abandon slavery would be ruinous for UK business interests. Of course, that did not turn out to be the case at all. Indeed, our reputation worldwide was enhanced by the results that the Clapham group was able to bring about as a result of its concerted actions in both our Houses of Parliament.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 95 and 98. I will take Amendment 95 first, because that is a separate matter.
It seems rather odd that the legislation deals exclusively with commercial organisations when one area of business across the UK is within the hands of government departments. The procurement by government departments and government department agencies ought to have the same degree of transparency in their supply chain as commercial organisations do. Otherwise, there might be an advantageous position for government which is not shared by commercial organisations. I was on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee and big businesses such as Sainsbury’s and Primark came to talk to us about wanting a level playing field. We did not discuss government procurement, but if you are to have a level playing field, it should include government. I can understand that it might be difficult to put that into the Bill at this stage, but I would like an assurance from the Government that this is a serious matter that will be reviewed as a matter of some urgency so that, certainly before the end of this year, we can know that all parts of organisations that employ and buy are treated, right down the chain, in exactly the same way.
My second amendment is a very much simpler version of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. In principle, I agree with him that we should go some way on this. One of the problems—and I again think of the appalling phrase “level playing field—is that there is no accountability. Amendment 97, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bates, is great as far as it goes. However, there is nothing to do if a company chooses to do nothing. As for the Californian legislation, I was told that one of the major American companies put up on its website the splendid phrase: “We propose to do nothing”. Apparently that complied with the Californian requirement. I will not mention the name of the firm because I might get into trouble. The fact is that we do not have any way of requiring some companies to put anything on their website. There may be those around them who would criticise them, but there is nothing to do. At the very least, copies of the statements proposed by the Government should be sent to someone.
I saw the commissioner this week. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, saw him last week. He was a bit apprehensive, I have to say, about the office of the commissioner receiving all these statements. He said that it might be better if somebody else receives them, but he entirely agrees that they should be on somebody’s website. Someone —I shall not mention who—suggested the Home Office website. That is a real possibility, if it were efficiently run. It may be that the commissioner could, in consultation with the Home Office and with commercial organisations, discover some other organisation prepared to create a website to which a statement, under Amendment 97, could be sent, but it needs to be sent somewhere.
We may have to take this in stages. If we can find a website upon which all these statements can be placed, it may be that the next stage—how they are monitored and what happens to those who do not, in fact, comply—will be further legislation. I do not believe that the Bill should go to ping-pong over whether there is effective monitoring and enforcement, but it is essential that the Government look at this as a matter of some urgency, because we need the statements and we need them to be sent somewhere, so that people can read them. Not only do those statements need to be read—no doubt by rivals—and commented on if they are not effective, but, at some time in the future, failure to comply with these government requirements should be capable of being dealt with in a way which is adverse to the company that does not comply. The best way to do that is a matter for the future.
I am making two points. First, the Government must do what commercial organisations do. Secondly, simply to have the statement is not enough: sending it somewhere outside the company’s own website has to be the next step.
Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, support the amendments in this group. I shall speak particularly to Amendments 97A and 98A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. First, as other noble Lords have said, we must give credit where credit is due. The Government have engaged with the issue of transparency in supply chains and have come a long way on this issue since the Bill was first published. Part 6, on transparency in supply chains, was a welcome addition, as is government Amendment 97. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for his positive engagement with this issue.
Having minimum criteria in the Bill will not only help business, it will help consumers and civil society. It will also help the Government as, with minimum criteria, there will be clarity about what businesses have to provide, thereby creating the level playing field that good businesses need and deserve. Comparisons between companies will be easier to make, helping consumers and civil society to make choices and to apply the pressure needed to make real change happen—to be catalysts for change. Having minimum criteria in the Bill will help give the Government the transparency and the world-leading legislation that they say they want to achieve, but the word “may” in line 2 of Amendment 97 has to become “must”. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, sets out in his Amendment 97A, without this change, the amendment setting out the minimum criteria that we all now agree needs to be in the Bill is made less effective. The element of uncertainty remains and the level playing field is gone.
I understand the argument that these are minimums, that we should give flexibility to allow more information to be given, not less, and that we want businesses to be able to report appropriately for their business and circumstances, but the lesson from the application of the Californian legislation is clear. While hundreds of organisations issued statements in line with the Act in California, some did not. Some businesses disclosed meaningless information, some disclosed misleading information and, worst of all, some disclosed that they do nothing, as my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss said. Some have even ignored the legislation and been completely silent. We do not want that to happen.
Part 6 is not a paper exercise for businesses; it is a serious measure that good businesses will want to engage positively with and on an equal footing with each other. It is not fair that the good businesses that are doing excellent work are being undercut and undermined by the bad. Clauses that allow uncaring businesses to write down in less than 200 words, “We don’t do any of this work, and we don’t intend to start”, like the submission—and I will name the company—from the multinational Krispy Kreme doughnuts in California, have to be tightened. That is why I support Amendment 97A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and why I have added my name to Amendment 98A.
As monitoring and enforcement of this part of the Bill is crucial, it is not adequate enough to leave monitoring and enforcement to be fulfilled by consumers and civil society alone. It is the job of government to ensure compliance with its legislation. Therefore, I support the proposition put forward in both Amendment 98A and Amendment 98, in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I was convinced by her argument in Committee that the part of government that should monitor and be responsible for this part of the Bill is the commissioner.
Amendment 98A introduces a requirement for a central government portal where all the annual statements are aggregated online, maintained and overseen by the new commissioner, a role that I understand the commissioner is supportive of. But even if this current commissioner is not supportive of it, we are clearly making legislation for the future, and it should be a role of such a commissioner. Leadership on this issue has to come from government, so the legislation needs to allow for the monitoring, enforcement and review. A government portal will also allow consumers and civil society more easily to fulfil their role of community enforcers. Having one central place that we can all go to to compare businesses, research best practice and analyse reports is simple and practical and an important initiative in our shared fight against slavery and forced labour in supply chains.
Finally, I refer to the last part of Amendment 98A, which will mean the issue of slavery and forced labour will be put on the desk of multinational CEOs around the UK and the world. Many noble Lords in this House have emphasised the need for supply chain transparency to be a corporate responsibility, as it is in the boardrooms of multinationals where real change can be made to happen. Multinational corporations have the power to insist on decent wages and formal contracts for all their workers here and across the world. They have the power to insist on inspection regimes and the power to improve the working conditions of those enslaved by exploitative suppliers. Amendment 98A helps them realise more acutely that they have this power and also encourages them to use it. I support the amendment and hope that the Government will, too.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, again, I welcome the changes that the Government have made on this issue. Changes is the wrong word because we started with nothing, and with the introduction of the new clause the Government have built on that, which is very welcome. I agree very much with what has been said about public procurement; for us to say, “Do as we say”, when we should be saying, “Do as we do”, is probably all that I have to say on that issue.
I agree, too, about the appropriateness of co-ordination involving in some way the commissioner. I have added my name to the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Baroness on that matter. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for raising the issue of enforcement, without which one has nothing. I was struck by the following from a report undertaken by four students at King’s College London, comparing this Bill with the Californian Act and a US federal Bill not yet in effect. The American legislation is far more precise and detailed as to what is required from the organisations that are covered. The students said that,
“the ‘incentivising’ enforcement methods are questionable as to impact and efficiency. Parliament makes companies follow many other rules—why is this one particularly troublesome?”.
Because I would like to thank them properly, I shall repeat their names—but I reassure Hansard that I shall send the spellings. They are Olivia Rosenstrom, Elizabeth Komives, Tim Segessemann and Helin Laufer. They also commented that,
“a clear structure among all companies makes review and comparison a lot easier for both experts and the public”.
Again, that is very insightful. Those young people go straight to the heart of the matter—rather better than I, many times their age, can do.
The Lord Bishop of Derby
My Lords, I support this group of amendments. I, too, welcome government Amendment 97, because we need a framework that people can inhabit flexibly and that sets out the framework very clearly but gives room for manoeuvre.
As for Amendment 98A, the modern tool for transparency is the website. A website is accessible to everybody in a very equal way. The Bill needs to balance two kinds of transparency. We are looking for transparency where there is bad practice—we want to shine a light on the oppression and abuse of people. We are also looking for transparency where there is good practice, especially good business practice in terms of employment and working conditions. We have to get both sides of the transparency issue up and running.
There is a serious point about resourcing the website. If it is located in the office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, that will give a clear message about what it is for. With a website, we can imagine that if people do not find what they want, or do not think that something has happened after it has gone up, they will send in their requests or their complaints, and that will be a big resourcing task to monitor, to respond to and to manage. Therefore, if it is to be run by the anti-slavery commissioner—I can see the value of that—it will, as others have said, need proper targeted resourcing, having measured the task. There may be other models for providing such a website. Whether one can have some equivalent of the Salvation Army and find someone to designate and manage it, there must be a public space that is accessible to everyone, which looks at what is going on and being achieved, shares good practice and exposes those who are falling short.
Finally, I again endorse use of the Companies Act 2006 because that gets into the DNA of how we expect companies to operate good practice.
Baroness Mobarik (Con)
My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 98A of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. If the requirement for those companies in the category whereby they are obliged to prepare and submit a slavery and human trafficking statement for each financial year of the organisation is to be meaningful and effective, a central repository for statements makes infinite sense. The office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner—the commissioner-designate, Kevin Hyland—is fully supportive of this proposal. A central repository for companies to be able to upload a human trafficking and slavery statement would be an effective way in which to assist with monitoring compliance and public accountability, and it is to be welcomed.
In order for leadership in companies to take this seriously, this amendment is important. It would require companies to include a fair summary of the statement and the web address of the full statement to be included within the directors’ report. This would not be unduly onerous for companies. The upside for companies is that such a duty would prove their due diligence and that it is a matter of real ethical concern to them. That makes for a more attractive proposition to investors and encourages a healthy competition to eradicate the blight of modern-day slavery, which can only be a good thing.
I hope that the Minister, my noble friend Lord Bates, who we all know has been working tirelessly on the Bill for many weeks, will be able to accept this amendment. It enjoys cross-party support as well as support from wider civil society and the commissioner-designate.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, I know that the hour is late but I want to add a minute or two of support for my noble friend’s amendments. I, like many others, spoke of the evils of some supply chains and companies’ responsibilities, but on Report it is not necessary to go into case studies again, as we are now talking about minor amendments.
My noble friends are right: proper reporting is an essential element in the legislative response and should satisfy retailers and consumers at the same time. I am a firm believer in corporate social responsibility, although it is going out of fashion, and greater transparency. Generally, I have been impressed by the extent to which businesses have been ready to accept minimum requirements. Of course there is a balance to be struck, and these amendments respect that balance. Who could quarrel with the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Young? Companies will differ in their relationships with the supply chains, but Amendment 97A goes a little further than the Government’s amendment by requiring a statement while retaining some flexibility.
Amendment 98A, to which the right reverend Prelate just spoke confidently, simply requires the statement to be entered on the website. My noble and learned friend disagrees over whether the commissioner-designate is going to want to do all this for himself, but we must include a provision in the Bill that companies have to provide such a statement; we can work out later where the central website will be. The commissioner-designate has already indicated his agreement in principle, and I hope that the Minister will do so, too.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I should like to speak in particular to Amendments 97A and 98A, but that certainly should not be taken as diminishing the importance of the other amendments in this group.
One value of transparency over the actions taken to tackle modern slavery in the supply chain is that it creates a level playing field. I suggest that government Amendment 97, welcome though it obviously is, would still leave it optional as to what companies put in their statement and thus not necessarily achieve the level playing field that is surely required. Ensuring a level playing field between businesses on what kind of information they must disclose will also allow for easier comparisons between businesses, even if they are in different industry sectors.
However, to achieve really effective comparisons, we need the terms of Amendment 98A. This would introduce a requirement to put slavery and human trafficking statements on to a central website maintained by the office of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner in order both to facilitate those effective comparisons across companies and sectors and to assist with the monitoring of compliance and public accountability.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, said that the commissioner-designate is supportive of this, but the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said he might have lost a degree of enthusiasm, because he might have to do it himself as opposed to somebody else doing it. I am afraid that I have not had a personal meeting with Mr Hyland, so I am unable to add a third version of what his views might be on this particular issue, but it seems as though he is supportive, even though there might be a difference of view as to who should be carrying it out. Without a central site for statements, holding organisations to account will be very difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil. It is surely clear that having that central site where those statements would be is actually quite crucial. That is really one of the things that Amendment 98A is seeking to address.
Amendment 98A would also help ensure boardroom responsibility for the eradication of slavery and human trafficking from corporate supply chains. It would also draw the slavery and human trafficking statement to the attention of mainstream investors who might otherwise not have been aware of it, and enable them to ask questions of the company, which is another form of accountability and another pressure point to take the appropriate action.
Once again, I hope that the Minister will feel able to give a helpful response. Perhaps he might feel able to reflect further before Third Reading on the points that have been made tonight from all around the House, particularly in relation to the two amendments to which I have specifically spoken. In the spirit in which the Minister has been operating up till now—which has, indeed, been highly successful—with the amendments that he has put forward and made, which have been much appreciated around the House, I hope that he might be able to agree to reflect further on this issue before Third Reading.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord tempts me to go further and I am grateful to him for doing that. I can promise him a full response: whether it is a helpful response will be something that noble Lords will be able to judge at the end. It is quite a large group and there are some new developments and new amendments there about which I want to put some remarks on the record.
I am conscious that on this area, we have had a long journey. I remember a debate initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, on supply chains last year. At that time, when I was answering, we did not even have the politics of the Bill in place, so that was an addition. Of course, as is always the case, one goes back and says to colleagues in government, “If you can just do this, I am sure that that will meet the concerns”, and then, after huffing and puffing, we came forward with Part 6. I totally understand that people want to start making amendments and expounding on that. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, is saying that these are relatively small elements but we will consider that as we move through.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
I am grateful to the Minister for the response he has given to my amendments. He will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, ask him whether, between now and Third Reading, he would look at the matter again. Let us forget some of the fringe or side issues as to where the website should be based and so on, but surely between now and Third Reading the principle of there being a central repository where this information is gathered, which the noble Lord has just accepted during his remarks—for which I was grateful and I appreciated what he said—could easily be clarified. I think that would meet a lot of the anxieties that have been expressed in your Lordships’ House this evening.
The reality is that the caravan moves on and as soon as this legislation has been enacted—and we will all cheer when that happens because it is profoundly important, worthwhile legislation—the pressure will be off to put some of these other things into place. Welcome though reviews, consultations, tech sessions and the rest are, the reality is that we should put in a requirement that there should be a central repository—and I personally wish we could go as far as requiring directors to have a summary of it in their annual reports as well—the principle of which has been accepted by the Minister. Surely we could have an assurance that that could be considered between now and next week.
Lord Bates
The only hesitation that I have—normally I like to agree with the noble Lord as far as possible—is on whether we can do it by Third Reading. I really do not know. I will reflect on it and talk. I think it is more important to get the principle there—that we are saying, with all these statements coming together, that clearly they need to be in one place. Whether that is civil society, an NGO, a commissioner or a government body is something that can be sorted out. But the principle is that we want to see these statements in one place so that people can monitor and evaluate them to ensure that the intended action takes place.
Baroness Young of Hornsey
I thank the Minister for his comprehensive response to the amendments we have just been considering. I will make three quick points.
I think that we will return to the issue of enforcement. We expect businesses to comply with money-laundering laws, bribery laws and a whole heap of other potentially criminal activities. To me, this is another criminal activity in which a company might be complicit and therefore the statements that they make need to be meaningful, and there will eventually need to be some sort of sanction, I am sure, in the future. But we will see what happens once we come to post-legislative scrutiny and we see how well the Bill actually works.
With regard to turnover and thresholds, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the consultation with business. As to whether or not there will be any consensus, that will be something we will see when that is published. That will be an interesting point because obviously different organisations will have different views on that.
With regard to government procurement, which is probably the thing I feel most strongly about in the two amendments to which I have been speaking, I will have a look at the Modern Slavery Strategy, as the Minister suggests. But statements of intent that are in that kind of paper are not the same as having something in a Bill that makes a very clear statement about what government agencies and the Government themselves should be doing in relation to that.
I will have a think about that, along with others—and I hope the Minister will as well—and in that context, I withdraw the amendment.
Lord Bates
“( ) An organisation’s slavery and human trafficking statement may include information about—
(a) the organisation’s structure, its business and its supply chains;(b) its policies in relation to slavery and human trafficking; (c) its due diligence processes in relation to slavery and human trafficking in its business and supply chains;(d) the parts of its business and supply chains where there is a risk of slavery and human trafficking taking place, and the steps it has taken to assess and manage that risk;(e) its effectiveness in ensuring that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in its business or supply chains, measured against such performance indicators as it considers appropriate;(f) the training about slavery and human trafficking available to its staff.( ) A slavery and human trafficking statement—
(a) if the organisation is a body corporate other than a limited liability partnership, must be approved by the board of directors (or equivalent management body) and signed by a director (or equivalent);(b) if the organisation is a limited liability partnership, must be approved by the members and signed by a designated member;(c) if the organisation is a limited partnership registered under the Limited Partnerships Act 1907, must be signed by a general partner;(d) if the organisation is any other kind of partnership, must be signed by a partner.”
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, prevention is critical to tackling modern slavery. That is why the Bill will introduce slavery and trafficking prevention orders which restrict the activity of individuals who have been convicted of modern slavery offences. The slavery and trafficking risk order and the slavery and trafficking prevention order will complement the existing serious crime prevention order regime. We want to ensure that law enforcement has all the tools required to prevent and disrupt organised criminals from committing modern slavery offences.
In a limited number of cases, it will be appropriate for the Director of Public Prosecutions and the director of the Serious Fraud Office to seek a serious crime prevention order; for example, where positive requirements are needed to stop a modern slavery offender from causing further harm.
Currently under this Bill, it would not be possible to apply for a serious crime prevention order against those with convictions for the existing trafficking offences. Government Amendment 102 will remedy this and ensure that law enforcement has the flexibility it needs to tackle this abhorrent crime.
Continuing to give law enforcement agencies this flexibility in relation to offences committed before this Bill is passed will help them prevent the horrific abuse and suffering caused by modern slavery offences. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support the amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Bates
“15A In section 19(8) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (no order made: reconsideration of case), at the end insert “in relation to it”.
15B In section 20(12) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (no order made: reconsideration of benefit), at the end insert “in relation to it”.”
Lord Bates
“( ) regulations under section 43(8) which remove a public authority from Schedule (Public authorities under a duty to co-operate with the Commissioner) (public authorities under a duty to co-operate with the Commissioner), other than in consequence of the authority having ceased to exist;”
“( ) regulations under section (Regulations about identifying and supporting victims) (identifying and supporting victims);”
“( ) regulations under section 51(6) which remove a public authority from section 51(5), other than in consequence of the authority having ceased to exist;”
“( ) the first regulations under section 52(3) (definition of turnover for purposes of section 52);”
(a) are subject to the affirmative procedure if they contain provision removing a public authority from Schedule (Public authorities under a duty to co-operate with the Commissioner) (public authorities under a duty to co-operate with the Commissioner), other than in consequence of the authority having ceased to exist;(b) otherwise, are subject to the negative procedure.”
(7A) The Department of Justice in Northern Ireland may not make regulations to which subsection (7B) applies unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, the Northern Ireland Assembly.
(7B) This subsection applies to regulations under section 43(7) which contain provision removing a public authority from Schedule (Public authorities under a duty to co-operate with the Commissioner) (public authorities under a duty to co-operate with the Commissioner), other than in consequence of the authority having ceased to exist.”
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
My Lords, at the end of a very long session, I rise briefly to move Amendment 114. As the Modern Slavery Strategy makes clear, the Government’s response to modern slavery has victims at its heart. The Bill is an integral part of that response and also has the interests of victims at its heart. That should be reflected in the Title of the Bill, which is the purpose of the amendment.
In proposing this small change to the Title of the Bill, emphasising the importance of victims, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this Report stage. I do not think that any of us is retreating from Report entirely unbruised or a little disappointed, but perhaps that is the way of things. The reality is that on the vast majority of issues we are in absolute agreement, and paramount is the necessity of tackling this abhorrent crime and eradicating it from our society, protecting the victims while prosecuting the criminals. I commend the amendment to the House.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)
My Lords, before I begin, I should declare my interest as a trustee and member of the campaigning organisation Liberty. I support government Amendment 114. As some of your Lordships may remember, I spoke to an amendment proposed in Committee by my noble friend Lord Rosser which put victims at the heart of the Modern Slavery Bill. I remarked then that it was for the humanity of the victims that we should act. Therefore, I am pleased that the Government have seen the necessity of an amendment to the Long Title of the Bill to reflect the fact that the new Act will make provision for the protection of victims.
For far too long, the criminal justice system has failed victims. In the pursuit of other objectives, victims have been seen as afterthought or, worse still, ignored altogether.
It is high time that we put victims at the heart of our justice system and this amendment highlights this by stating that the Modern Slavery Bill is intent on providing the protection and support that victims of trafficking deserve.
Lord Bates
I am very grateful for the noble Baroness’s support for this amendment and for her words, which I totally agree with. I pay tribute as well to her work on behalf of victims. I am delighted that we have secured her support for this.
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