House of Commons
Prayers
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Oral Answers to Questions
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
1. What steps she is taking to ensure that the UK meets its EU renewable energy target by 2020.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
5. What assessment she has made of the UK’s progress towards meeting its EU renewables target by 2020.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
We are making good progress towards our 15% renewable energy target for 2020, and I am confident that we will meet the next interim target of 5.4%, with provisional figures showing that 6.3% of final energy consumption for 2013 and 2014 came from renewable sources.
Rachael Maskell
With the UN climate change conference just days away, on top of renewables subsidies being removed we have learned that the UK will fall significantly short of its renewable energy target. While Labour led global talks, is the Secretary of State going to Paris to learn about the consequences of her cuts or to apologise to future generations?
Amber Rudd
I am delighted to say that there will be plenty of opportunities during this Session to talk about Paris, and I look forward to doing so. On the specific question of the renewables target, I repeat to the hon. Lady that we are making good progress at the moment. [Interruption.] There are issues, but we are expecting to exceed our interim target. There is more to do, and I am delighted to say that I am working across Government with the Department for Transport and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ensure that we do it.
Paula Sherriff
Does the Secretary of State agree that meeting our renewables target should not just prevent catastrophic climate change but benefit UK workers through the creation of green jobs? Will she commit to ensuring that projects such as the Beatrice offshore wind project, which benefit from public funding, create the sorts of skilled supply chain jobs we need rather than subsidising private companies abroad?
Amber Rudd
I certainly agree that the direction in which this Government are going in supporting renewables and meeting our low-carbon targets will continue to lead to the growth of the green economy, which is a really important addition to the growth in the economy nationally.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
The announcement yesterday to phase out coal with gas is equivalent, in one announcement, to doubling the amount of renewables we have in our system, and it is possibly the biggest reduction in carbon ever announced by a Secretary of State. Does she believe, though, that any of our EU partners will follow us in taking this route?
Amber Rudd
I thank my hon. Friend for pointing out the announcement that I made yesterday which shows such strong leadership in reducing carbon emissions in Europe and in the world. It is interesting that he asks me whether other European countries will do this. I am not sure they will. We are not ones to lecture our European friends, but I can tell him that I have had a lot of congratulations and comments of a positive nature about it internationally.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Given that the increase in global temperatures over the past two centuries has been minute, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself has said that most of it is perfectly natural, and that there has been no increase in global temperatures for 16 years, is it not time to simply reject these renewables targets and concentrate on our manufacturing industries and bringing down prices?
Amber Rudd
I always enjoy hearing from my hon. Friend, but I must say that I do not share his views. I believe that there is a settled view that is supported by science, and it is right that we take action, but I hope that this Government can demonstrate that we can do so while growing the economy. That is the evidence that we are showing people internationally, and that is why we are providing such strong leadership.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Given the leaked letter that indicated the purchase of renewables from abroad, will the right hon. Lady make sure that the Scottish islands are in the mix and that we go there for renewable energy? The wind resource is so great that I did not get off Barra on Monday.
Amber Rudd
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that yesterday I made an announcement continuing our support for offshore wind, which includes a potential application from the highlands and islands project. I hope that that was welcomed by him and by other promoters of offshore wind. I look forward to having further conversations with them, because offshore wind has a strong future in this country, but one that will also drive down prices.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The borough of Kettering is doing more than most in contributing to the national renewables target, with a major wind farm at Burton Wold, another one at Rushton, and lots of applications being received for solar farms. However, one of the big issues is the delay in connecting these new farms with the national grid because of the lack of suitably qualified engineers across the country. What can the Department do, with industry, to solve this problem?
Amber Rudd
It is good to hear of so much progress being made with renewable energy in my hon. Friend’s borough. We are working closely with industry to make sure that we support the skills and will continue to do so.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
There seems to be a difference of opinion between my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and the Secretary of State on progress towards our targets, but let us assume that the Secretary of State is right. If we are making such good progress, and bearing in mind that this is likely to be the warmest year on record, is now not the time to stretch ourselves by going to Paris with even tougher targets, to incentivise more renewables in the system?
Amber Rudd
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have the toughest targets in the whole world.
Amber Rudd
“Make them tougher”, he says from a sedentary position. We are well admired internationally, not only for our tough targets, but for our announcement on coal yesterday and for our structure of carbon budgets and constant monitoring. I am proud of that and I wish the hon. Gentleman would be, too.
Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
Progress has been much slower in meeting heat targets. The renewable heat incentive is due to close and as yet we have had no assurances of what will come next. Can the Secretary of State assure us that there will be continued support for decarbonising the heat sector?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. The two areas of renewable energy where we need to make progress are transport and heat. The renewable heat incentive has been a success, helping 50,000 homes. My proposal for continuing it is currently with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so we will have to wait until after the spending review.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Does the Secretary of State agree that subsidising progressively unaffordable fossil fuels, many of which are produced abroad, while cutting off support for renewable energy at home when schemes are on the verge of being self-supporting, mitigates our chances of reaching our targets?
Amber Rudd
It is not about one or the other. We intend to meet our targets while achieving the balance of supporting renewable energy and having fossil fuels as part of the mix. That is how we deliver secure, efficient and low-cost electricity nationally.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Thousands of jobs have already gone and thousands more are at risk since this Government slashed support for renewables. Ministers have blocked onshore wind developments, slashed support for solar and are chopping and changing energy policy so often that the CBI says they are deterring potential investors. How many more renewable energy companies must go under—how many more jobs must be lost—before this Government will live up to our international commitments and end this assault on Britain’s clean energy industries?
Amber Rudd
It is disappointing that, when talking about clean energy and low carbon, the hon. Lady failed to mention yesterday’s announcement. We are the first large developed country to announce a date for taking off coal. That is a great achievement and it is important as part of our future low carbon emissions. Our plan is for a green economy. We are continuing to develop jobs as well as support manufacturing and industry. I am proud of the direction we are taking.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
2. What assessment she has made of the effect of recent trends in wholesale energy prices on household bills.
Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
16. What assessment she has made of progress by the major energy suppliers on reflecting wholesale gas prices in consumer bills.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
Lower wholesale gas and electricity costs have contributed to the price of fixed-rate dual fuel tariffs falling by £100 compared with last year. Average domestic gas prices have reduced by 6.5% since the start of this year. All the major energy suppliers have reduced their standard gas tariffs at least once this year. The Government expect suppliers to make sure any reductions in the costs of supplying energy are passed on to consumers.
Suella Fernandes
In order to keep household bills down, it is vital that we invest in energy infrastructure. Does the Secretary of State agree that the proposed IFA2 interconnector station at the Daedalus airfield in Gosport, which will connect to Chilling in Fareham and provide a second electricity link between Britain and France, is a welcome development that will make a positive contribution to affordability and sustainability?
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend is right to say that interconnection can bring important, significant benefits to consumers by enabling access to cheaper electricity overseas, lowering household bills and supporting security of supply. The IFA2 project, along with others involving France, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and Ireland, is progressing through Ofgem’s regulatory regime, which is designed to bring forward interconnector investment in the consumer interest.
Nusrat Ghani
Rising wholesale energy prices have a particular impact on the elderly, with an estimated 540,000 older households in fuel poverty in recent years. Evidence shows that a large number of elderly people are prevented from switching to cheaper tariffs, which can be found only through online comparison sites, because they simply do not have access to the internet. What is the Department doing to ensure that the major energy suppliers are making their cheaper tariffs accessible to the most vulnerable in society?
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Switching is an important way to save money and reduce costs, and there is a huge choice available online. However, there is a problem for people who are not online, which is why my Department has funded, for the third year, the big energy saving network. The network provides funding for direct face-to-face advice, targeting the most vulnerable in society to help them through the switching process and ensure that they access the cheapest tariffs.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Household bills in this country will never be manageable until the Government understand that it is not just the wholesale unit price of energy that matters, but the number of units each household needs to buy. We can make massive bill reductions with energy efficiency, and we can also end the scandal of so many British children going to bed tonight in cold homes. We have to do this. Ministers have promised me action for many years at the Dispatch Box. This Government’s record is abysmal. Come on, Secretary of State, let us do this for Britain.
Amber Rudd
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s conclusion, but I share his view that energy efficiency is an incredibly important way of saving money and helping householders. One of the most important ways of doing that will be through smart meters. Once people can access and see how much energy they are using, they will be able to use less of it. We are proud of the smart meter roll-out. We expect every household and business to have one by 2020.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I spoke to the Secretary of State about this beforehand. Yesterday, I met Age UK, which informed me of its concerns about the lack of energy efficiency schemes for those living in park homes. Ever mindful of the fact that the age of those living in park homes is from 55 upwards to perhaps 80, if she wants to make efficiency savings for them, she could reduce prices. What has been done for park homes?
Amber Rudd
We addressed some of the issues that are particularly challenging to park homes in the fuel poverty targets under the previous coalition Government. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that more needs to be done. It is particularly difficult for park homes without electricity meters. Those with electricity meters can access support, but the ones without them find it more difficult. I will certainly take that matter away and review it.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
4. What assessment her Department has made of the likely effect of changes to subsidies on the predicted deployment rates of renewable energy by 2020.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
9. What assessment her Department has made of the likely effect of changes to subsidies on the predicted deployment rates of renewable energy by 2020.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
17. What assessment her Department has made of the likely effect of changes to subsidies on the predicted deployment rates of renewable energy by 2020.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
Even with the actions we are taking to control levy control framework costs and to protect consumer bills, we remain on track to deliver at least 30% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Detailed assessments of the impact of cost control actions were published by my Department alongside each of the measures as they were announced.
Mike Freer
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government remain committed to renewables, while being tough on the costs of subsidy?
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There was a focus on the levy control framework, which was particularly my approach, as soon as we came into government. I was shocked to find the scale of the overspend and have therefore responded to keep consumer bills under control.
Mims Davies
In Eastleigh, solar generation has leapt ahead due to the feed-in tariff, and many of my constituents want that to continue. Will the Secretary of State ensure that clean energy is supported and that both large and small solar energy generators in my constituency are not harmed by future changes?
Amber Rudd
I reassure my hon. Friend that we remain committed to clean energy, but in a way that minimises costs to consumers and maximises the benefits of the renewable industry to the UK. Our support has significantly driven down the cost of renewable energy and led to greater than anticipated levels of deployment.
Stephen Hammond
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her speech yesterday and warmly welcome her determination to reach zero subsidy? Does she agree with me that if we eliminated all subsidy for large-scale solar PV—photovoltaics—and concentrated it on domestic and small-scale solar PV, we could actually achieve our renewables target, protect jobs and reach zero subsidy and grid parity within the LCF earlier than 2020?
Amber Rudd
I share my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm for reaching grid parity and his support for solar in general. Solar has been a great British success story: costs have come down and delivery has far exceeded expectations. He will be aware that we are considering the consultation at the moment. The consultation closed after we received the responses, and I will report back on it. I will take his suggestions under advisement.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State now have a go at answering the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) about how many more thousands of jobs will be lost in the renewable energy sector as a result of her Government’s decision to pull the plug on solar and onshore wind? How does she respond to the comments of the United Nations chief environment scientist Jacquie McGlade, who recently said that Britain now, under the Tory Government, is sending a “worrying signal” by
“shifting away from clean energy as the rest of the world rushes towards it”?
Amber Rudd
Once more, with the right hon. Gentleman’s comment, we hear an Opposition Member fail to mention the fact, as announced yesterday, that we have put a date on the end of coal. I have received huge congratulations from international commentators. The situation is completely different from the one he tries to paint. The Government are committed to growing the renewable industry, are proud of the amount by which it has grown and will continue to support it, including through job creation.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Progress in renewable electricity generation has been put in jeopardy, particularly in rural communities, with the ending of renewables obligation certificates for wind turbines for farm generation of electricity. Will the Secretary of State provide a response that brings hope to those in rural communities?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Lady will be aware that Northern Ireland has the option to fund that itself. We made a decision, which was set out in our manifesto, to provide no additional support for onshore wind and we will stick to that.
Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
Onshore wind is demonstrably the cheapest form of renewable energy, yet its route to market has been constrained. The Government’s no new subsidy commitment in their manifesto is clearly being implemented. Would the Secretary of State support the concept of subsidy-free onshore wind? If so, does she agree with the assessment of the Committee on Climate Change of what would constitute subsidy-free onshore wind?
Amber Rudd
That is a very interesting question. I said last time I was in the Chamber that we would look at that idea and we will continue to do so. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we have said that there will be no new subsidy and that such schemes must be supported by the local community. We are happy to engage with developers and have that discussion if they have a proposal.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Renewable energy is vital to the local economy in my constituency. It is encouraging that one of the big investors, DONG Energy, welcomed the announcement by my right hon. Friend yesterday. It is important that we develop an energy cluster on the Humber to reduce costs and maximise benefits. Will she assure me that she will do all she can to achieve that?
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I received a message of support from DONG Energy, which is a big investor in offshore wind. The UK is rightly proud of its offshore wind sector. We have more offshore wind than the rest of the world put together. There is a lot of interest in that internationally and it has great export potential. We will continue to support it.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
I applaud the Secretary of State’s announcement yesterday in her reset speech that coal will be phased out by 2025 on the grounds of its unacceptably high carbon emissions. In the same speech, she indicated that temporary subsidies to assist the deployment of renewables, which are the lowest-carbon alternative energy source, would come to an end, while permanent subsidies for the deployment of gas, which is a far higher carbon alternative, would be maintained. On reflection, does she find those positions at all contradictory?
Amber Rudd
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his new role. Our position is that subsidies are supposed to be temporary. That is why I set out a plan yesterday to reduce the subsidy for offshore wind. The industry is happy to engage with us on that basis. We will set caps with it and, I hope, deliver offshore wind with it at a lower price than has been achieved before. On the other subsidies that he mentioned, we are making sure that we deliver a balance. There has been woeful underinvestment in infrastructure over recent decades. Under Labour, no nuclear power station was commissioned, which was a disgrace. We will move forward with a secure supply of electricity.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
6. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of her Department’s spending on energy efficiency schemes in reducing fuel poverty.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
18. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of her Department’s spending on energy efficiency schemes in reducing fuel poverty.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
From 2013 to the end of August this year, the energy company obligation had installed about 887,000 energy efficiency measures in more than 700,000 households on low incomes or in deprived areas. We are clear that the support should go to those in the greatest need.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank the Minister for her answer, but the huge drop in the installation of energy efficiency measures over recent years gives me no confidence that the Government are taking the scandal of fuel poverty seriously. Research by the Association for the Conservation of Energy has shown that the installation of energy efficiency measures dropped by a staggering 65% between 2012-13 and 2014-15. What steps is the Minister taking to reverse that shocking trend?
Andrea Leadsom
We are proud to have achieved more than 887,000 measures on energy efficiency. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said yesterday, we will redirect our ECO budget in the coming years towards those in greatest need and those who are suffering from the worst impacts of living in cold, damp or drafty homes.
Judith Cummins
With the withdrawal of Government funding for the green deal finance company, it is now even harder for overstretched families to afford energy efficiency schemes in their homes. Too often, poor quality housing stock leaves families in fuel poverty. What funding will the Minister introduce to help families to save money on their increasingly unaffordable energy bills?
Andrea Leadsom
The green deal plan was a small percentage of our measures, and it was closed to new entrants precisely because it did not have the take-up that we had hoped for. Some 96% of installed measures are delivered through ECO, and, as I have explained, we have put in a bid to focus our ECO even more on the fuel poor, which is our top priority.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
Let us get to the crux of this issue. The Department’s stated goal is for as many fuel-poor homes as is reasonably practicable to be rated at least at band C for energy efficiency by 2030. However, between 2010 and 2013 that was achieved for only 70,000 fuel-poor households, leaving 95% still to be improved. Does the Minister accept that at that rate of progress, her Department will miss its 2030 target by 100 years?
Andrea Leadsom
I do not agree with that. The key point is that an enormous number of homes do not currently reach the band C efficiency level, and we are determined to improve that as far as possible. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced yesterday that we will focus all our energy efficiency and fuel poverty budgets on the most needy. That is vital.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
7. Whether she will support proposals for a global goal on adaptation at the Paris climate conference in December 2015.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
The Government support the view that the Paris agreement should set out a long-term direction on adaptation for all countries. In 2014, only 16% of climate finance mobilised to developing countries supported adaptation, and it is clear that globally we must do more. That is why the Prime Minister has reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to aim to spend 50% of our climate finance on adaptation.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Many constituents have contacted me following a campaign by ActionAid about the effects of climate change in developing countries such as Bangladesh, where flooding particularly affects women and children. In Paris, will the Secretary of State support a specific, binding goal that ensures that the wealthiest countries in the world support developing countries in adapting to climate change?
Amber Rudd
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Government are committed to getting a deal in Paris. We are aware that that deal will require considerable financing, which is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced that we will increase our commitment to climate finance up to $9 billion over this five-year spending period—a significant increase. We remain committed to making adaptation an important part of that, but we are not yet in a position to commit the rest of the world in terms of the final deal that will be reached.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Paris conference of the parties aims to replicate the successful method of the UK Climate Change Act 2008—a long-term goal that is specified under a legally binding agreement that achieves stability through a series of five-year reviews. The Secretary of State has abandoned long-term targets and destroyed the stability of the investment framework, and last night her Department’s emissions calculator showed that after her reset speech the shortfall against the fourth carbon budget has increased by 54 million tonnes of CO2, which is 10% away from the legally binding fourth carbon budget. Does she now feel more shame showing her face in the city of Paris, or in the city of London?
Amber Rudd
I find the hon. Gentleman’s question disappointing. The UK is rightly proud of our Climate Change Act, and of the targets and aims that we are setting for ourselves. We will provide leadership in Paris. The number of texts and notes that I received yesterday after creating that strong sign on coal was remarkable. I urge the hon. Gentleman to stop knocking the United Kingdom’s negotiating position, and to start supporting us in leading and getting a global deal.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
8. What contribution her Department is making to cross-departmental work on the Government’s environmental agenda.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
Ministerial colleagues in DEFRA lead the Government’s environmental agenda overall. My Department leads work to cut carbon emissions, which is essential for protecting our environment for future generations. Working across Departments is essential to deliver our carbon commitments. Let me give two examples: we are cutting emissions, driving innovation and creating jobs through our joint work with the Department for Communities and Local Government on energy efficiency and with the Department for Transport on low emissions vehicles.
Jake Berry
To take my right hon. Friend away from the UK, Ascension Island is one of the last refuges for the global stock of large fish, including tuna, marlin and sailfish. With that in mind, will she update me on progress in creating a marine conservation zone around Ascension Island and other British overseas territories?
Amber Rudd
I thank my hon. Friend for his important question. We are working with overseas territories on their current marine management arrangements to audit them and provide support in addressing gaps. In particular, we are working with the Ascension Island Government to balance their ambition for a sustainable fishery with the development of a marine protected area.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Secretary of State may know that Cambridge City Council had to cancel plans to put solar panels on 1,000 homes after her changes in policy. What discussions has she had with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government ahead of her abrupt policy changes?
Amber Rudd
We always work across Government and ensure that everybody is consulted on major changes. The particular issue of solar on public houses will form part of the consultation, and I will be making further announcements in December.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government agreed a city region deal this week for Merseyside without including the tidal and barrage schemes that were part of the bid. It was said that the Department of Energy and Climate Change was pushing back against them. Is that true?
Amber Rudd
I am afraid I do not have a full answer to give the hon. Gentleman, but I am happy to write to him further when I have an answer.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
10. What steps she is taking to encourage the building of further new nuclear reactors.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Government are committed to an expansion of new nuclear power, which is a vital part of our work to build a clean, affordable, safe and reliable energy system for the future. The industry is taking forward proposals to build six new nuclear power plants, providing 18 GW of low carbon power in the UK. We are in regular contact with it.
Stephen Metcalfe
Following the recent welcome announcement that China will be involved in the provision of new nuclear, will my right hon. Friend reassure the House and my constituents that all proper safety and security measures will be taken, and that a robust mechanism for monitoring such will be in place?
Andrea Leadsom
Yes, I can absolutely reassure my hon. Friend. Safety in our nuclear plants is of paramount importance. Any operator of a UK nuclear plant must meet the UK’s stringent safety and security regulations, which are enforced by an independent regulator. They provide a whole range of controls, including safe and secure operation, consumer protection, security of UK supply and enforcement of contractual obligations.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I wish the Government would apply their horror of subsidies to the nuclear sector. The Secretary of State’s response to the cross-party objection to the departmental minute on Hinkley fails to address concerns that rather than a £19 billion liability on the public purse, Hinkley may in reality mean an eye-watering £45 billion bill for householders and taxpayers. That is just for one new power station that will not boil a kettle for another decade. At the very least, does she agree there must be a full Commons debate on the issue and an independent examination of the costs before proceeding?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady can, of course, use the normal methods for encouraging a debate. There have been many already. Hinkley Point offers low carbon affordable energy that is highly cost-competitive with clean energy sources. The point is that it is base-load. The UK bill payer will not have to pay a penny until it is actually generating. That is very good value for the UK bill payer.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
First, I would like to congratulate the Secretary of State on her masterly speech yesterday.
Does the Minister agree that we need a mix of energy, including nuclear, which I am pleased to say we have in my area of Somerset, as well as solar and wind? It has to be a balance, it has to be at the best cost and it has to be about innovation, which will, in itself, create the sorts of jobs in the energy sector that Opposition Members are worried we are losing.
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is exactly right. We need an energy mix, which is exactly what we are achieving and what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out in her speech yesterday. I was delighted to visit Hinkley Point last week and see the enormous pride and excitement in the area about the prospective jobs and work in the supply chain and the huge investment in the area. It is really good news for the UK and our energy security.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Will the Minister remind the House how much the Government are spending on nuclear decommissioning and explain why it is the one sector to which market discipline does not seem to apply?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady will know that the UK has an enormous nuclear legacy dating back to the 1940s and ’50s. A huge amount of work is being done at Sellafield and other sites to dispose safely of that nuclear waste. As she will know, the budget is extremely large—in the region of £3 billion—but that money is being spent to deal safely with this very long legacy. I can assure her, however, that new nuclear creates far less waste. We are planning a geological disposal facility to make sure that future taxpayers have nothing like that legacy to deal with.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
11. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for International Development on preparations for the Paris climate conference in December 2015.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
I have been working closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development to secure an ambitious global deal in Paris. Tackling climate change and promoting sustainable development are two sides of the same coin. We cannot achieve one without the other. We cannot end extreme poverty any other way. The global goals established earlier this year provide a clear framework for sustainable development, with full integration of climate and environment goals.
Imran Hussain
It is vital that we reach a binding agreement on tackling climate change in December, and I, too, welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement about closing coal-fired power stations by 2025, as it sets a strong example to other countries. Will she go further, though, and state what percentage cut in emissions by 2030 she is pushing for?
Amber Rudd
We are focused on Paris at the moment. We are working with our EU colleagues, other countries and like-minded allies to bring along other countries that might be more reluctant or more difficult to get across the line. With our EU colleagues, we have set targets, such as that for a 40% reduction by 2030, but at the moment our focus is on Paris.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
12. What steps her Department has taken to encourage schools to invest in solar energy; what discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Education on the effect of borrowing restrictions on investment by schools in solar energy; and if she will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
In April 2014, my Department published a leaflet encouraging schools to invest in solar PV, which was followed up with a letter to local authorities in November 2014. We encourage deployment through the financial incentive of the feed-in tariff, but discussions are always ongoing with other Departments on what more can be done to help schools invest in solar.
Mr Allen
Thousands of schools cannot make their contribution on renewables and save thousands of pounds each year because of the Chancellor’s rules on borrowing to install solar. One school, Wilmslow High, wants to do this, and its local MP, a Mr George Osborne, has said:
“I am happy to support you wherever I can”,
but he is awaiting a reply from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Will the Department reply to the local MP so that he can make representations to himself as Chancellor and end these ridiculous rules?
Andrea Leadsom
I would like to apologise publicly to the local MP. I shall look into the matter today. Restrictions on school borrowing are necessary, however, to protect public sector accounts. School borrowing contributes to public sector net debt and borrowing—two important fiscal measurements that we must control in order to bring down the national deficit and retain economic confidence—which is why we have no plans to lift restrictions on borrowing.
Mr Speaker
I feel sure that the Minister will have looked into the matter by lunch time.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
13. What recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of statutory regulation of the district heating sector.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
We do not believe that further statutory regulation is appropriate for the sector at this stage, but are keeping this under review. We welcome the voluntary consumer protection scheme, Heat Trust, which is launching next week. The scheme aims to provide customers with comparable protections to those available in statute to gas and electricity customers. We believe that, when combined with metering and billing regulations, this represents a proportionate approach to the consumer challenges in the sector.
Matthew Pennycook
The vast majority of customers served by district heating networks, including thousands in my constituency, believe strongly that they do not offer a fair deal, and the industry-led solution, Heat Trust, will I think do little to allay fears in that regard or build consumer confidence. May I urge the Secretary of State to revisit the question of whether effective statutory regulation would give customers locked into these monopoly schemes a better deal?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I am aware that heating networks do not have the same regulatory framework. Heat Trust is launching on 25 November, following development and consultation with consumer groups and Government. I see that he has a certain doubt about the success of Heat Trust, but we will work closely to monitor its impact and will assess, based on its record, whether further action is needed.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
14. What assessment she has made of the effect of proposed changes to feed-in tariffs on solar power companies in the UK.
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
15. What assessment her Department has made of the effect of proposed changes to feed-in tariffs on the number of jobs in the solar power industry.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
19. What assessment she has made of the effect of proposed changes to feed-in tariffs on solar power companies in the UK.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
During consultation on the proposed changes to the feed-in tariffs, we strongly encouraged all parts of the small-scale renewables sector to provide evidence on the likely impact. The actual impact on solar companies will, of course, depend on the options taken forward when the responses to the consultation have been considered.
Alex Cunningham
The Minister will be aware of the thousands of job losses on Teesside, with steel, construction and mining all shedding people. Even the Government are contributing to the misery, sacking hundreds of employees at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Does she really want to add thousands more from the solar, energy conservation and energy-intensive industries as a direct result of her policies?
Andrea Leadsom
We are huge supporters of the solar sector. The point is that there is a balance to be struck between the enormous success in deployment, which is exceeding our expectations, and the impact on the bill payer. We have to keep that balance. We have consulted on it and will issue our response in due course, but it is absolutely our intention to see the solar sector continue to thrive.
Michelle Donelan
A number of leading solar community projects and green energy companies are based in my constituency, including Good Energy, which supplies more than 50,000 UK consumers. People who work in the industry fully understand the need for it to be sustainable, but they feel that a drop of up to 87% overnight is more than the industry can cope with, in terms of local jobs and growth. Will the Minister look at what more can be done to support existing projects and for mechanisms to keep the solar industry alive until grid parity is reached?
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this very important matter for her constituency. I can absolutely assure her that we are looking at it carefully. I had a round table meeting with a number of solar firms and heard their views at first hand before the consultation closed. We are looking carefully at the more than 55,000 responses and will come forward with our policy response as soon as we can.
Ruth Cadbury
Virginia Fassnidge is one of my constituents who installed solar panels to cut her family’s household bills and save carbon. Will the Minister explain to those who want to follow her example why they should, when the 98% cut to the feed-in tariff subsidy scheme no longer makes it attractive to consumers, risks the very viability of the domestic solar industry when it is about to become viable without subsidy and completely undermines the Secretary of State’s solar revolution?
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. Obviously her constituent will be pleased to know that the subsidy from the bill payer that she has received will continue to be available to her—I think there has been some confusion about that point. For those who come later, the proposal in our consultation is for the return to investors to be in the region of about 4%, as opposed to the current level, which is significantly higher. We were required by the EU to look at the tariffs on a three-year basis and that is what we have done. We have put forward a proposal and we are looking carefully at the responses.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Government’s decisions have had a devastating impact on our manufacturing industry in the UK. That flies in the face of exactly what the Government say they want to achieve in creating an industrial balance within our economy. Just like the steel industry, the Government have been found wanting.
Andrea Leadsom
We have a big and growing energy sector. We are bringing forward policy proposals to develop new sources of energy, which will mean a whole raft of new jobs and new opportunities for people, but there is always a balance to be struck. What we cannot do is permanently subsidise at the expense of the bill payer; many issues have already been raised about fuel poverty. In the end, industries need to stand on their own two feet.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
Paris is a city that is currently in mourning, but in less than two weeks’ time we will see the world gather there in solidarity to seek to achieve the first truly global deal on climate change. Yesterday I announced plans to close all unabated coal-fired power stations by 2025 and to restrict their use by 2023. This is a world-leading commitment to the environment and underlines our crystal-clear determination to cut carbon emissions as cost-effectively as possible. I stress that the UK’s energy security comes first. As we tackle a legacy of under-investment and build a new system of energy infrastructure fit for the 21st century, we need to replace ageing polluting power stations with reliable, good value-for-money alternatives that help to reduce our emissions.
Nigel Huddleston
Ofgem estimates that the average household could save about £200 a year by shopping around for their energy needs, but 62% of households have never switched, while 45% mistakenly believe that there is no benefit from doing so. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) raised the issue of online information access, but what else are the Government doing to encourage households to switch and save money?
Amber Rudd
I thank my hon. Friend for his important question. The more opportunities that we have to raise and draw attention to the opportunities for switching, the better. Switching can indeed save £200 and sometimes more per bill. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and, as I said, we have plans to reach out to people who are not online and to help the most vulnerable. We also had the recent Power to Switch campaign, which led to a significantly increased number of people switching.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I share the right hon. Lady’s sadness at the recent events in Paris, which shocked the world. As world leaders gather in that same city in a few days’ time to address the threat posed to us all by climate change, will she ensure that we use the opportunity to show real leadership and offer hope to people around the world that we, the international community, can come together to address the common threats to our shared security through shared international goals and by increasing our ambition every five years until the job is done?
Amber Rudd
I genuinely welcome the hon. Lady’s question, and I am proud of the fact that we in the United Kingdom are united across the political divide in wanting to get an ambitious deal in Paris. I also share the hon. Lady’s view that what we need is not just a deal, but a deal that has five-year reviews as part of it, so that whatever the final deal—I really hope we will get a deal in Paris—we have some way of coming back regularly in order to reflect on the actual emissions, their consequences and perhaps on new technology that might be available to help us all to reduce them.
Lisa Nandy
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer and particularly for the push she will give to five-year reviews. I also very much welcome the agreement that the G7 leaders reached earlier this year to phase out pollution from fossil fuels by the end of this century and to cut greenhouse gases by between 40% and 70% by 2050 from 2010 levels. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the British Government will continue their support for the Climate Change Act 2008 and will accept the advice due to be given shortly by the independent Committee on Climate Change on what the next round of UK carbon targets—the so-called fifth carbon budget—should be?
Amber Rudd
I can reassure the hon. Lady that we are committed to the Climate Change Act and to working with the Committee on Climate Change to ensure that we stick to the commitments that are enshrined in law and deliver the low-carbon future that we all want.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
T8. Given the ongoing complex challenges in the world, particularly Russia’s recent action in the Ukraine, can my right hon. Friend tell us what steps she is taking further to strengthen this country’s national energy security?
Amber Rudd
There is a big, liquid global gas market and we are, of course, trying to bring on our own national gas through shale. I note my hon. Friend’s concerns, and I am happy to say that we get most of our imported gas from Norway. He raises a good point, and we will keep the matter constantly under review.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
T2. According to conversations that I have had with a number of energy suppliers, they have evidence suggesting that in-home displays are not used by most of the customers who are provided with them. Can the Minister explain why the Government remain wedded effectively to mandating the provision of IHDs for their smart meter roll-out, rather than allowing consumers to choose the engagement tool for managing their energy use that suits them best?
Amber Rudd
I am happy to reassure the hon. Gentleman that, although we have said that we need a smart meter with a visual display, we are looking into other ways of delivering that.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
Far and away the dominant zero-carbon technology, in the United Kingdom and globally, is nuclear power. I welcomed the earlier announcement that we were working on six new stations in the UK, but an emerging technology involving small modular reactors is causing a great deal of excitement, and could make a big difference. Does the Minister expect the UK to play a part in that?
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. The UK gave up its ability to design and export nuclear reactors some years ago, and we are currently at the forefront of looking at new nuclear technology, including small modular reactors. I recently met representatives of the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board to discuss some of their exciting ideas, and, subject to the spending review, I think we shall be hearing more about them.
Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)
T3. Community-led renewable energy schemes empower communities, tackle fuel poverty and provide jobs, so why is the Secretary of State sitting back and letting the Treasury do a U-turn on social investment tax relief, given that that will undermine new schemes? Does she support community energy schemes, and, if so, will she update the House on her plans to support this important part of the co-operative sector?
Amber Rudd
I can reassure the hon. Lady. I do support community energy schemes, because I think that they can add tremendous value in demonstrating the advantages of renewable energy to local communities. We shall thinking carefully about how we can support them in future, and I hope to report to the House in due course.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
I commend the Secretary of State for her Power to Switch campaign, but will she commit herself to working with her colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions, so that next time the winter fuel cheques are sent out, there will be more information about Power to Switch, together with clear details of how to switch on the telephone and on paper?
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend has raised an important point. It would indeed be a good idea for us to work more closely with the DWP to ensure that more vulnerable people are told about the opportunities that they might be missing, and I shall take the matter up with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Stuart Blair Donaldson (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (SNP)
T5. As the Government move the UK Green Investment Bank into private ownership, will the Secretary of State give us a clear assurance that the Government will deliver the full £3.8 billion of capitalisation that was initially pledged to the bank, so that it can continue to invest meaningfully in our green economy?
Amber Rudd
We are rightly proud of the Green Investment Bank. It is the first bank to be set up by a Government in this way, and it has played a leading role in supporting renewable energy development. I am excited about the prospect of its moving out of public ownership, raising money, and going into, as it were, the public arena. I hope that it will then provide an opportunity for more investment. As for the hon. Gentleman’s specific question, I shall have to come back to him with a detailed answer.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Earlier this month, the Government said that they would negotiate with the European Union about the 5% value-added tax on female sanitary products. Would my right hon. Friend be prepared to extend that discussion to the issue of the 5% VAT on fuel, which is an essential for most households?
Amber Rudd
I thank my hon. Friend for his suggestion, which has slightly surprised me. I shall have to come back to him with some further thoughts about it.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
T6. Following the Secretary of State’s notable speech yesterday, in which she stressed the importance of new gas-fired power stations, will she tell us what steps she is taking to assist the progress of the construction of the world’s first full-scale gas carbon capture and storage project at Peterhead power station?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the CCS competition that is going ahead. I have had meetings with the association which promotes that area. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the spending review is coming up and decisions will be made then, but the United Kingdom has been a keen supporter of CCS here and in other countries, and we have spent a great deal of money on trying to explore the opportunities for the UK to extend the life of our fossil fuels.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
There is an application to explore for shale gas in the beautiful area of Ryedale in my constituency. Assuming the application and the exploration are successful, what assurances can the Minister offer that an expansion of the industry will not lead to an industrialisation of that beautiful area?
Andrea Leadsom
I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend that all onshore oil and gas projects, including shale gas projects, are subject to scrutiny through the planning system, which addresses impacts on residents such as traffic movements, noise and working hours, and that national planning guidance says that, in respect of minerals such as shale oil and gas, new developments should not just be appropriate for their location but take into account the effects of pollution, including the cumulative effects, on health, the natural environment or general amenity, and the potential sensitivity of the area. I am well aware of what a beautiful area he lives in and I assure him we are absolutely focused on that.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
T7. May I urge the Minister to look carefully at the impact that any spending reductions in the nuclear sector would have on our supply chain in West Cumbria? Ahead of the spending review, will she press the Chancellor on the need to support our local supply chain through the ongoing decommissioning at Sellafield, alongside the nuclear new build at Moorside?
Andrea Leadsom
I am delighted to tell the hon. Lady that there are huge opportunities for West Cumbria from new nuclear. I have visited Sellafield and the new plant at Moorside. There are enormous opportunities. People are already being recruited. It is believed that, across the UK, we will need to recruit about 8,000 people a year. There are lots of new apprenticeship opportunities. Having met local councillors in the area, I know that they are very excited and positive about the opportunity.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
At present, the National Grid pays out £1 billion a year in balancing charges, which is passed on to electricity users. Transmission charges are not fit for purpose. The Government have removed onshore renewable subsidies, and community energy schemes are under attack too. We have a regulation system that was designed 30 years ago. So instead of the rush for new nuclear and ad hoc ministerial announcements, is it not time the Government took a step back and had a proper strategy on energy policy?
Amber Rudd
That is exactly what I set out yesterday: a proper forward look at our energy policy. The Government are committed to delivering secure, clean and affordable energy not just in the next five years but over the next 10, 15 and 20 years. That is what a Government should do to get the best for businesses and consumers.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
Gas has always been acknowledged as a bridge to a decarbonised future but the announcements made by the Secretary of State yesterday will have a cumulative effect. Can she assure us that that bridge has not lengthened and raised the risk of a stranded fleet of new gas generators in 25 years, particularly given that some analysis suggests that the emissions shortfall against the fourth carbon budget has increased from 7% to 10%?
Amber Rudd
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He is right that there is a widening gap against the fourth carbon budget. I want to be clear that that is not to do with policy. The reason for that is to do with land use—something delightfully called LULUCF, or land use, land use change and forestry sector. I am aware of his views on gas and they are really the same as mine: it is indeed a low-carbon bridge but in future we hope that other sources will come forward.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The port of Immingham in my constituency depends heavily on the import of coal. Many jobs rely on that both in the port and on the rail network. What assessment has my right hon. Friend’s Department made of the loss of jobs in those associated industries, with less coal coming in as a result of coal-fired power stations closing?
Amber Rudd
I reassure my hon. Friend that that is something we intend to do, but it will be subject to a consultation. We will have the opportunity to look at that issue, but we are talking about 10 years hence, so I hope that there will be plenty of opportunities to ensure that areas can adapt and benefit from other areas of industry that will emerge.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
If the Government are serious about meeting the targets on emission levels, instead of yesterday announcing the closure of the coal-fired power stations, would it not have been eminently sensible to come forward with a serious attempt at carbon capture and storage, which would enable us to burn the fossil fuels, coal and shale gas with near-zero emissions, providing secure, affordable energy for generations to come?
Andrea Leadsom
I agree with the hon. Gentleman in part, in that there is the opportunity for CCS to enable us to use fossil fuels for longer, but the reality is that the UK coal fleet is extremely old. All of those coal plants are due to come off in the next few years and we would not want to be building new coal-fired power stations now when there is the lower-carbon alternative of gas and the whole prospect of a clean low-carbon future.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Recent analysis shows that UK power could be almost 90% renewable by 2030, while electrifying 25% of all heating demand and putting around 12.7 million electric cars on the road, but that would require cutting demand for space heating by over 50%. That means much smaller bills, too. The Secretary of State has clearly been spending a lot of time with the Chancellor recently; can she tell us whether energy efficiency will be a Treasury infrastructure priority in the future?
Amber Rudd
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I am aware of the absolute importance of getting heat right and of the fact that we need new policies in order to meet our targets and that heat is an important part of trying to reduce fuel poverty. I have proposals, and she is absolutely right that some of them are with the Chancellor. I hope to come back and make announcements in due course.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Is the Energy Secretary proud of the fact that at the beginning of December the last deep mine pit in Britain will close, under this Tory Government? Does she really believe that it makes a lot of sense to import 40 million tonnes of coal a year from countries we do not even trust, while at the same time getting rid of thousands of miners’ jobs and those of other people in the area? It is a scandal.
Amber Rudd
I agree in part with the hon. Gentleman, in that I do not think it is right for us to be importing coal from abroad. I do not think it is right for coal to have a long-term future in this country, which is why I was pleased to announce yesterday that we have put a final date on coal sourced for electricity of 2025.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I am intrigued by the answer the Minister has just given on heat policy, because it is very hard to see how we could meet our heat renewables target without substantial increases in Government spending, yet surely we expect there to be reductions in the comprehensive spending review next week. Will the Minister promise that that target will be sacrosanct, and that any reduction in funding will perhaps be met with a commensurate increase in regulation in order to make sure that we meet our 2020 targets?
Amber Rudd
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He is right that regulation is another way to approach the issue; basically, we can do so through either some form of subsidy or some form of regulation. I apologise to him, because I am going to wait and see how the cards fall before fully answering that question.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I am grateful, Mr Speaker.
The Minister said in earlier answers that she wants the renewable energy industry to be sustainable financially and commercially successful, but at the same time the Government have taken the subsidies away at a rate that has damaged the industry, and they have not applied that policy to nuclear. Surely she can see the damage being done and the inconsistency in the Government’s approach.
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman will realise that there is a balance to be struck. We have seen enormous bill payer-led subsidies for onshore wind, solar and other clean carbon technologies, and there is a balance to be struck: the bill payer cannot be expected to foot the bill for an unlimited period. On nuclear, private investment is going into Hinkley C. The taxpayer will not be paying anything until that produces, and the cost per megawatt hour generated of electricity will be very competitive with present clean carbon costs.
Business of the House
(9 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)
The business for next week is as follows:
Monday 23 November—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill.
I also expect there to be a statement on the national security strategy and the strategic defence and security review.
Tuesday 24 November—Opposition day (11th allotted day). There will be a debate on Trident, followed by a debate on HMRC office closures. Both debates will arise on a motion in the name of the Scottish National party, followed by a motion to approve a European document relating to restrictive measures against Iran.
Wednesday 25 November—Second Reading of the Childcare Bill [Lords], and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his joint autumn statement and spending review.
Thursday 26 November—General debate on the final report of the Airports Commission. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 27 November—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 30 November will include:
Monday 30 November—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
Tuesday 1 December—Remaining stages of the Immigration Bill, followed by a debate on a motion relating to the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill.
Wednesday 2 December—Opposition day (12th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 3 December—Second Reading of the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [Lords].
Friday 4 December—Private Members’ Bills.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 26 November and 30 November will be:
Thursday 26 November—General debate on the north-east devolution deal.
Monday 30 November—Debate on an e-petition relating to a tax on sugary drinks.
Chris Bryant
Last night I was in Colchester, where Nick Alexander, the 36-year-old man who was killed while he was at work selling rock merchandise in the Bataclan concert hall, went to school and where he ran a popular club night. I know that all our hearts go out to his family and friends, as they do to so many in Paris, in Baghdad and in Beirut. Of course we remember the valour of the emergency services and of the members of the public who have become unintended heroes at these moments, but should we not also pay tribute to the journalists, who have often had to stare the brutal truth of murderous radicalism in the eye and bring it to our attention? As Emile Zola said:
“It is not I who am strong; it is reason, it is truth.”
I am sure that the whole House will also want to send its heartfelt sympathy to the families of the two people killed in the explosion at the Celsa Steel factory in Cardiff yesterday.
May I ask the Leader of the House why he has still not given us any dates for next year’s recesses? It would be particularly useful for all hon. Members to be able to start making plans for next year, and I can see no reason why we should be halfway through November before the Leader of the House provides us with that information.
The Leader of the House has provided us with a single day for all the remaining stages of the Immigration Bill, on 1 December, but the Government promised that they would publish the review by Stephen Shaw of the welfare of detainees in immigration removal centres before the Bill completed its passage. It must surely be right that we in this House consider Mr Shaw’s findings before signing the Bill off. Will the Leader of the House guarantee that the report will be published in plenty of time before 1 December?
Will the Leader of the House also allow time for a three-day debate on the autumn statement? I have asked this question before, and he will probably say no, but I am going to try again. Parliamentary scrutiny of Government spending is particularly shoddy. It is extremely cursory at the best of times. Billions of pounds are pushed through on the nod and amendments are allowed only if they are tabled by a Minister. The Government are now preparing the most aggressive assault on public services in this country since the second world war, yet the Leader of the House seems to think that a mere two-hour question-and-answer session will provide plenty of scrutiny for some of the most far-reaching measures our constituents will face during this Parliament.
The Government have already tried to be too clever by half, by pushing the tax credits cuts through in secondary legislation, so we will be going over the Chancellor’s plans with a fine-toothed comb, not least because we have listened to the Prime Minister very closely this week and he keeps saying that the counter-terrorism budget will be protected. We are delighted by that, but even the Prime Minister has been lobbying the Thames Valley police force against local cuts to front-line services, and Robert Quick, the former head of counter-terrorism at the Metropolitan police, has said that planned cuts to the wider police budget
“will make Britain more vulnerable to terrorism.”
It is the first duty of Government to protect the people, so surely that single sentence should make the Government think twice.
In South Wales alone, we have lost 284 full-time police officers, and further cuts will lead to another 300 being lost. I am sure that every Member in the House could produce similar figures for their own local police force. At a time when the Secretary of State for Wales has pointed to the dangers of radicalisation there, and when Cardiff and Swansea regularly host major sporting events, would it not be a real dereliction of duty yet again to cut police budgets by more than the 5% that police forces have already agreed?
We also want to look at the Government’s travel costs when we are looking at expenditure, in the light of the news today that they are planning to go ahead with “call me Dave airways”. I mention that because when the Leader of the House was shadow Transport Secretary, he told the BBC, responding to the idea that a special jet should be set aside for the Prime Minister, then Mr Blair, that this was
“the wrong moment to be splashing out taxpayers’ money on funding the government to travel in style”.
What on earth has changed? Is it just that the Leader of the House has changed his job, and now that he has a ministerial car he has got used to it and wants everybody else to travel in style? Is it that, suddenly, there is lots more cash to be splashed around in government? Or is it that he has become something of a Liberal Democrat? We all know what the Lib Dems did in the last Government: they voted things through in Parliament and then went back to their constituencies and campaigned against them. That is exactly what he seems to do now. We never thought that he was a Liberal Democrat, but perhaps there always was one inside him.
May we also have a debate on Foreign Office funding for bilateral groups? The Franco-British Council was formed 43 years ago, but this August the Minister for Europe wrote to its secretary-general, Ann Kenrick, telling her that its grant will be cut from £100,000 a year by more than 80%. The council’s most recent seminar was organised by a Muslim school teacher, Samia Essabaa, who was in the Stade de France with pupils last Friday. It hopes that its next seminar will be on “Tackling Islamic radicalisation”. Surely this kind of work is worth the £100,000 a year that the council has been receiving and is not due for a cut—it is certainly worth more than a special jet for the Prime Minister.
On Syria, we in the Labour party stand ready to listen, because everyone wants an end to the civil war, the defeat of ISIL, the end of the Assad regime and the safe return of the refugees. The Prime Minister said that he will respond to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the next few days. When does the Leader of the House expect this to be? Will he ensure that the House has time to digest that reply before any motion is put to it? May I also urge him to make provision for a two-day debate when it comes to any formal Government proposal? When the House was summoned back on the 28 August 2013, we had a seven-and-a-half-hour debate. That was exceptional because the day did not start with questions, yet even so there was a five-minute limit on speeches, which was reduced to three minutes after 8 pm. Surely, when we are debating such matters it is vital that hon. Members can make proper contributions, and we should have a two-day debate.
On Friday, Mr Speaker, as you know, the UK national Youth Parliament sat in this Chamber under your chairmanship. Last year’s Youth Parliament chose mental health as its campaign for the year, on the back of which the Youth Select Committee, helped by the House of Commons staff, published its report this week entitled “Young People’s Mental Health”. It is an excellent report, which argues that mental health is as important as physical health and says that more than half of all mental ill health starts before the age of 14. It also refers to the stigma of mental ill health as the greatest battle of all. Today is international men’s day, and it is a sad fact that suicide is still the biggest killer of men between the ages of 20 and 49 in England and Wales. Young gay men are six times more likely than their straight counterparts to take their own lives. Is it not incumbent on all of us to tackle the root causes of mental ill health, to protect the vulnerable and to end the stigma which is all too often attached to it?
Chris Grayling
I start by echoing the shadow Leader of the House’s words about the events in Paris and the tragic death of Nick Alexander. We should also extend our good wishes to those who have been wounded and traumatised, both British nationals and French. We wish a speedy recovery to all those who are still in hospital in Paris.
As a former journalist and somebody who has worked alongside some of the most heroic journalists of the past generation, I echo the shadow Leader of the House’s words about journalists, too. They go into some of the most dangerous situations in the world, and some pay with their lives. We always owe them a debt of gratitude for the information they provide and the light they shine on some of the most barbaric practices in the world.
Although we do not, and indeed should not, talk about the security of this House, I would like to say to Members that, in the wake of the Paris attacks, our security officials, the House of Commons Commission and all those involved in running this place are well aware of the challenges that we face, and always seek to take appropriate measures. I hope that hon. Members, and the staff who work here, are always reassured that those officials are doing everything they can on their behalf. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the armed police and to all the security staff who provide protection for this heart of our democracy.
I echo the words and condolences of the shadow Leader of the House following the tragic explosion in Cardiff. Our good wishes and sincere sympathies go out to the families of those involved.
The shadow Leader of the House has always been keen to focus on anniversaries. Will he, and the Scottish National party, join me in celebrating the 21st anniversary of another great Conservative social reform? He has talked about it recently, as has the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). It is the 21st birthday of the national lottery, which has provided important support in the constituencies of the shadow Leader of the House, SNP Members and others. It makes a real difference to local communities, and I praise all of those who, over those 21 years, have been involved in developing the national lottery and supporting local projects, and securing lottery funding for important local causes.
On the recess dates, all I can say to the shadow Leader of the House is that, of course, we will provide those dates as soon as possible, but he will understand that it is incumbent on any Government—indeed on all Members of this House—to put securing the important business of this nation ahead of time off in our constituencies and on holidays. We will ensure that we can deliver the changes that this country needs, and then we will seek to deliver the dates of the recesses as soon as we practically can.
On the report on immigration removal centres, I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman’s concerns are drawn to the attention of the Home Secretary ahead of the Immigration Bill.
The hon. Gentleman asked for a three-day debate on the autumn statement. Let me remind him that he has an Opposition day coming up, and I have just announced further time for the Backbench Business Committee. There is no shortage of time available for Opposition parties and for Members of this House to secure debates on topics of concern. We have given more time control to Members of this House outside the Government than any previous Government. It is of course open to the hon. Gentleman to debate any subject that he wishes.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the challenges of the spending review. He really should remember why we have to take those decisions. We are still sorting out the problems that we inherited from the years of Labour Government under Gordon Brown. The Opposition always conveniently forget that. We on the Government Benches might treat them more seriously if they had a sign at all of having an economic policy of their own. Frankly, I am completely confused about where they stand now. Is it the party leadership that controls economic policy, or is it the shadow Chancellor or those on the Back Benches? The messages that we get are so mixed that none of us has any idea at all.
The shadow Leader of the House talked about extra money for security, and I am grateful to members of the Labour party for giving their support to the additional funding that we have said we will provide for our security services. That is enormously important. He will have to wait for the details of the spending review. As regards policing, I simply remind him that we have had to make some difficult decisions about police funding over the past few years. Police forces up and down the country have responded admirably to that, and have delivered quality policing at a lower price. Crime has fallen, and is continuing to fall.
The shadow Leader of the House talked about today’s announcement on Government transport. If we look at what was proposed back in the years of a Labour Government, we will find that they were going to spend £100 million on two brand-new aircraft. Even then, that would have been a travesty and a complete waste of public money. We are spending a small fraction of that, upgrading an existing aircraft to save money for the taxpayer. That is the difference between our two parties. They spend, spend, spend and we deliver value for the taxpayer.
The Prime Minister said yesterday that he will look at Foreign Office funding for bilateral groups, and I am sure that he will respond on that in due course. On Syria, he has promised to respond fully to the Foreign Affairs Committee, and he will do so in the next few days. It is a sign of how seriously he takes this matter that he is making a personal response to the Syrian situation. Of course, once that response is there and it has been considered by the House, we can decide how to take matters forward, but the hon. Gentleman will have to wait for that response.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend knows, Plymouth will be the centre of attention for the Mayflower celebrations in 2020. I remind him that this was when the British went to found the American colonies. I recently met my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. May we have a debate on those important celebrations and how they can boost tourism to the UK, and in particular to Plymouth and the south-west?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend continues to be an admirable champion not only for the city of Plymouth, but for its heritage. He has done more than any representative of that city in recent years to promote it as an historic centre and I commend him for that. We have Culture, Media and Sport questions next week and I am sure he will use the opportunity to raise this again. I send all my good wishes to those in Plymouth who are preparing for this important anniversary, and I wish my hon. Friend well for his continued support for the heritage of the constituency and the city he represents.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week. I associate myself with the remarks made and the condolences offered following the events in Paris last week and the events in Cardiff. I associate the Scottish National party with the comments about the staff of the House who work so hard to ensure that we continue to be safe and who do so in such a friendly, pleasant and accommodating way. Everyone in the House should recognise those attributes of the people who keep us safe every day.
I noticed a few ripples of excitement and anticipation ahead of the Scottish National party’s debates next week. The Trident debate offers an opportunity for all parties in the House to clarify their position in advance of the critical decision that is going to be taken about Trident main gate. We know the Conservative position. The Conservatives love their nukes and they are quite happy to spend £167 billion on obscene weapons of mass destruction—a cold war weapon that cannot even start to defend us from the range of threats that we face. We know the Scottish National party position and our historic opposition to that, and we will suggest a number of ways in which £167 billion might be more usefully spent on social projects. Who knows, we might even find out what the Labour party thinks about Trident, although I am not holding out any great expectation of that. If I am right, I think Labour is both for and against, uncertain and unsure about Trident. When it comes to the vote next week, I think Labour Members might be for, against, maybe for and maybe for abstention. That roughly categorises the Labour position on Trident and we look forward to hearing from Labour Members next week.
When are we going to have the debate on Syria that is due? Yesterday, when I closed my eyes, I could swear that I heard the voice and the words of Tony Blair coming from the Prime Minister, without a care about UN resolutions—the position that the former Prime Minister took—and not caring less about public opinion. We saw how that worked out for the former Prime Minister. If we are going down the Blairite route towards further military action without UN authorisation, may we have some sort of statement and clarity from the Government?
I am pleased that we have a debate on Thursday next week on the Airports Commission. It might be an opportune time to bring up the little issue of the Prime Minister’s plans for his own personal air travel—Air Force One, brought to you in association with Bullingdon airways and etonJet. It is an incredible vanity project when, the day before, the Chancellor will be standing at the Dispatch Box with his latest round of misery for those who are the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in our communities.
I know that the Leader of the House likes his anniversaries, as does the shadow Leader of the House. Yes, we welcome the 21 years of the national lottery. It is just a pity that the Government are cutting the Big Lottery Fund by some 40%, as was announced this week. Here is another anniversary for them: it is one year since Nicola Sturgeon took over the helm of the Scottish National party, and what a year it has been. We have 56 out of the 59 MPs from Scotland. We are still north of 50% in opinion polls on the Holyrood elections next year, and we have personal satisfaction ratings in Scotland way beyond anything that has been seen by either of the main parties down here. So I am pretty certain the Leader of the House would like to pay tribute to the success of the First Minister and all that she has achieved in the past year.
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman had more acclaim from his Back Benchers than the Leader of the Opposition had yesterday from his Back Benchers. On Trident, I do not understand either where Labour stands. It is utterly confusing. Indeed, we had the extraordinary position on yesterday’s “Daily Politics” show where the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), when asked if he had confidence in his party leader, said, “I have confidence in Hilary Benn.” That speaks volumes. I am not surprised: I am completely confused about what Labour stands for. The shadow Defence Secretary, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), is saying that she supports Trident, but Labour appointed somebody who opposes Trident to co-chair its defence review with her. I therefore understand the hon. Gentleman’s confusion. Perhaps next week we will discover a little more about what Labour’s policy is.
I gently chide the hon. Gentleman about the contradictions in the debate subjects he has chosen for next week. For half the day, he will argue that we should pull a really vital national resource out of Scotland, costing thousands of jobs and leaving an important part of Scotland a wasteland, yet for the other half he will complain about our making necessary reductions in HMRC and worrying about that costing jobs in Scotland. I do not quite understand how he squares those two things. I think that our defence industry plays a really important part not only in the Scottish economy but in defending our nation. The SNP’s position is utterly contradictory.
The hon. Gentleman asked about Syria. I simply say that he is going to have to wait for the Prime Minister’s response. The Prime Minister has said that he will respond personally to the Foreign Affairs Committee. This is the first time he has made a personal response of this kind, and the House needs to wait to see that. We will address the issues once the House has had a chance to digest the report.
The hon. Gentleman made mention of the plane. The difference between us—not just between us and Labour but between us and the SNP—is that when we make a change of this kind it is designed to save money. This will reduce Government travel costs, and that is surely the right thing to do. The Scotsman reported last year that when Nicola Sturgeon was in charge of transport she never travelled by rail but always by chauffeur-driven car. I travelled to work this morning by train, and it was late, which was frustrating. I get the train each day, and perhaps the First Minister should have done the same.
The hon. Gentleman talks about Nicola Sturgeon’s first anniversary and the achievements of the SNP over the past 12 months. We all recognise the successes it has had, but I think he slightly underplays his own contribution. It is a team effort, so he should give himself a bit of a pat on the back and not just Nicola Sturgeon.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
St Francis special school in Fareham was broken into three times over the half term and vandalised again last weekend, causing over £15,000 of damage and forcing it to close. Will my right hon. Friend join me in appealing to people with more information to come forward to Fareham police—they will be treated anonymously—and in applauding the resilience of the headmaster, Steve Hollinghurst, and the many local residents who raised over £9,000 to help the school open this week?
Chris Grayling
This was a shocking incident. It is always absolutely dreadful when a community facility or a school is a target of crime, and it is inexcusable. Yet it is also a sign of the strength not only of the community that my hon. Friend represents but, when these things happen around the country, of other communities elsewhere, that people rally round and help fix the problem. We condemn unreservedly those who carry out such callous acts, but at the same time it is a tribute to the strength of community in this country that people respond in the way they do. I pay tribute to her also for her part in that.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Tomorrow is the second anniversary of Hull being granted UK city of culture status for 2017. The science museum receives £20 million-worth of taxpayers’ money, but it has told Hull that it is not possible to move the Gypsy Moth airplane that Hull’s Amy Johnson flew to Australia in 1930—the first woman to do so—to Hull for the Amy Johnson festival in 2016, leading into the 2017 celebrations. May we have a debate on the obligations on national arts organisations and museums to work with Hull leading up to city of culture 2017, and to ensure that Hull’s history is actually displayed in Hull?
Chris Grayling
First, let me congratulate the city of Hull on its achievements. I had some sight of the city of culture year in Liverpool a few years ago, and thought that city did a fantastic job. I also saw the impetus that it can create within a city. I am sure that if Hull goes through the same process of preparation—and excitement, frankly—about the city of culture year, it will be a great boost to the city.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will be here next week. The hon. Lady will want to raise the issue again, so I will make sure that he is made aware of her comments today. She is absolutely right to say that I would hope and expect our great national museums and other institutions to play their part in supporting our regions as well as being centres of national excellence.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Tomorrow, the Lancet commission on liver disease will produce a report highlighting the enormous impact and financial cost of that disease in this country. May we have a debate or a statement from a Minister from the Department of Health on what the Government propose to do to deal with this critical problem?
Chris Grayling
I pay tribute to all those involved in producing the report, which the Department of Health intends to take seriously and to study carefully. Given that there is widespread concern across the House about the issue, perhaps my hon. Friend could secure a debate either through the Backbench Business Committee or in Westminster Hall, in order to get a Health Minister to debate the issues closely.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for the business statement. There will be a Backbench Business Committee debate on the Airports Commission next Thursday. I also thank him for giving notice of the business on 30 November, which has been allocated to the Backbench Business Committee. He can be assured that the Committee has an ample supply of applications and business to fill the time.
I thank the Leader of the House for reminding us of the 21st anniversary of the national lottery. My constituency of Gateshead has benefited greatly from the national lottery, through funding for the arts and other areas. It has given £100 million to projects such as the Sage Gateshead, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Gateshead millennium bridge, which have transformed the riverscape on the Gateshead side of the Tyne river.
I disagree with the Leader of the House about one thing, though. With or without Trident, I do not think that the area around Faslane could ever be described as being a wasteland. It is beautiful countryside.
Chris Grayling
There was never any doubt about the beauty of the countryside in western Scotland or, indeed, in Scotland as a whole. It is a fantastic part of this country where we would all wish to spend time. However, if such an important facility were lost to western Scotland, the impact on the local economy of emptying the site, which is an important part of that local economy, and letting it go to waste would be a tragedy. That is why I disagree with the Scottish nationalists about the economic impact on Scotland, quite apart from the defence impact on the nation as a whole. I am afraid that is one area where we will not be with the SNP.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments on the national lottery. We should also pay tribute to Sir John Major, whose idea it was and who made it a reality. Twenty-one years later, I think that is an achievement to be celebrated.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
May we please have a debate about the northern powerhouse? A ComRes survey reported this week that 44% of people in the north of England had never heard of it and that a further 20% had heard of it but knew nothing about it, so a debate would provide an opportunity at least to increase awareness.
Chris Grayling
That is a very good idea. Perhaps we could suggest it to the Backbench Business Committee. The national lottery is a great Conservative achievement from 21 years ago, and perhaps we could use a debate to celebrate a great Conservative achievement today. Finally we have a Government who are really determined to drive up economic activity in the north, compared with the last Labour Government, under whom the proportion of manufacturing industry in our economy fell by half and the north bore a disproportionate brunt of it.
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
In this age of austerity, I am sure the Leader of the House is as astonished as I am that my local authority, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which is run by a City Independents and Conservative coalition, has reportedly just spent £500,000 on getting rid of its chief executive. May we have, as a matter of urgency, a debate in Government time on golden parachutes in the public sector?
Chris Grayling
Every local council is accountable to its local electors for the decisions it takes. None of us would ever wish to see local authorities spending money unnecessarily, but, of course, I have no idea about the nature of the contract and the circumstances behind that pay-off, so it would be wrong of me to comment on it.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
On Monday, my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) said that he would like the Procedure Committee to make recommendations to enable this House to choose its own representatives to international organisations. Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that the Government will not stand in the way of such a process? My hon. Friend asked that question on Monday, but did not receive a reply.
Chris Grayling
I have great respect for the Chair of the Procedure Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), and I would not dare to try to tell him what or what not to study. I have no doubt at all that if he chooses to look at this issue, he will do so. It is certainly not for me to intervene to tell him what he should or should not do.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May I, too, put on the record my condolences to the victims of the explosion at the Celsa steelworks yesterday, in the neighbouring constituency to mine in Cardiff?
On China, may we have a debate about continuing Chinese abuses of human rights, particularly the case of Gui Haiming, who has disappeared along with three other employees of publishers Sage Communications in Hong Kong, which publishes books critical of the Chinese communist elite? Should not we in this country be doing more to raise such issues of human rights abuses by the Chinese regime, particularly when we are looking to develop our relationship with that country?
Chris Grayling
One of the things we were able to do during the recent visit was to raise concerns about human rights with the Chinese leadership. It remains the Government’s view that we are more likely to be able to influence change by engagement than by disengagement with China. The Foreign Secretary will be in the Chamber for Foreign Office questions on Tuesday, and the hon. Gentleman will no doubt use that opportunity to raise the issue again. The Government will always raise concerns about human rights with other nations where it is necessary and appropriate to do so.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Some time ago, Harrow council decided to outsource the designation of disabled parking badges. The result has been that an increasing number of aged, infirm and extremely vulnerable individuals have had their applications for renewing their blue badges rejected with no recourse to an appeal. May we have a debate in Government time on the implementation of disabled parking so that we can explore its operation right across this country? There is nothing more infuriating than to see someone who is clearly not disabled park in a disabled bay, while at the same time disabled people cannot park and access shops or other facilities.
Chris Grayling
Another aspect of what my hon. Friend is talking about is that when we go into car parks, we very often see vast numbers of empty disabled spaces, while, as we all know, constituents who need blue badges are struggling to get them. This is really an area in which local authorities should apply common sense. There is no point in having large numbers of empty disabled spaces without people who could use them being able to access them. He is absolutely right, and he may wish to bring this issue before the House in the form of an Adjournment debate. I hope that simply raising it today will send a message to local authorities that we want them to be smart about this issue.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister announced an extra £2 billion of funding for special forces. We only have 450 in our special forces. Apparently, the money is to be used to buy equipment—protection equipment, vehicles, including helicopters, and night fighting equipment. May we have a debate on whether this is new money or money diverted from the wider defence budget, and on whether or not it is time—given that the Prime Minister now has his own private army, by the sound of it—to widen and make more open parliamentary oversight of special forces?
Chris Grayling
I must say that I think the Prime Minister’s “private army” is a pretty disparaging way to describe some of the most heroic people in our armed forces. We are providing the money necessary to enable an elite and brave group of people to defend this country against the appalling activities we have seen in France in recent days. I am proud that this is a Government who do the right thing in such areas. The hon. Lady will have plenty of time to question the Chancellor about his spending plans next week, but we will always do the right thing to try to protect our citizens.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Employees at Fairline in my constituency are understandably very worried by last week’s announcement of job losses. Unfortunately, Fairline will not engage with me, the employees or the unions. May we have a debate on the responsibilities and obligations on companies such as Fairline to engage with employees and the communities affected, and to do what they can to ensure we can get the right support to the right people at the right time?
Chris Grayling
I always think that employers make a big mistake when they act as my hon. Friend suggests they have in his constituency. The fact that he has raised this issue today will be noticed outside. It does reputational damage to the companies concerned. I would encourage any employer to do the right thing by their employees and the communities in which they operate, even when they have to take difficult decisions. If they do not, they will pay the price in the end.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Age Sector Platform and the pensioners’ parliament in Northern Ireland have passed various resolutions over the past few years, asking for the warm home discount scheme to be extended to Northern Ireland. So far, that has not happened. It would be an important measure in mitigating fuel poverty. Is it possible to have a debate on that proposal, which would impact on a large number of older people throughout Northern Ireland?
Chris Grayling
Coincidentally, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is sitting next to me in the Chamber and will have heard the hon. Lady’s comments. I am sure she will take them away and digest them.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
May we have a debate on the national health service? I am proud to support a Government that are investing an additional £10 billion in the service in this Parliament, that are giving mental health parity with physical health and that introduced the cancer drugs fund. A debate would help us to expose the reality of Labour’s rhetoric. Of course, in Wales, where it is in control, it is cutting the NHS.
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The health service faces enormous challenges, such as the ageing population and keeping up with new solutions to health problems. That is why it is right and proper that we have committed to provide the £8 billion that Simon Stevens asked for over the course of this Parliament to help him deliver his plans for change in the health service and why it is right that we have committed to deliver more mental health funding. My hon. Friend is right that the contrast between health services in England and in Wales—one run by the Conservatives and one by Labour—is there for all to see. I hope that everyone in this country learns that lesson.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
The Leader of the House may be aware that the Trussell Trust, which runs 425 food banks in this country, put out its mid-year statistics yesterday for April to September 2015. North Enfield food bank gave 2,465 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis in Enfield, 990 of which were given to children. May we have an early debate in this House on the Government policies that are widening the gap significantly between rich and poor, and driving so many children into abject poverty?
Chris Grayling
First, let me pay tribute to all the volunteers who work in food banks around the country. Food banks are not unique to the United Kingdom and are used more extensively in countries such as Germany. They do good work in helping people to overcome crises in their lives. However, I say to the right hon. Lady that it is simply not the case that the gap between rich and poor is widening. Inequality is falling, unemployment is falling sharply and the number of children growing up in workless households has fallen sharply. This country is moving in the right direction, not the wrong one.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
We do not need a debate on what is the ugliest building in Britain because it is the bus station in the centre of Preston. It would therefore be helpful to have a debate on why Labour-controlled Lancashire County Council has spent £23 million restoring that concrete monstrosity, while proposing to shut libraries and museums in my Rossendale constituency.
Chris Grayling
I have visited the bus station in Preston and I know exactly what my hon. Friend means, although I suspect that such a competition would attract entries from around the House. When a local authority gets it wrong, as he suggests the Labour council in Lancashire has done, it will pay a price electorally. Our colleagues in Lancashire will highlight the failings of that authority and explain why it needs to change.
Mr Speaker
The Leader of the House clearly has a stimulating existence if he spends time visiting bus stations. Perhaps we should hear more about these matters.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
May I associate myself with the comments of right hon. and hon. Members about the tragic accident at Celsa in Cardiff yesterday? Last week, two teenagers received custodial sentences from a Cardiff youth court following an incident with a BB gun, despite the sale of such imitation weapons to under-18s being illegal. May we have a debate on the current law governing the possession and sale of imitation weapons, because it is clearly not working?
Chris Grayling
This is a serious issue because, as the hon. Lady knows, weapons that have been deactivated can be reactivated, and a weapon that has been sold as unusable can become usable. I am sure that the Home Secretary is taking that broader issue seriously, and I will ensure that the specific point raised is drawn to her attention. In the meantime, I hope that the police will seek to take action against the person who sold that weapon.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
Next week’s business includes the Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill—I see that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is in the Chamber. Is the Leader of the House concerned that such legislation is coming through this House rather than the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly?
Chris Grayling
Let me take advantage of that question to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Northern Ireland Secretary who has worked tirelessly in recent weeks to try to find a solution to a complex and difficult problem. The Bill before the House on Monday is an outcome of those talks, and it has the support of all parties in Northern Ireland. I understand that a legislative consent motion for it passed through the Assembly yesterday, and I hope that Members across the House, and in the other place, will come together next week to enact the Bill speedily. When politics in Northern Ireland reaches a resolution and agreement, it is beholden on us all to ensure that we put that agreement in place as quickly as we can.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Last Thursday, Boulby Potash announced that it would make 700 of its 1,000 miners redundant by 2018, including 350 redundancies with immediate effect. That comes off the back of announcements by Caparo, SSI, Johnson Matthey, and other redundancies that amass to about 5,000 private and public sector jobs that, in the past two months, have either gone or will soon go. To deal properly with that situation, may we have a debate or statement on the Government’s review of carbon capture and storage programmes? Teesside is an excellent candidate for CCS, and we could create a new renaissance in industrial activity in the area and attract private investment directly to the Tees valley.
Chris Grayling
Any large-scale job loss in this country—indeed, any job loss—is unwelcome, and the Government will work with all those in Teesside and other areas who have been affected by recent developments. We will do everything possible to ease the immediate impact of those job losses, and to secure appropriate investment to replace jobs that are lost. That will always be our priority. The Prime Minister said yesterday that CCS is being considered by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. We have just had questions to DECC, and if the hon. Gentleman did not have the opportunity to raise that issue with the Secretary of State, I will ensure that she is made aware of his concerns. She will no doubt bring forward further information about her plans in due course.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
May we have an urgent debate or statement on the junior doctors dispute, given that 98% of junior doctors who voted have voted overwhelmingly for a full strike? The turnout was 76%, which is satisfactory by anyone’s standards. Is the Health Secretary’s position tenable, given that he has clearly lost the confidence of our junior doctors?
Chris Grayling
I spoke to the Department of Health this morning and I reassure the hon. Lady that the Health Secretary will soon make a statement in the House. The House must be informed about what is happening, and more information will soon be provided.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
Will consideration be given to a debate on abated military pensions for those who left the armed forces before 1975? Many constituents have contacted me about that issue, and it affects more than 40,000 veterans across the UK.
Chris Grayling
By happy coincidence, questions to the Ministry of Defence take place next Monday. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman raises that issue directly with the Secretary of State, and I will ensure that he is made aware that the matter is likely to be raised.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
May I associate myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friends about the industrial accident in Cardiff? On the Friday before last, my private Member’s Bill—the Off-patent Drugs Bill—was talked out by a Minister at the Dispatch Box, despite having support from expert opinion, public opinion, and across the House. Early this week a Minister from the Department of Health said that the Government share the ambitions of my Bill, so will the Leader of the House find Government time to debate the important issue of off-patent drugs, and also to consider the way in which private Member’s Bills are handled?
Chris Grayling
This issue has been debated and the Government’s position was that legislation was not necessary. We share some of the hon. Gentleman’s aspirations. Health Ministers will continue to look at the issues he raised in that debate. He will no doubt find other opportunities to pursue them, if he feels they are not being addressed.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ Welsh language customer service unit is currently located in Porthmadog, a town in Gwynedd where the majority of the population is Welsh speaking. It is therefore a very convenient place for the Welsh-speaking staff and the majority of people who are likely to use HMRC services through the medium of Welsh. The service is to be moved from Porthmadog to Cardiff, which is four hours away on a good day in a car. May we have a debate on the impact of the proposed HMRC changes on Welsh-speaking jobs and services, and jobs as a whole, throughout Wales?
Chris Grayling
By happy coincidence, there is such a debate next Tuesday, as part of the Scottish National party Opposition day. The Government are well aware of the sensitivities in ensuring that we provide services for Welsh speakers. There is a need to ensure that HMRC operates in as an efficient way as possible. The hon. Lady would want us to deliver value for money for the taxpayers she represents but, as the restructuring takes place, HMRC will ensure it can continue to provide an appropriate Welsh language service for those in Wales who need it.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
This House was united in reaction to the dreadful events in Paris last week and in making clear that they had nothing to do with Muslim communities, such as the one that I represent. Does the Leader of the House therefore share my disgust at the appalling cartoon published in a national newspaper this week, which portrayed Muslim refugees as rats and featured crude racist stereotypes reminiscent of anti-Semitic bigotry that once faced Jewish refugees? Will he provide an opportunity for the House to make it clear that this kind of hatred should have no place in our national conversation?
Chris Grayling
I did not see the cartoon the hon. Lady mentions, but let me be absolutely clear that the events that took place in Paris were not representative of the Muslim community, either in France or anywhere else in the world. The vast, vast, vast majority of Muslim people are decent, God-fearing, law-abiding people who work hard for their families and do the right thing in their communities. None of us should ever have anything to do with a narrative that suggests otherwise. There is a tiny minority of people who come from Muslim countries who, in my view, besmirch the Muslim faith through an ideology that is among the most unpleasant we have ever experienced in the history of mankind. It should be resisted at all costs.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
For nearly two years, my constituent William Irving has been detained in Chennai, where he is undergoing a second trial for piracy despite the charge having previously been dropped. I wrote to the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), on 22 October to request a meeting, and to the Foreign Secretary on 2 November, in relation to this case. Neither has yet responded, so may we have a statement in the House on whether the Government will commit to providing every assistance to Billy and his shipmates, and to ensuring a speedy turnaround of their passport applications to allow them to return home to their families as quickly as possible at the conclusion of their trial?
Chris Grayling
I know the hon. Lady is particularly concerned about this case. She has raised it with me before. The Foreign Secretary and the Minister are both here early next week for questions. I will make sure they are aware of her concern that she has not received a response. If they have not been able to respond by then, I hope she will be able to get a response from them then.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
There is an epidemic of addiction to prescription drugs in my constituency and it has been brought to my attention that there is a black market in GP prescriptions. If that is happening in Wansbeck, it will be happening across the country in different constituencies. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate to discuss this deeply disturbing development?
Chris Grayling
I was not aware of that problem, but I absolutely take on board the hon. Gentleman’s point. It would be an extremely serious matter, not only for the people addicted in his community, but for the financing of the local health service, and we should not tolerate it for one moment. I will make the Health Secretary aware of his concerns, and if he was to write to him with more detail, I would ask the Health Secretary to look out for the letter and give it proper and immediate attention.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
May we have a debate about the rights of football supporters in the UK? It would allow us to pay tribute to Brian Lomax, the founder of Supporters Direct and the modern movement to establish supporters’ trusts at football clubs in the UK, and who sadly passed away at the beginning of the month. He understood that football was more than just a business or entertainment; it is about emotion, loyalty and, most of all, our communities. He will be sorely missed.
Chris Grayling
I think the hon. Gentleman’s words speak volumes. He is absolutely right to pay tribute to Brian Lomax and to remind us of the importance of football in communities up and down the country—not just the professional game, on which supporters’ trusts are focused, but as a grass-roots sport that brings together people from different parts of our society. I pay tribute to Mr Lomax for the work he did during his life, and I send my condolences to his family on his sad death.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
If any of us object to the Leader of the House’s business motion later today, we will lose the right to table amendments in the microwave legislative business next Monday—the same day as an important statement that many hon. Members will want to ask questions on. We are told that this sort of microwave, fast-track procedure is to be used only in emergencies or when there is a compelling exigency. What is the compelling emergency in this situation, other than the overdose of political Febreze to accompany the stepping down of the First Minister and the climb down by Sinn Féin on welfare reform?
Chris Grayling
Given that the Northern Ireland Secretary is about to make a statement, I had better let her give a detailed answer to that question. Suffice it to say that I want to ensure this measure has the smoothest possible passage through the House. I see that more Northern Ireland MPs have now joined us. A huge effort was made by all parties in Northern Ireland, and I pay tribute to all those involved in the talks. It was a real marathon. I said earlier that the Secretary of State did a fantastic job. Given the complexities and challenges in Northern Ireland politics, it is beholden on us here to do everything we can to facilitate the agreement reached, and that is what we will seek to do.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I am shocked that we have not yet heard that the Health Secretary will make a statement to the House. The Leader of the House indicated that he would, but it would not be good enough for him to do that tomorrow, hiding it away on a Friday, when many Members will be back in their constituencies. A statement would give him an opportunity to correct his assertion from the Dispatch Box that patients have to wait more than 14 hours to see a consultant at weekends. That has been disproved. The only people who now believe it are the Government. When are we getting this statement?
Chris Grayling
With respect, the result of the ballot was announced only a few minutes before the sitting. I have secured a commitment from the Department of Health that a Minister will make a statement shortly, and no doubt that will give the hon. Gentleman an opportunity to ask his questions.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Given the Government’s concern about the performance of the unelected Lords, will the Leader of the House make a statement outlining what mechanisms are in place to allow an MP such as me to scrutinise the performance of the newly appointed business tsar, Baroness Mone of Mayfair? Does he agree that her voting for the tax credit cuts in the other place sends out the wrong signal to potential entrepreneurs?
Chris Grayling
I am afraid I do not agree that it was wrong for Conservatives in the other place to vote for the tax credit cuts. We stood on a manifesto commitment to make substantial cuts to welfare, and we are doing that as part of our plan to put this country’s economy on a sound financial base.
Northern Ireland Political Agreement
(9 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the agreement reached this week in the cross-party talks at Stormont, but first I would like to pay tribute to Peter Robinson, who announced this morning that he will soon be standing down as First Minister and leader of the Democratic Unionist party. Peter has been a central figure in Northern Ireland politics for over four decades. He has a long and distinguished record of public service in both this House and the Assembly, and he has championed the interests of Northern Ireland with unparalleled effectiveness, determination and dedication. He was key to the agreement reached this week and he can be rightly proud of his contribution. I am sure the whole House will join me in wishing him a long and happy retirement.
Last December, the Stormont House agreement was reached after 11 weeks of negotiations between the five largest Northern Ireland parties and the UK and Irish Governments. The agreement addressed some of the most difficult challenges facing Northern Ireland, including the finances of the devolved Executive, welfare, flags and parades, the legacy of the past, and reform of the Assembly to make devolution work better. All this was underpinned by a financial package from the UK Government that would give the Executive around £2 billion in extra spending power.
In the Government’s view, the Stormont House agreement was, and remains, a good deal for Northern Ireland. By the summer, however, it was clear that implementation had stalled. There were strong differences of opinion within the Executive over the budget and the implementation of the welfare aspects of the agreement, and these were preventing other elements of the agreement from going ahead. We were facing a deadlock, which, left unresolved, would have made early Assembly elections more and more likely, with an ever-increasing risk that collapse of devolution would follow. After all that has been achieved in Northern Ireland over recent years, a return to direct rule from Westminster would have been a severe setback, and it is an outcome that I have been striving to avoid.
In August, a second issue arose to threaten the stability and survival of devolution. The suspected involvement of members of the Provisional IRA in a murder in Belfast raised the spectre of paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland and its malign and totally unacceptable impact on society. Faced with those circumstances, we concluded that it was necessary to convene a fresh round of cross-party talks with the five main Northern Ireland parties and the Irish Government on matters for which they have responsibility, observing the well-established three-strand approach.
Those talks began on 8 September and have run for 10 weeks. The objectives we set were twofold: first, to secure the implementation of the Stormont House agreement and, secondly, to deal with continued paramilitary activity. I believe that the document published on Tuesday entitled “A Fresh Start: The Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan”, makes real progress towards fulfilling both of those hugely important objectives. Crucially, it tackles the two issues that have posed the greatest threat to the stability and survival of devolution in Northern Ireland.
Let me turn first to the Stormont House agreement. The new agreement will help to give the Executive a stable and sustainable budget, assisted by further financial support of around £500 million from the UK Government. These funds are to help the Executive to tackle issues that are unique to Northern Ireland. They include support for the Executive’s programme of removing so-called peace walls and £160 million to assist the Police Service of Northern Ireland in its crucial work to combat the threat from dissident republican groupings. The package also paves the way for completion of the devolution of corporation tax powers to the Northern Ireland Executive— something that could have a genuinely transformative effect on the Northern Ireland economy and on jobs and prosperity. The measures in the Stormont House agreement designed to address issues around flags and parades will now go ahead, and there is agreement on reforms to the Executive and Assembly to make devolution work better, including on the size of the Assembly, the number of Government Departments, use of the petition of concern and provision for an official opposition.
Secondly, the agreement takes Northern Ireland’s leaders further than ever before on the issue of paramilitary activity. It strongly reaffirms the commitment to upholding the rule of law and makes it absolutely clear that in no circumstances will paramilitary activity ever be tolerated. The agreement places new shared obligations on Executive Ministers to work together towards ridding society of all paramilitary groups and activities, and challenging paramilitarism in all its forms. It commits all participants to a concerted and enhanced effort to combat organised and cross-border crime, which the UK Government will help to fund.
A key element of the Stormont House agreement on which we were unable to agree a way forward was the establishment of new bodies to deal with the legacy of the past. We did establish common ground between the parties on a range of significant questions about how to establish those important new structures, but sadly not enough to enable legislation to go forward as yet. The Government continue to support these provisions because of the pressing need to provide better outcomes for victims and survivors—the people who we must never forget have suffered more than anyone else as a result of the troubles. So it is crucial that we all now reflect on what needs to be done to achieve the wider consensus necessary to get the new legacy bodies set up.
I want to emphasise that, in very large part, the agreement published on Tuesday takes on board a wide range of points made by all five Northern Ireland parties during the 10 weeks of talks just concluded. As the overwhelming majority of issues were in the devolved areas, this agreement has rightly been driven by Northern Ireland’s elected leaders, in particular by the First and Deputy First Ministers. I would like to reiterate my sincere thanks to them and to all the five Northern Ireland parties who worked with determination and commitment in the talks. Thanks also go to the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace) and of course to Ministers Charlie Flanagan and Sean Sherlock from the Irish Government, who all devoted many long hours to this process and made an invaluable contribution to its successful outcome.
Implementation of this week’s agreement is already under way. On Tuesday, the Executive voted to support it; yesterday, the Assembly passed an legislative consent motion on welfare legislation at Westminster; and the Northern Ireland welfare reform Bill will be introduced to Parliament later today. I believe this package as a whole gives us the opportunity for a fresh start for devolution. It is a further stage in delivering the Government’s manifesto commitment to implement the Stormont House agreement, and it is another step towards a brighter, more secure future for everyone in Northern Ireland. I commend this statement to the House.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and her usual courtesy in allowing me early sight of it. I join her in paying tribute to Peter Robinson, who has announced that he is to step down. His contribution to peace and progress in Northern Ireland has been immense. He has taken tough decisions and tried to reach out to all communities. Northern Ireland is a better place in no small part thanks to his immense work. I join the Secretary of State, as I know all Members would, in wishing him well for the future.
I begin by complimenting all those who have contributed to this document, including the UK and the Irish Governments. It is a document that, despite some obvious challenges and indeed omissions, once again offers Northern Ireland a way forward. It is one more stepping stone towards the brighter, better future that the people of Northern Ireland want and deserve.
Does the Secretary of State agree that it is the implementation of the agreement that is crucial and that the people of Northern Ireland do not want to be faced in a year or two with another crisis? This really has to be a fresh start. Is she, like me, confident that the measures contained in the agreement really offer a way forward in a number of areas? In particular, we welcome the commitment to bring an end to paramilitarism. Paramilitary activity has to end, and the proposal for a new strategy to bring this about, overseen by a panel, is critical. Is the Secretary of State, like me and many people I meet in Northern Ireland, worried about these groups and their particular attraction to some young people. Apparent easy money, lack of career opportunities, educational under-achievement and indeed a false belief that membership of such groups can provide status are all aspects that need to be tackled so that many of these young people can grow up in relative peace. Will the Secretary of State use her position to ensure that countering the attraction of these groups for young people is one of the strategic priorities, as I believe it should be?
In relation to the establishment of the joint agency task force, will the Secretary of State say more about how cross-border co-operation will work, what resources there will be for the PSNI, and, crucially, whether she expects the number of prosecutions to increase? I welcome her confirmation that work will be undertaken in respect of flags and parades. Does she agree that that work is both urgent and crucial?
Does the Secretary of State share my disappointment that it has not been possible to reach an agreement on legacy issues and the past? Will she say more about what the issues were, and how she believes they can be resolved? How, for example, will the clash between national security considerations and disclosure be resolved? Victims and survivors must clearly be a key part of any agreed process. I understand that dealing with the past is incredibly difficult, given the competing narratives and contested versions of events, but a comprehensive approach is critical to continuing progress in Northern Ireland.
The problem with the search for truth and justice is that they often seem to be unattainable possibilities, but is it not the case that the people of Northern Ireland and their politicians have arrived at compromises that were apparently impossible, and have built consensus where none seemed likely?
Will the Secretary of State ensure that further efforts are made to deal with the past? What plans has she to meet victims and victims’ groups, and discuss a way forward? Given that no agreement has been reached on the issue, will funds be provided for the PSNI so that it can continue its legacy work?
The House has been asked to legislate on welfare reform. We will not oppose those measures, but a programme for jobs and growth is also needed in Northern Ireland, as it is in the whole of the UK. What measures in the agreement, over and above the devolution of corporation tax, will provide such a programme, while also improving the infrastructure?
As I said at the beginning, I see this agreement as a stepping stone towards a shared future. Of course there are frustrations and disagreements—of course there is disappointment at the inability to reach agreement on legacy issues—but could not the alternative have been a situation in which the devolution settlement itself was at risk with a return to direct rule—both those outcomes are unthinkable?
Whatever people may consider to be the agreement’s imperfections or disappointments, there is another breathing space: there is another opportunity for Northern Ireland to move forward, combat criminality, banish paramilitarism, tackle sectarianism, and establish a Government that is stable financially and politically. That opportunity must be grasped, outstanding issues must be resolved, and a fresh crisis in a year or two must be avoided.
Mrs Villiers
Experience leads me to agree with the hon. Gentleman that implementation is key, and that reaching an agreement is just the start of a broader process. However, I warmly thank him for his support for this agreement and the Stormont House agreement. I also agree with him that a strategy to end paramilitarism in Northern Ireland must include programmes for young people to ensure that they are not drawn into activity of this kind. We had some constructive discussions about that during the talks, and I am sure that it will form part of the strategy foreseen in the agreement.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the task force, the surge in criminal activity, and the cross-border work. That work will be based on structures that already exist, but it will involve renewed vigour and activity, and there will be £25 million of additional funding to support action against paramilitarism. The UK Government are determined to do all that we can to work with the devolved bodies, the Minister of Justice and, of course, the Irish Government and the relevant agencies there. The PSNI and the Garda are working together, which is crucial. They do tremendously effective work now, and I am sure that the existing levels of co-operation will rise still further in the future. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that progress on matters relating to flags and parades is urgently needed. One of the aspects of the agreement that I welcome most is the fact that it allows that progress to be made.
I share the hon. Gentleman’s disappointment that we were unable to reach a conclusion on the legacy issue. However, we did make progress on, for example, the role of the implementation and reconciliation group and its relationship with the other legacy bodies, and on a number of aspects relating to how the Historical Investigations Unit will work and the devolution of responsibility between the HIU and its director. I think that we made significant improvements to how proposed draft clauses might work by clarifying the role of the Department of Justice. We had many discussions on national security. We did not manage to find a solution to that to which everyone could sign up, but I am sure that the shadow Secretary of State will agree it is crucial that we ensure that we do nothing to jeopardise national security.
I agree that an important way forward from now on is to meet victims groups, and I will be doing that soon. I also hope that I will be able to meet the victims commissioner soon to discuss the best way forward because we need to find a way to get these bodies set up.
I welcome the shadow Secretary of State’s indication that he will not be opposing welfare reform. He is right to state that it is crucial that we do all we can to promote jobs and prosperity in Northern Ireland. A crucial way to do that is to ensure that the Executive have sound public finances. There have been many illustrations in recent years of the hugely negative effects Governments face if they cannot make their budgets add up, so getting the Executive’s budget on a sustainable basis and ensuring that it is delivering effective government for Northern Ireland is a crucial way to deliver the prosperity agenda, which is so important for Northern Ireland’s successful future.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on her achievement in bringing the parties to an agreement. I know that she has put an enormous amount of time, effort and indeed patience into the negotiations. In her statement, she referred to the importance of ensuring that young people do not get drawn into paramilitary activity. Does she agree that one way in which we can try to help with that is through improving and increasing integrated education? I understand that some funds were made available in the Stormont House agreement for those purposes and that there are projects waiting to start. Does she think that, with this agreement, that funding will now be available for those projects?
Mrs Villiers
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. He is right that integrated education is a crucial means to address sectarian division in Northern Ireland, as is shared education. There are funds available in the £2 billion Stormont House agreement package, which will now be released. We are contributing to a £60 million programme to promote confidence-building measures to see the interface barriers, or so-called peace walls, taken down. That is another way to bring communities together, which is a key part of ensuring that paramilitary groups disband once and for all and are no longer part of Northern Ireland’s present day.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
May I associate myself and my party with the Secretary of State’s remarks about Peter Robinson and his four decades of service?
I congratulate the Secretary of State, the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland parties on coming to this agreement. It should be hailed a success. It would have been easy for any politician to have stumbled during this.
The additional funding in recognition of the particular problems in Northern Ireland, a legacy of the troubles, is welcome and the welfare provisions equally so. The bedroom tax will not be applied, nor will some sanctions. I wonder whether after today’s proceedings the Secretary of State might set out the differences between the two welfare systems, in written form, to allow us a better understanding.
Part of the funding for the welfare package, if I have understood correctly, will come from savings made through tightening up on error and fraud. Given the role that welfare reforms played in creating the recent difficulties, is there an alternative plan if those savings are not realised? I say, in passing, that the inclusion of a sunset clause in the Bill is welcome as a sign that the UK Government do not intend to continue to exercise control over the welfare system.
I note the substantial commitments made by the Irish Government in this agreement and their desire to improve links to, and economic development in, the north. I welcome those commitments and their commitments to assisting in ending paramilitary activity. That commitment on all sides is particularly welcome and interesting. I wonder whether the Government are in a position to explain what they see as being the scale of paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland and whether it is mainly a criminal undertaking now? The signs, though, from this agreement are good and I offer the support of my party in helping to make it work.
Mrs Villiers
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her support for the agreement. As the Leader of the House said, it is crucial that we see support in all parts of the House for this agreement, which will signal a way forward for the devolved institutions.
The hon. Lady kindly mentioned the Irish Government. I share her sentiment that Minister Flanagan and the Irish Government have played a very important role. Indeed the process was also strongly supported by the US Government, with Senator Gary Hart playing a constructive role throughout, which was much welcomed.
The hon. Lady asked about the differences in the welfare system. The proposal in this agreement, reflecting the Stormont castle agreement back in December, is that the system applicable in GB will apply, but benefits will be topped up by the Northern Ireland Executive drawing on funds from the block grant. Under this agreement, rather than write that all in advance, a fund has been agreed and a panel will be set up to decide how to allocate those funds, but one of the areas to which those funds will be devoted relates to the social sector size criteria.
The hon. Lady asked about the programme for making savings in error and fraud in welfare. I believe that that could save significant amounts of money and the Northern Ireland Executive believe that it will save very substantial amounts of money. The agreement makes it clear that half of any savings resulting from this can be shared by the Northern Ireland Executive and used for whatever purposes they deem appropriate.
The sunset clause is an important part of the legislation that we will consider next week. These are exceptional circumstances; we must urgently take action to enable the Northern Ireland Executive’s finances to be put on a sustainable basis, but there is no justification for the powers to be extended into the future. The key challenge comes in the next year or so, and that is why the sunset clause has been inserted.
In relation to the hon. Lady’s question on the scale of paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland, I direct her to the assessment we published a month or so ago making it clear that, very unfortunately, members of paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland are extensively involved in a range of criminal activities, such as drug dealing, money laundering and in some cases murder as well.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
May I add my thanks to Peter Robinson? I met him first in 1970, when he was an aspiring politician and I was aspiring to be a halfway decent infantry officer. I liked him then. He is honest, he is straight, he knows how to talk to soldiers, and he is in no small part responsible for the decent situation we now have in Northern Ireland. I thank him, with all my colleagues, for what he has done in his work.
Mrs Villiers
I am delighted to associate myself with those comments. Peter has done a huge amount of work for the good of Northern Ireland. He has achieved many things in his long career in public life, and Northern Ireland is the better place for his input into public life and politics there over four decades.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
May I, on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, thank the Secretary of State, the shadow Secretary of State and those other Members who have paid tribute to Peter Robinson today? There is no doubt that, as far as we are concerned, words are not adequate to convey the thank you that we as a party—and everyone who values progress in Northern Ireland—owe to him for the work he has done not just recently, but over a lifetime of dedicated service to Northern Ireland. When one thinks back over the years to the dark days when politics was a dangerous occupation—it remains so for some—one realises that we owe an enormous debt of gratitude for the sacrifices he and his family have made to make progress in Northern Ireland. We thank him sincerely for all he has done.
Today’s agreement is, of course, another tribute to the work Peter and others have done to try to move Northern Ireland forward. There will, of course, be snipers—there will be those who will want to downgrade this agreement—but the reality is that without this agreement, devolution would fail. We would be back to direct rule, which is, effectively, as far as Unionists are concerned, joint rule with Dublin. That is a far less appealing vista. What we have instead is an agreement that will provide a fresh start, allow us to move forward and put the budget on a sustainable footing.
Does the Secretary of State agree that we will now have the best welfare system in the United Kingdom? Help will go to the people who will be affected by the working tax credit cuts. That is something that those who voted against or sniped at the welfare changes need to bear in mind.
On paramilitaries, we are determined that a blind eye will never be turned to violence or to the actions of the paramilitaries.
On the legacy of the past, I share the right hon. Lady’s disappointment that an agreement could not be reached, but it is right that we should never allow a hierarchy of victims to be created and that we should not allow those who were so-called victims of the state to be elevated above the victims of the paramilitaries. She is right to hold the line, along with us, in protecting national security. I want to thank everyone involved for the work that has been done to achieve this milestone agreement.
Mrs Villiers
I should like once again to pay tribute to the work of the right hon. Gentleman and his party on achieving this agreement. He is absolutely right—as was the shadow Secretary of State—to say that if this process had failed, we would have been staring direct rule in the face, and I would have had to head off and write a programme for Government. We would have had to prepare for office. As the right hon. Gentleman said, there are always parts of these agreements in which one would have liked to go further and difficult compromises that have to be made, but the crucial point is that this agreement will secure the continued operation of devolution. Without it, there would have been a real danger of suspension, collapse and a return to direct rule. I believe that this can be a fresh start.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s question about welfare, he is right to suggest that at the end of this process, Northern Ireland will have the most generous welfare system in the United Kingdom. Indeed, it will be one of the most generous in the world because, for all the reforms that have taken place, this country retains a generous welfare system across the board, and rightly so. It is crucial that we get this agreement implemented and ensure that it sticks, and I will be working with the right hon. Gentleman and with all the five Northern Ireland parties to do my best to ensure that that happens.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Northern Ireland is a long way from Essex, but I am sure that everyone is very pleased that that important part of the UK can have the fresh start that it deserves. Does the Secretary of State agree that this agreement will provide Northern Ireland with a safer, more secure future and put an even greater distance between the past and the present, which will benefit the whole of the UK?
Mrs Villiers
I believe that strongly. This agreement will pave the way for a safer, more secure future. Returning for a moment to the previous question, it is important that we strive to find a way to resolve our differences on the legacy bodies. We must ensure that when the bodies are set up, they are entirely fair, proportionate and balanced and that they do not focus disproportionately on just a handful of cases in which the state was involved. This Government will do all that we need to do to protect our national security; we will not compromise on that in any circumstances.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Will the Secretary of State accept that, while many of us have misgivings over parts of the agreement, including over what is not in it, that does not in any way detract from our support for its positive aspects, which we have long advocated, and which we advocated in the negotiations, including the whole-community approach to paramilitaries and the signing up by all parties to a uniform position on eradicating paramilitarism from our society? She said at the talks, as she has said publicly and consistently, that there would be no agreement on the past without an agreement on welfare reform—that that was the hard message for Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour party. However, we have now apparently ended up with an agreement on welfare reform but with no agreement on the past. People want to know how that came about. Would she consider publishing clauses on the past, on a without-prejudice basis, and committing them for pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses, so that they could be the subject not of some sort of private abeyance to be sorted out between herself and Sinn Féin but of proper consideration by Members of both Houses here and by the public in Northern Ireland, particularly the victims?
Mrs Villiers
On the way forward on the institutions dealing with the past, we will certainly give consideration to the proposals the hon. Gentleman puts forward. I think we all recognised that it was difficult to reach the conclusions we needed to get to within a structure containing just the parties. We need to reflect on whether we can have a wider, more inclusive process. Of course we will give consideration to whether we can publish a further draft of the Bill in the future, but we have not made a conclusive decision on this.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the linkages between the past and welfare reform. To the end, I was arguing to keep legacy in, and I wish we had been able to do so; even if we could not agree on all the issues relating to legacy, I had hoped that we would be able at least to agree on a fair selection of areas where consensus had been achieved. I could not get everyone to sign up to that, but I will continue to strive to find a way to get these legacy bodies set up, as that is crucial for victims and survivors.
Lastly, I pay tribute to the work that his party did in the talks process, particularly on the legacy matters, but also on paramilitaries. The Social Democratic and Labour party’s call for a whole-community approach to ending paramilitarism will resonate in this House and across Northern Ireland.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
In welcoming this deal, may I ask the Secretary of State to say a little more about what sounds like £500 million of new funding for Northern Ireland outlined in her statement? Will she go a bit further by saying that if there are any further disputes between parties in Northern Ireland, they will not be fixed by more money from Westminster?
Mrs Villiers
In these extremely difficult days for the public finances, we thought very carefully about what additional support we were able to provide on top of the Stormont House agreement package, but we did feel that a case had been made credibly and strongly to us that Northern Ireland does face unique challenges in the United Kingdom and that therefore there was a case for additional support, on top of the favourable conditions in relation to the block grant. That breaks down roughly as: £160 million of additional security funding for the PSNI to help it counter dissident republican terrorists and paramilitary groups; £25 million for tackling paramilitary activity and strategy; £3 million for a verification body in relation to paramilitary activity; £60 million for programmes to build confidence and see inter-faith barriers coming down; crucially, as a result of the legislative consent motion passed by the Assembly last night, the savings forgone payments—sometimes referred to as welfare penalties—will stop, and that means that a further £40 million will be added to the block grant for the next two years; and we also have £125 million to support a programme to eliminate fraud and error, which we have already discussed. The Executive believe that that will yield substantial savings, half of which they are allowed to retain, and that that is likely to take the total value of the package to well over half a billion pounds.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
May I associate myself with what those who have spoken have said about the contribution made by Peter Robinson, who has announced his retirement from active politics? I have engaged in Northern Ireland affairs throughout my time in this House, but particularly between 2001 and 2010, when our service overlapped. We did not always agree when we had matters to deal with, but there was no doubting at any point that Peter Robinson was a man who was staunch in support of his community and his party. On behalf of my colleagues, I send him and Iris our very best wishes for a long retirement.
May I also add my congratulations to the Secretary of State on an agreement for which there must be a broad welcome, given the context of it? I should, however, say that it is regrettable that significant areas remain outstanding, and I agree with her in respect of the legacy issues she listed. Will she assure us that the budget for dealing with these legacy issues will not be taken from the current operational budget of the Department of Justice? What discussions has she had with the Minister of Justice on that so far?
Mrs Villiers
I keep in regular touch with the Northern Ireland Minister of Justice on all these matters. Of course it is crucial that we all work together to try to ensure that the policing and criminal justice system is as properly resourced as possible. That is one reason why additional security funding was provided in the last spending review. We have now announced further additional security funding for this forthcoming spending review period.
I should also point out that the legacy funding provided in the £2 billion package of the Stormont House agreement amounts to £150 million. It was a priority to try to relieve the pressure on the PSNI so that it could devote its resources to policing the present rather than the past. Naturally, that £150 million package is delayed for the moment pending the establishment of those legacy bodies. The money is still there on the table, and it is another reason why we should get on and try to find an agreement to set up those bodies, so that that funding can be used. As the right hon. Gentleman said, it is a matter of regret that we have not yet been able to reach consensus on how we establish those bodies, but we will continue to work on that with his party and others to try to find a way forward.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her patience and diligence in delivering this much needed package. I also wish to pass on my appreciation to Peter Robinson as he takes a well-deserved retirement. I met him at university many years ago, and he has been in public life ever since. What a remarkable job he has done.
In her statement, my right hon. Friend referred to the devolution of corporation tax. Will she clarify when that will happen and whether it is contingent on any other measures that will need to be implemented?
Mrs Villiers
The Government’s position is that we will give the final go ahead for the devolution of corporation tax once the conditions on financial sustainability in the Stormont House agreement are met. We have already passed the legislation to enable us to do that. We just need commencement of that legislation to enable the transfer of power to take place. The agreement published this week sets out the aim of the Northern Ireland Executive to deliver a reduced rate of corporation tax operating from April 2018. I know that we are all working on that and hoping that that target date will be met.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for bringing forward her statement today. May I, too, pass on some words to Peter Robinson to wish him well in his retirement and in future years?
In her statement, the Secretary of State suggested that the involvement of members of the Provisional IRA in a murder in Belfast led to the conclusion that it was necessary to convene a fresh round of cross-party talks. How concerned is she now that all those involved in the discussions, including Her Majesty’s Government, the Irish Government, the Democratic Unionist party, the Social Democratic and Labour party, the Ulster Unionist party, the Alliance party and others, all accept that the IRA is still in place, but Sinn Féin does not?
Mrs Villiers
The crucial issue is that all participants in the talks process are absolutely clear that there is no justification whatever for paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, that they must all disband, and that for that to happen we need not just a surge in criminal justice activity, but a broad approach that embraces the whole community in working for the day when those organisations are consigned to Northern Ireland’s past rather than its present.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
May I associate myself with the tributes that have been paid to Peter Robinson and with the remarks that have been made about the hard work of the Secretary of State, her Department and her officials in securing this agreement? One positive aspect of that agreement are the reforms of the Assembly, particularly the creation of, and provision for, an official opposition. Does she agree that that is a very important part of the normalisation of Northern Ireland politics?
Mrs Villiers
Indeed. It is something for which the Conservatives have been campaigning for many years, particularly during the tenure of my predecessor as Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson). It is a big step forward that there will be more formal provision for an Opposition. I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments about the officials of the Northern Ireland Office, all of whom have worked tremendously hard during this talks process and the previous one.
Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
I echo the comments that have been made from all parts of the House in relation to the retirement of my party leader, Peter Robinson. I add my personal tribute to the contribution he has made over many years to the politics and the people of Northern Ireland. I thank the Secretary of State for the hard work that she and her team put in during these talks, and commend her for the progress that has been made. I welcome the constructive tone of the comments from the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). We now need to build on the progress that has been made and work towards delivering for the innocent victims and those who have suffered so much. Let us look at ways in which we can find an agreement to implement the legacy elements. What we cannot do, especially at this time, with our national security threatened by terrorism, is compromise the work of the security services who are here to protect every single citizen of this country.
Mrs Villiers
These national security questions are very difficult. We reflected hard on whether we could stretch ourselves to find a way through on this, but we have not been able to so far. The right hon. Gentleman is right: we cannot take risks with our national security. There is documentation that could be disclosed in Northern Ireland which would give support, knowledge and expertise to terrorists, not just in Northern Ireland but around the world, so I am always aware of that being a hugely important part of my role. The role of a Government—our first duty—is to safeguard the security of our citizens; sadly, events over the past fortnight or so have demonstrated how important that duty is.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for the hard work that she has put in over many weeks and months this year, and I thank the team that work with her, advising her so diligently. I welcome the investment in policing, but can she say a little more about what steps the Executive will be taking to reform the public sector and ensure a more sustainable financial approach into the future?
Mrs Villiers
The Executive have already embarked on a very significant reform, funded by a voluntary exit scheme, which will see the Northern Ireland civil service contract considerably. These are difficult decisions, but I believe that with reform in the coming months and years, the Executive will be able to release more funds for crucial front-line services, and I very much welcome the announcement of significant additional funding for healthcare that the Executive announced today.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating Peter Robinson on his retirement and on the hard work that he has put in since the agreement. I congratulate the Secretary of State, too, on her hard work, and my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State on his sensible comments. All parties involved in the agreement have shown how important the Northern Ireland situation and this deal in particular are to the House and to the security of the wider UK. Does the Secretary of State agree that there is no alternative to the deal? In order to avoid direct rule, the deal was crucial for the peace process in Northern Ireland to continue. Does she agree that by avoiding direct rule, she has provided the largest and most significant step in controlling, monitoring and dealing with any potential future paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland?
Mrs Villiers
I think I can agree with all that. Devolved power-sharing government requires two crucial things, the first of which is the ability of parties to work together. The paramilitary question was having a toxic impact on working relationships. Another crucial thing for any Government, devolved or not, is a workable budget. They must be able to live within their means. This agreement today sets a path to addressing both of those. As has been said, there are parts that we would all have liked to see added to the agreement and there are compromises in it. These stages in Northern Ireland’s process forward are never without their imperfections, but this is a good step forward for Northern Ireland. Without it, I am convinced that we would be headed steadily and surely towards suspension and direct rule, which would be bad for Northern Ireland. We have worked hard to try to avoid that and will continue to do so.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I, too, commend my right hon. Friend for the Stormont House agreement that all parties have worked so diligently to effect. I am particularly pleased to note that the issue of flags will be progressed. Is there a timetable for this in Northern Ireland?
Mrs Villiers
There is a timetable for the commission to report on flags. I believe the plan is for it to report within 18 months but, if my hon. Friend will forgive me, I cannot remember the exact date. It is another reminder that with the Stormont House agreement and the fresh start agreement in place, we need to get on with implementing them. That is why I welcome the fact that the legislative consent motion was passed yesterday and the Bill will be introduced to Parliament within minutes and debated. The debate on the welfare legislation will take place early next week.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I, too, thank the Secretary of State for her statement and for the very kind tribute that she paid to our party leader. I echo the thanks and gratitude to the Secretary of State and her team, for I know the very long hours that she personally has put into dealing with the situation in Northern Ireland. There will, of course, be some nay-sayers in Northern Ireland about this deal, but will the Secretary of State go as far as to say that this is by far the very best welfare deal that anyone in the United Kingdom could have? We know that there will be some people who hate the deal so much that they will be on their knees tonight in Northern Ireland praying that Scotland comes up with a slightly better deal so that they do not have to welcome it, but over 105,000 low-paid families in Northern Ireland will today be grateful that their tax credits will not be cut in the way that they would have been under another deal or under direct rule.
On national security, will the Secretary of State confirm that there is no change whatever to the national security portfolio and arrangements? Although there is £160 million available to assist the police in dealing with the dissident and Irish terror threat, if ISIS uses our border as a soft way into the United Kingdom, can the right hon. Lady confirm that additional resources will come from the national budget to assist with that?
Mrs Villiers
I can confirm that if the welfare legislation goes ahead and the Executive proceed with the top-ups proposed under the agreement, Northern Ireland will have the most generous welfare system in the UK. I can also confirm that we are not proposing changes on national security. It continues to be a tier 1 priority for us. We recognise the lethal threat posed by dissident republican terrorists. Thankfully, they seldom succeed in their aims to harm, but there is no doubt that that activity is regular and that these groups have both lethal intent and lethal capacity, and it is only by the efforts of the police and their security partners that we do not see dissident republicans succeeding in more of their evil plans.
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the concerns about ISIL being a factor in Northern Ireland, just as it is everywhere else in this country and beyond. Of course, we as a Government are absolutely focused on our efforts to keep people safe both from the DR threat and from the ISIL threat, and that includes work on cross-border crime and doing all we can to ensure that neither ISIL nor anybody else is able to exploit our border with the Republic of Ireland for criminal or terrorist purposes.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I associate myself with the good wishes to Mr Peter Robinson on his retirement. I thank the Secretary of State for her statement today and for all her hard work that led up to it. I find that in general there is widespread support in my constituency for the welfare changes we have introduced since 2010, based on the principles of helping those who are trying to find work and making work pay, while still controlling the cost of welfare. Does my right hon. Friend agree that these welfare reforms will be just as welcome in Northern Ireland?
Mrs Villiers
I warmly agree with my hon. Friend. The reforms we have introduced into the welfare system in Great Britain give us a better system that has the rewarding of work at its heart and becomes more affordable for the taxpayers who fund it. That is another reason why I welcome the fact that that system will, I hope, apply in Northern Ireland as it does elsewhere.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all hon. Members who have kindly offered me their thanks and congratulations in relation to my role in the process that was recently completed.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and join others in wishing Peter Robinson well in his retirement. We have differed politically on many occasions, but notwithstanding that, wish him well.
Will the Secretary of State confirm that she has ensured that next week’s comprehensive spending review supports and sustains the financial provisions of the mark 2 Stormont House agreement? Does she acknowledge that any modest financial gains contained in that agreement could be wiped out next week with one stroke of the Chancellor’s pen? Will she confirm the nature of the sunset clause in relation to the decision-making power in the Bill?
Mrs Villiers
The sunset clause brings to an end the decision-making power by the end of next year. I can confirm that the £500 million package on offer is confirmed; it will not be withdrawn by the spending review. As for the rest of the spending review, I am afraid that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on that at this time, and that the hon. Lady, like the rest of us, will need to wait for the Chancellor’s autumn statement.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
I add my congratulations to the Secretary of State and to all those involved in achieving a satisfactory outcome to these difficult talks. Will she give additional details on what efforts will be made to tackle organised crime and cross-border criminality?
Mrs Villiers
We have already heard about the proposed cross-border taskforce. A key aspect is to build on the work of the organised crime taskforce in Northern Ireland and the cross-border work that is going on—for example, in relation to fuel smuggling—in order to bring fresh impetus and capacity to that in providing support for things such as forensic accounting to pursue the proceeds of crime. A crucial step forward is for the PSNI and the Garda Siochana to be able to share more equipment and facilities. That will enhance their effectiveness and their ability to co-operate, and policing resources can go further when they are shared, in part, between the two police services.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Finally, with thanks for his patience in waiting to the end, I call Tom Pursglove.
Tom Pursglove
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I, too, pay tribute to the Secretary of State for all her efforts in securing this agreement, and for keeping this House updated as matters have progressed. Cross-border policing is a challenge, and that has been alluded to. What more work can be done to make sure that forces across England, Wales and Scotland work with forces in Northern Ireland and southern Ireland to help solve this problem and to help feed intelligence up the chain to try to tackle these crimes where they happen?
Mrs Villiers
There are extensive co-operation agreements that ensure that police services in Great Britain can share information with the PSNI, and I am sure there is always scope to build on those.
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. It has certainly been a long 10 weeks with very many meetings—a pretty gruelling process—but I am very conscious that while I have been engaged in cross-party talks for only a couple of years, there are many fine men and women in Northern Ireland who have been engaged in this kind of process for about 25 years. We need to pay tribute to their determination and all that they have achieved in transforming life in Northern Ireland. They are rightly an example held up throughout the world of how bitter division can be overcome, and how people who were once bitter enemies can find a way to work together for the good of the whole community.
Bill Presented
Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Theresa Villiers, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, Priti Patel and Mr Ben Wallace, presented a Bill to make provision in connection with social security and child support maintenance in Northern Ireland; to make provision in connection with arrangements under section 1 of the Employment and Training Act (Northern Ireland) 1950; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 99) with explanatory notes (Bill 99-EN).
Paris Climate Change Conference
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes the Pope’s Encyclical, entitled Laudato Si’, Our Common Home, on climate change and international justice which is an important contribution to discussions on this vital subject; further notes that the 2015 climate change conference will be held in Paris between 30 November and 11 December 2015; and calls on the Government to recognise the significant support for a successful outcome to the conference which should commit to take further steps to tackle climate change effectively in the UK and around the world before 2020.
I should like to begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the opportunity to debate this important issue in the main Chamber today.
Pope Francis published his encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home”, six months ago. In it, he says that he wishes
“to address every person living on this planet”
about the “urgent challenge” of “global environmental deterioration”. Following his namesake, St Francis, he writes that
“concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace”
are “inseparable”. It is an astonishing and exceptionally rich document drawing on the experience of the Church around the world, scientists, philosophers, and civic groups. He calls for
“a new and universal solidarity”
in which
“All of us can co-operate”.
His main theme is the
“relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet”.
He makes a particular appeal to politicians, saying that many of us
“seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems”
when there is
“an urgent need to develop”
new “policies”. He calls on us to show “courage” and change
“established structures of power which today govern societies”.
This is why I and other hon. Members applied for the debate.
In looking at what is happening to the planet, the Pope contrasts the acceleration of change with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution. He is particularly critical of the “throwaway” society, saying that instead we need
“to adopt a circular model of production”.
He makes this important observation:
“The climate is a common good”.
For those who have not been keeping up with papal politics, things have moved on since Urban VIII put Galileo under arrest. Pope Francis embraces the work of independent scientific research and the benefits of technology to medicine, engineering, and communications. He points to the “very solid scientific consensus” on global warming and to our role in it through
“the intensive use of fossil fuels”
and “deforestation”.
In considering the
“biodiverse lungs of our planet…the Amazon and the Congo”,
the Pope is not afraid to challenge proposals that he says
“only serve the economic interests of transnational corporations”.
One of the worst things is that the cost of this violent “destruction”, as he calls it, is borne mainly by the poor. He draws attention to the increase in the number of migrants. We know that one reason for the huge increase in the number of people coming across the Mediterranean is the desertification of sub-Saharan Africa. We would be misleading our constituents if we pretended that we could tackle this without tackling the underlying causes.
The encyclical warns of the dangers of the developing situation whereby knowledge, resources and power are in the hands of a small number of people. As Oxfam says, the richest 85 families own as much as the poorest 3.5 billion. The Pope writes,
“a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized”.
He says:
“Inequity…compels us to consider an ethics of international relations.”
So he calls for:
“The establishment of a legal framework which can…ensure the protection of ecosystems…otherwise…power structures based on”
technical fixes “may overwhelm our politics”, our freedom and our justice. Put simply, the world system is unsustainable.
The Pope is very clear that we need a change of heart, and naturally enough he draws on the creation story, asserting that nature is not solely a source of profit and gain, and:
“Whether believers or not, we are agreed…that the earth is…a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone.”
An important consequence of that is that we must have equal concern for future generations, and another is that private property is always subject to a social mortgage. The Pope says:
“Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world. The effects of the present imbalance can only be reduced by our decisive action, here and now.”
What is the Pope’s positive agenda for change? First, he wants us to understand the world as a whole and to see that strategies to tackle the environment need to incorporate economic and social change. Individuals can and do change their behaviour in worthwhile ways, from turning down the heating to sorting the rubbish, but they can also press for change through consumer boycotts, involvement in campaign groups and pressurising politicians. This morning I was particularly glad to meet people from the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, who have come to support us in this debate.
The Pope is very keen to encourage ecological education that goes beyond facts, to challenge our culture. Action can be taken at local and national level. He points to the co-operatives established to provide renewable energy projects and to help small-scale farmers. In his description of the changes in cities, we see clearly his Latin American perspective, with calls to improve housing, public transport and neighbourhood planning. All those things happen in some places some of the time, but for the planet to survive they need to happen everywhere all of the time. In an interdependent world, none of that will be enough without international action, which is why holding this debate before Ministers go to Paris is so important. Global consensus is essential and technologies based on fossil fuels need to be replaced, but the international community has not reached adequate agreement about responsibility for paying for that transition.
Looking at recent history, the Pope points out that, although the 1992 Rio summit set out goals and actions, it was
“poorly implemented, due to the lack of suitable mechanisms for oversight, periodic review and penalties in cases of non-compliance…Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility”
from those who are most
“powerful and pollute the most.”
International negotiations will not make significant progress while positions taken by countries place national interest above the global common good. It is important that internationalisation of environment costs do not penalise the poor. As the Bolivian bishops have said, the countries that have benefited most have a greater responsibility.
What is needed is global regulatory norms and enforceable international agreements, and that means institutional reform at the international level—
“an agreement on systems of governance for the whole range of so-called ‘global commons’.”
The Paris conference is a real opportunity to move things on.
In her letter to the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, the Secretary of State wrote that
“UK priorities include seeking to agree a five yearly cycle of review that would provide the opportunity to reflect on progress and increase ambition…capitalising on the falling cost of low carbon technology. This will be important as we do not expect the cumulative commitments contained in countries’ INDCs to be enough to put us on track to meet the…2 °C goal. We are also building support for legally binding rules to help ensure transparency and accountability so that there can be confidence that the action committed to is being taken.”
That has been the British Government’s position for some time, but I honestly do not think it is strong enough. First, instead of saying what we must do to keep the global temperature rise to 2 °C and then sharing out the burden, it allows a bottom-up approach that is inadequate and necessitates more difficult and costly action later—or, of course, the possibility of failure.
Secondly, I am not clear what “legally binding” means when there seem to be no penalties. It is time we got tough with those who flout the rules. In other arenas, international bodies levy fines, penalties and sanctions. Why does that not happen in this area? Let me give just one example. We issued sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine, but Canada left the Kyoto protocol to avoid penalties and we have taken no action against it for that.
Let us be clear: people in the deserts of Africa and those affected by the floods of Bangladesh are already dying as a result of climate change. If we are to be serious, we should make other international organisations, such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, subordinate to what is agreed in the United Nations framework convention on climate change and co-operate substantively with it.
When I was preparing for this debate, I asked my researcher to find the Government’s latest published position. Imagine my surprise when she produced a White Paper on which there was a picture of the happy, smiling face of the former Lib Dem Secretary of State, Ed Davey. The document includes a quote from the current Secretary of State:
“The move to a green economy offers a great opportunity but to be fully realised it requires world leaders to provide certainty, clarity and confidence. The UK is a global leader in developing cost effective policies and innovative technologies”.
I cannot square that with the Government’s actions since May. They have removed the climate change levy exemption; removed the subsidy for onshore wind; restructured vehicle excise duty; ended the zero-carbon homes commitment; cut the support for solar; and yesterday they committed to a further dash for gas. None of that looks like a Government doing their best to decarbonise. The Pope is asking us to be prepared to make sacrifices in the interests of the common good, but the Government’s changes are so drastic that they will damage our own economic interests.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an interesting speech. She has listed a number of points and I share some of her concerns, but on dash for gas, yesterday’s announcement was about getting rid of coal-fired power stations and all their pollutants and replacing them with gas. No journey to 2050, however ambitious, will not involve interim measures, such as replacing coal with gas. If she wants to give a balanced speech that takes everyone with her, she should acknowledge that.
Helen Goodman
Of course, it is true that coal-fired power stations will eventually cease to be effective and that they would have to be closed anyway, and it is good that the Secretary of State has formalised that commitment. However, by investing in new gas-fired power stations, we are committing, not just for now, but for 30 years, to a reliance on imported gas. That is problematic, partly because it does not improve energy security and partly because it will not result in decarbonisation.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware that, of the 10 coal-fired power stations that are still in operation, three were due to close next year in any event and that all but two of the others were likely to close by 2023? Therefore, by saying that there will be no unabated coal by 2025, the Secretary of State has spun an extension of coal-fired power stations into an ending of unabated coal. That is a neat political trick, but it is not exactly where we want to be.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is extremely well informed. I was not aware of those points.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
Had Opposition Members invested in energy infrastructure when they were in power, going for gas right now would not be urgent. Indeed, had they even thought about investing in renewables, we would not be in the situation we are today. This Government are taking all that on board and trying to sort it out for the taxpayer by providing energy from a mix of energies.
Helen Goodman
I admire the hon. Lady for the energy she shows in this debate, but we have heard people in the sector say there is a problem—I will give a couple more examples—because 30,000 jobs are now being lost in small-scale solar and wind, which is very significant.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
I want to go back to the point about gas and coal because it really is not good enough to leave it where we have. If the world did what we have done and removed coal from the system, it would be equivalent to increasing the current amount of renewables in the world by a factor of five. To pretend that that does not matter is to mislead us all.
Helen Goodman
It is good to remove coal—there is no contention about that—but it would be better to replace it with more solar and more wind. That is the simple proposition I am making.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for taking this frenzy of interventions. One thing she has not so far said—she must forgive me if I am not completely au fait with His Holiness’s utterances on this subject—is whether he mentions investment in technology. Surely the lesson of the history of humanity is that science has broadly solved pretty much all our problems when they have presented themselves to us.
Some significant technologies are a little starved of Government investment across the world. I have a particular enthusiasm for the fuel cell and the hydrogen economy that will, I hope, replace the carbon economy in my lifetime as one that is less damaging to the planet. Does she agree that perhaps one thing we should do at the Paris summit is to agree—much as we have on dementia, for instance—that global action on investment in technology and science can solve these problems as much as behavioural change can, not least with the hydrogen economy at the forefront of global considerations, as many countries are now realising?
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. Of course we need new technologies. One of the problems at the moment is that people trying to invest in new technologies—for example, big battery storage technologies—cannot get funding. They cannot even get them funded by the UK Green Investment Bank. I do not think it is very helpful to privatise the Green Investment Bank when that is the case, or to change the policy framework, which means that we will lose the clarity, simplicity and confidence that industry needs in order to plan its investment over the medium term. We cannot just switch this on and off like the lights; we need to think about it decades ahead.
Kit Malthouse
I am sorry to repeat myself, but that was broadly my point. I was trying to make the point about the Paris conference that, as much as the hon. Lady says the emphasis should be on an agreement about behavioural change by business and industry, there should be a global agreement on investment in exactly the technologies that she says are starved of money. That might mean the Government having to make up for a market failure by investing in them to a certain extent. Nevertheless, as she says, given that we need a decadal view—out to when my grandchildren will be born—such investment needs to put in now. It may be that that has to be paid for out of the global public purse.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman is right that we need to have intelligent investment in technology, but I want to draw him back to paying a little attention to the Pope’s encyclical. An over-reliance and an over-optimism about technical fixes when we do not know whether they will actually work has encouraged us to consume too much and to be too destructive. We need to keep such things in the balance as we develop policy.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making a powerful speech. She is talking a lot about the papal encyclical—rightly so, since the motion is about it—but will she also pay tribute to things such as the declaration launched in August by Islamic leaders from 20 countries, which similarly urges Governments to take ambitious action in this area? This is not a monopoly of one faith community or another; all faith communities are coming together to make such a demand.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Lady is of course right.
The White Paper included a section on the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises. I am afraid that it was greeted with a hollow laugh by people such as George Smith from my constituency. He is an electrician—I have had a ride in his solar PV-powered van—who has spent thousands of pounds training people, but is now concerned that he may have to sack those very people.
Many of us were incredulous about the Government achieving their renewables targets. In the Treasury Committee, I asked the Chancellor whether he was a climate change denier. He responded:
“I am not sure I accept that phrase as a general term in British politics”.
Now we know why: the leaked letter from the Secretary of State to her colleagues says that there will be a 50 TWh shortfall in the delivery of renewable energy targets in 2020, which is a shortfall of 25%. She notes:
“Publicly we are clear that the UK continues to make progress”.
She also notes:
“The absence of a credible plan to meet the target carries the risk of successful judicial review, and…on-going fines imposed by the EU Court of Justice”.
Instead of going back to the Chancellor and saying, “We must think again,” she says that
“we need to reflect...on the emerging strategy once the outcome of the Spending Review is known.”
Strategies do not emerge; they are planned. Fulfilling our part in avoiding global warming over 2° C should be the Secretary of State’s absolute priority.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Does that not show that Britain’s climate change policy is being run not by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, but by the Treasury?
Helen Goodman
That is also my suspicion.
The Secretary of State now proposes to buy renewables from other countries. That is not a way to support British industry. It will not maximise the EU contribution to the global deal. It is not consistent with the argument put to this House by Ministers for abolishing the climate change levy, which was that too much money went abroad.
I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue. The Paris conference is absolutely vital to our making progress. I urge the Secretary of State to reflect seriously on her responsibilities and to work for the best possible deal in Paris.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). She asked me to sign her motion, and I was happy to do so. I do not know why she thought I might be interested in the Pope’s encyclical, but here I am. I hope the House will forgive me if I concentrate entirely on the encyclical, on which I have some expertise; I have absolutely no scientific expertise on other climate change subjects about which other hon. Members will want to speak. I will, if they are interested, try in a few minutes to put the encyclical in context.
I have tried to read the whole encyclical. Like all Vatican documents it is very subtle, very profound and very long—the best part of 200 pages—but the part on climate change is relatively short. Since the papacy’s unhappy experience with Galileo, which the hon. Lady mentioned, the modern papacy tends to endorse scientific consensus, but the detailed part on climate change is quite limited. The encyclical is really a very long prose poem that concentrates on and affirms the Pope’s belief in the interdependence of man, nature and God.
It is important that we do not try to weaponise papal encyclicals for one side of the argument or the other. The words that come from the Vatican are seldom very useful in that context. To give an example on another subject, I was in the Vatican last week to meet Cardinal Baldisseri, who has been leading the synod on the family. Journalists always try to pigeonhole such debates inside the Vatican as controversial, saying that there are traditionalists and modernisers. That is the way of politicians. The Vatican moves in a rather more sedate manner. The long document on the family does not take a confrontational viewpoint on all the matters that have worried us in this House over recent years. Again, it is a long prose poem in favour of traditional marriage and the family. We must therefore be careful about how we read the document we are discussing.
The encyclical is primarily saying that mankind is much more than mind or body; there is a deeper soul. As mankind is about the soul and its connection with a universal God and a universal nature, we must recognise that we are part of nature and respect nature. That is where the Pope comes from when discussing climate change.
I do not want to weary people too much and will not read out the whole encyclical, but I will read a couple of paragraphs to give a flavour of it. It is very beautifully written and it informs the debate in a general way. In paragraph 65, the Pope says:
“Without repeating the entire theology of creation, we can ask what the great biblical narratives say about the relationship of human beings with the world. In the first creation account in the Book of Genesis, God’s plan includes creating humanity. After the creation of man and woman, ‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good’… The Bible teaches that every man and woman is created out of love and made in God’s image and likeness”.
That informs the Pope’s view on climate change and the other debates that we, as politicians, are interested in. Unsurprisingly, he is always much more interested in the God-centric point of view.
In paragraph 67, the Pope states:
“The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to ‘till and keep’ the garden of the world… ‘Tilling’ refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while ‘keeping’ means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature. Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.”
I am sure that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would not disagree with any of those remarks. They are very beautifully put. I hope that the House will forgive me for having referred to those couple of paragraphs.
It is important, whether one is on the right or the left, not to say that the Pope has come down on one side of the argument. When the Pope went to see Congress, all the Republicans stood up and cheered when he proclaimed the right to life and his opposition to abortion. They were still clapping and cheering when, almost in the same breath, he talked about the rights of migrants and his opposition to the death penalty. They were left on their feet, clapping for something they did not agree with.
Caroline Lucas
The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech. He says that the Pope does not come down on one side or the other. Will he confirm, however, that the Pope is saying very clearly that we need to tackle climate change? We might have an argument about the best way to do it, but he is saying that. He also has a strong economic critique. I can quote him too:
“Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending.”
That is pretty strong language.
Sir Edward Leigh
I am happy to accept that. I do not want to weary the House by referring to the paragraph, but the Pope does endorse action on climate change. That is a relatively small part of the encyclical and it must not be seen in the context of the political debate. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland was right to mention conferences and what is going on in Paris, but I do not think that the Pope is concentrating on that. What he is concentrating on, fundamentally, is the theme that we are part of nature. The debate around climate change relates to his profound belief that we are part of nature and connected to nature, and that we are abusing the world. Because we are abusing the world, we are abusing ourselves. I think that that is what he is trying to say, and that is what I am trying to explain to the House in my very inadequate way.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman has obviously thought deeply about these matters and has given more of the theology than I did. However, the Pope does talk about the need for more effective international action and he does decry what we politicians have done up to now.
Sir Edward Leigh
I am happy to accept that the Pope talks about more international action, but he is careful not to be too specific. In one paragraph, he is quite critical of carbon credits. He gives a general thesis and acknowledges the problem, then he leaves it to us—the Secretary of State, the Minister and the Opposition parties—to come up with solutions.
The most important theme of the encyclical comes out in the very first paragraph. It relates to our common home. This is where I hope I can take Opposition Members with me. The Pope states:
“‘Laudato si’, mi’ Signore’—‘Praise be to you, my Lord’. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. ‘Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs’.”
When one reads through this long encyclical, that sort of language is repeated again and again.
The Pope is repeating the philosophy of the 20th century philosopher, Professor Charles De Koninck, who understood that the person, the individual, could not be neglected. He differed from the personalists because he knew that the person had to be integrated within a vision of the common good. In the encyclical, the Pope constantly concentrates on our common good and our common nature: the good of the individual, the good of the family, the good of the village, town, province and country, and the good of the whole world. People—you and I—have to be understood, De Koninck argued and the Pope now argues, in the context of our place in the universe as a whole. That is one thing that the Pope is trying to do with the encyclical. Like De Koninck, the Pope understands the truth expressed by St Thomas Aquinas that the greatest perfection of the created person is the good of the universe.
The Anglican academic, Professor Jacobs, wrote a moving reflection on the encyclical, in which he pointed out that Francis does not use the word “planet” or even “environment”, but uses the word “home”. He constantly concentrates on our common home. Professor Jacobs writes:
“All the economic questions he explores later in the encyclical are therefore grounded in the etymology of ‘economy’: the governance of the oikos, the household. Such domestic language is a powerful means of fighting the abstracting effects of any attempt to ‘think globally.’ Francis seems to be saying that if you want to act globally, you should think locally: think of the earth as your home, one you share with others to whom you are accountable.”
“Laudato Si’” is distinctly not merely an encyclical about climate change. While the papacy has always been a patron and promoter of modern science and learning, specific scientific matters are outside its teaching authority. Rather, this is an encyclical about the fundamental crisis of humanity that is at the foundations of our modern world. Ecological aspects are a symptom of that crisis, not the root of it, and there are no simple solutions.
Professor Thomas Hibbs, who was formerly of Boston college, an institution of the Pope’s own Jesuit order, has written:
“The most audacious claim in the encyclical is not the affirmation of the reality of climate change, but the insistence that to have a coherent and effective environmental philosophy requires both an anthropology and a cosmology.”
He writes that “Laudato Si’”
“seeks nothing less than the re-imagining of the place of human persons in the entirety of the created cosmos. Francis discerns beneath the contemporary ecological crisis a crisis of the human person, who is now lost in the cosmos, increasingly alienated from self, others, nature, and God.”
I apologise for trying to explain the encyclical, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have done it as best I could. It is a most beautiful document and I recommend that hon. Members read it in its entirety.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). He spoke with huge eloquence, and I do not propose to compete with him on the papal encyclical. I have read it, but he informed the House about it brilliantly. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this incredibly important debate.
I will not spend time talking about the important encyclical because I want to mention what I believe we need out of the Paris summit, what we are likely to get out of it, and what should happen after it. Before I do so, it might be helpful—particularly for the Secretary of State, who is in her place—if I shared briefly a reflection on the Copenhagen summit of six years ago that I took part in, and I will offer one tip in particular.
I wish to relate an experience that was told by my lead official, the brilliant Pete Betts, who I believe still works with the Secretary of State. In the dying hours of the conference he rang me—I had not slept for 36 hours and was about to go to bed—to say that the deal was about to collapse. That was obviously a global problem, but it was also a particular problem for me because it followed a period when world leaders, including Gordon Brown, had come to town and made a heroic effort to salvage something from the wreckage of Copenhagen. Gordon had departed with the immortal words to me, “Make sure it doesn’t go wrong now”, and I had foolishly said, “I’m sure it’s all going to be fine, Gordon. Don’t worry about it.” When Pete rang me to say that the deal was about to collapse, part of me was obviously thinking about the world and the future of the planet, but I was also thinking, “What will Gordon say when I tell him the whole thing has collapsed?” I suggest to the Secretary of State that lowering prime ministerial expectations when the current Prime Minister leaves the summit—as I think he is due to do—is probably a good idea.
Let me return to the process of the Paris summit. We need an agreement that is as close as possible to what the science tells us is necessary. We should all be worried about what the science is telling us, because compared with six years ago it is even clearer. A good assessment produced by the Met Office earlier this month stated that 2015 is set to be the hottest year on record—yet another record. Some of that may be related to El Niño, but all the experts tell us that the underlying warming is a result of human-induced climate change. We are now at 1 °C of warming, which is half way to 2 °C. Importantly, global warming is not some theoretical idea—sometimes we speak as though it is—because it is happening now and the changes are already being witnessed.
Another study produced by the US Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this month found, among other things, that devastating floods in Indonesia in 2014, the 2013 Argentine heatwave, and tropical cyclones in Hawaii were all linked to human-induced climate change. The science is clear, dangerous, and should make us deeply concerned: climate change is real and it is happening now.
That takes me to what we are likely to get out of Paris, as opposed to what we need. I believe that we will get a 2° commitment, as at Copenhagen, but I am afraid not a 2° deal—the Secretary of State has acknowledged that. The UN says that on the best case scenario for Paris, current commitments made by countries for 2030 mean that we will be half way between “business as usual” emissions—that means no action—and where we should be to have a fighting chance of a 2° deal. As the UN has made clear, on the basis of submitted plans, we are heading for something like a 3° deal.
If the world ends up in 2100 with 3 °C warming, that would be catastrophic. It would mean temperatures that are higher than at any time in the last 3 million years, with dramatic effects of intense heatwaves, flooding, and millions—or hundreds of millions—of climate refugees. Does that mean that we should dismiss the likely Paris agreement? In my view, we should not. If the Secretary of State, her colleagues, and world leaders pull off an agreement in Paris, new ground will have been broken. It will be the first agreement to get anywhere even in the vague neighbourhood of 2°, the first to oblige all major emitters to take action to reduce emissions, and the first—we hope—comprehensively to stand up $100 billion of climate finance for mitigation and adaptation for the developing world. Those would be signal achievements—behind the science but ahead of where we have been.
However, just as we should not dismiss that progress, we should also be clear about what a dangerous position we will be in. If that is the agreement, the judgment on Paris will be that it has been a success, but that it can only be a staging post. Importantly, just as what happened after Copenhagen perhaps made it seem less of a disaster than it seemed at the time, what happens after Paris will determine whether the summit has turned out to be a decisive moment.
Since the ambition will be insufficient at Paris, our focus should be on raising that ambition afterwards. I think of that in two parts: ambition before 2030, and ambition after. Before 2030—my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned this—we need a ratchet mechanism to ensure that the Paris agreement is the beginning of what is required. That must mean a tough, five-year review mechanism, so that countries renew and improve their pledges. My colleague in another place, Baroness Worthington, said that the agreement might ultimately come to be seen as a global equivalent of our five-year carbon budgets, and that is the right way to think about it. The hope—I think it is not a forlorn hope—must be that as technology develops and as confidence is built, countries will move further and faster.
Graham Stuart
I agree with most of the speech by the right hon. Gentleman. Providing certainty, and ratcheting and tightening up a deal in Paris over time, send a signal to the investment market. That means that we will get investment in innovation, research and development and the supply chain, which is a prerequisite of driving down costs. Only by that level of commitment will we get the acceleration of a cost curve downwards, which is the way that we will deliver for the planet while also protecting the consumer. That is why we need certainty and those kinds of framework.
Edward Miliband
The hon. Gentleman’s point is important and well made, and it takes me to what I was about to say. This is not just about hoping that we can make that kind of progress with technology and so on; by setting the right framework we make it more likely that such progress will be made, and that the constructive, imaginative and inventive side of humankind will defeat our destructive side.
Barry Gardiner
My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful and important speech with his immense knowledge in this area. Does he share my concern that the word coming out of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is that the numbers of officials who are engaged on climate diplomacy will be cut around the globe, just as the case is being made that we need to proselytise even more in that area with our fellow nations?
Edward Miliband
I think that the FCO and every Department must be concerned with these matters, and I am sure that the Secretary of State, who is a champion on these issues, will argue for that. I know from my experience that that sometimes feels a bit lonely in government, but in our case we had support across the Government from the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister.
In response to the point from the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), ensuring progress means that we must keep on track here at home. Next Thursday there is an important moment when the Energy and Climate Change Committee publishes its recommendations for the fifth carbon budget, and I hope the Government will support that.
Let me move on to the period after 2030. Every excess tonne of carbon that we emit between now and 2030 means that we will have to do more later—we must be clear about that. The easiest way to think about it is that we have a finite carbon budget, which has been helpfully estimated by the UN to be about 1,000 gigatonnes—a round number. Once that is used up, we can emit no more if we are to avoid dangerous warming. Frighteningly, the UN tells us that on current pledges to 2030, 75% of that total carbon budget will be used up by 2030. That suggests the scale of the task facing us, particularly if we do not improve the pledges between now and 2030. The crucial point, whether we do that or not, is that the world will at some point have to reach zero emissions. I commend the Government and the Secretary of State for signing up to the G7 pledge, made recently, that the world will have to get to zero emissions sometime in the second half of this century.
It is striking that increasing numbers of business leaders—this again relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness—are putting their energies and thinking into the so-called net zero commitment. Ratan Tata, Paul Polman of Unilever, Richard Branson of Virgin and many others from the so-called B-team of business leaders, recently sent a letter to all those attending Paris calling for the adoption of the long-term goal of zero emissions. They are right: the long-term goal is an essential part of a successful Paris agreement.
What does zero emissions mean? It means a 100% clean energy system. It means the right decisions about infrastructure. It also means—this is where the inventers and engineers will be incredibly important—technological advance on how to capture carbon, reforestation and a whole range of other matters. Increasingly, the question of when and how we get to zero emissions will become our focus and energy after Paris. It will need to become the benchmark for the decisions we make in the years ahead.
Finally, we will also have to continue to work on the all-important question of a fair and equitable approach. The reality that all of us in the House have to face is that industrialised countries have grown in a high carbon way and we are now saying to poorer countries that they have to grow in a low carbon way. That is an unprecedented challenge of equity. It makes it all the more important that rich countries cut their emissions to allow space for poorer countries to develop. It also means, and I commend the Government for this, that it is right to be leading on development aid around climate change. That will enable countries to leapfrog the high carbon path and go to a low carbon path.
Those are the ways in which I think Paris must lay the ground for future ambition, and a future ambition that is fairly shared.
Graham Stuart
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we have to ensure there is engagement and understanding on this issue in Parliaments across the world? That is why today’s debate, and others like it, are so important. I refer the House to my declaration of interests. I will be chairing a GLOBE International two-day conference at the Assemblée Nationale on 4 and 5 December. About 250 legislators from around the world will be talking about the role of national Parliaments in setting the law, scrutinising government and making sure that international promises are turned into domestic reality.
Edward Miliband
Let me take the opportunity to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the role he plays in GLOBE International, which is an incredibly important organisation. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has also played a very important role in that organisation. By bringing legislators together, it plays a crucial role in building support for tackling climate change.
I want to end by making two observations. My first observation is about the process of what we might call summitry. Many people thought Copenhagen was a failure—I referred to it at the beginning of my speech—and that it did not achieve what we wanted. It certainly did not meet people’s expectations. The reality, however, is that it laid the groundwork for some of what we are seeing in Paris: a 2° commitment, the $100 billion of climate finance and the whole notion of bottom-up pledges.
Trying to get countries to sign up to these issues is such a knotty problem that we will not get all the way the first, second or even third time. We just have to move things forward and make progress. The negotiations in Paris look like an elite-level exercise and people will often ask what the point is of all those leaders gathering together. I believe, however, that it is a forcing mechanism. I do not think we would have seen the progress from a lot of countries around the world if there had not been a moment when countries came together. World leaders know they will be judged on whether they are doing something or just ignoring the problem. We will not get everything we want from Paris, but that does not mean we should be discouraged. In fact, we should redouble our efforts at home and around the world.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that many people will look to Paris as a first test of whether the very worthy spirit of the sustainable development goals are truly the working ethic of international action? As this is the first generation that can eradicate extreme poverty and possibly the last generation that can address climate change, people want to see that ethic at Paris and to see it proven afterwards.
Edward Miliband
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is an incredibly important year, with the sustainable development goals and the Paris talks. He makes the point very well.
My second and final observation—we have already had a bit of to and fro on policy questions—is on cross-party consensus. It is worth making the point that we came together, as political parties, to pass the Climate Change Act in 2008. It is hard to remember this—I checked back and even I was surprised—but the Act passed by 463 votes to three. That is an extraordinary achievement. The Prime Minister and I have had our differences over the years, but I have to say that, as Leader of the Opposition, he did indeed break new ground by putting this front and centre. The extraordinary consensus that was built sent a message about the commitment of the parties across this House. That was important in Britain. It was also—I do not think this is British arrogance—important around the world, too, as it sent an international message. Since 2008, we have seen the Climate Change Act emulated in many countries. Parties across this House should be proud of what we achieved together.
The point, to which I referred earlier, that I would perhaps mostly direct towards the Secretary of State is that it is hard being the biggest fighter for tackling climate change in government. There are many competing pressures, but I know she is totally a believer on these issues. I think that part of her role, if I may suggest this, is to find ways of maintaining and strengthening that consensus. This is not just in relation to the policies, but for the idea that somehow a good economy and a good environment are not in contradiction, but that the two go together. The CBI has made huge advances on this issue.
There will, of course, be disagreements. There is, however, a basic set of assumptions: the science on climate change is real; we know that, as human beings, we are responsible for it; and we are conscious—this is crucial—that we have in our hands the ingenuity to tackle the problem and deal with it. Whatever party we are from, we care about our responsibilities to hold the planet in trust for future generations. Whatever party we are from, we know we will be held to account for the actions we take or do not take now. Whatever party we are from—this relates to what the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said in his intervention—our children will either see us as the last generation not to get climate change or the first generation to get it. That is why I believe we cannot afford to fail. I will be supporting the Secretary of State in getting the best possible agreement out of Paris.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who made an excellent speech. I regret to tell the House that I am the first speaker this afternoon who has not read the encyclical, but I shall be speaking specifically about the Paris agreement: what the objectives are; whether we appear to be on track to meet them, and, given that we are not, where the problem is; what structural issues in my view we need to address, which are similar to, but not the same as, the ones we have just heard; and what all that means for UK policy.
The objective of the Paris summit is the 2° limit. In objective terms, that means either 1,000 gigatonnes of carbon, or something like 550 parts per million of carbon. In truth, there are a lot of probabilities around that: we could meet the targets and still have more than a 2° increase; we could fail to meet them and get less. Nevertheless, those are the numbers we are dealing with. The right hon. Member for Doncaster North made the point that on current progress we will have reached 75% by 2030. A figure I prefer to use is that by 2036 it will have all gone: by 2036, our business-as-usual scenario will be finished.
Are we on track or not? A couple of Members have mentioned the intended nationally determined contributions. However, about only 80% of all participants in Paris have delivered them. The first problem with the INDCs—this is an indicator of the issues the Secretary of State will have to face—is that we could not even agree a common benchmark or starting point for the INDCs. The Europeans prefer 1990 and the Americans prefer 2005. We both have our own reasons: they make us look better.
It is not surprising, given that we could not agree a benchmark or common template, that the INDCs, 80% of which are now in, are all over the place. The right hon. Member for Doncaster North said they implied a 3° outcome. I find this surprising. A report by the secretariat of the United Nations framework convention on climate change mentioned 2.73°. This is an optimistic analysis—that is unusual as these guys are usually over-pessimistic—because it assumes we will continue on broadly the same trajectory after the initial INDC period. That will be hard, however, because there are low-hanging fruit and it will be easier to make progress on the first things. The other key points are that we need five-year reviews and that only the EU and China have put in place policies reflecting their INDCs, suggesting that regulating the process might be harder than we think.
Where is the problem? It is not the UK. The Climate Change Act mandates an 80% reduction in emissions over 60 years: a rate of 1.33% a year, which is significantly higher than the EU INDC in Paris. I would like a Front-Bench spokesperson to contradict me if I am wrong, because it is an important point. The Act commits the UK to an emissions target 33% higher than the EU INDC submission, of which we are part. That is an extraordinary statistic. With our policies—the carbon budgets and everything that goes with them—we have imposed on ourselves requirements more stringent than those set by the EU as a whole, let alone individual member states. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman that other countries have passed climate change Acts. If only they had! We expected they would—we thought we were taking a worldwide position—but it has not happened to anything like the extent we hoped it would. I note that neither Front-Bench team has intervened, so I think I am right.
The INDC we submitted to Paris requires a 40% emissions reduction by 2030, which is significantly less than we are legally obliged to achieve in the UK. How are some of our European partners getting on? There is a database called the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research—EDGAR—and it is a rattling good yarn. It details carbon emissions by country, capita and unit of GDP for every year up to 2013. Since 1990, Austria, a wealthy European country, has increased its emissions by 20%, while we have reduced ours by 20%, in accordance with the Climate Change Act. That is the same country, by the way, that is suing us for building nuclear power stations. Holland and Belgium are flat. Germany has reduced its emissions, but, in spite of being a leader on renewables, its emissions are 30% higher than ours per capita. That is because it is going heavily for coal, and what makes the difference on emissions is not how many renewables a country has, but how much coal it does not have. We need to examine that. That is a slightly pessimistic analysis of the INDCs—I know we are going to negotiate—but I wanted to make the point that the European submission to Paris is 33% lower than what this Parliament has already mandated for this country. I wonder why that is.
What is causing this apparent possibility of failure? There is actually one piece of good news from the last few years. I am pleasantly surprised that we appear to have broken the link between GDP and energy intensity. The only caveat is the issue that dare not speak its name: embedded carbon. If we have broken the link only by importing carbon in the form of embedded carbon, we will have undermined much of what we are doing.
A bigger issue concerns an error that was made before and at Copenhagen and by the EU, and one that we are still making—I heard it in DECC questions again today: we have tended to over-emphasise renewables targets and under-emphasise decarbonisation, yet for too long we have used those words interchangeably. I am in favour of renewables, but because all the EU targets were for renewables, not decarbonisation, we placed a false emphasis on certain technologies. In particular, we did not develop nuclear power and carbon capture and storage as quickly as we should have. That error is still being made. This morning, I received a document from Friends of the Earth in preparation for this debate. It cannot bring itself to use the words “nuclear power” in this context. I can only conclude that although it cares about climate change, it does not care enough to countenance the dominant technology that is by far the best chance the world has.
Caroline Lucas
Those of us who are deeply sceptical about nuclear power are not sceptical for ideological reasons. Nuclear is slow and deeply expensive. We need to reduce our emissions quickly, but the next nuclear power stations will not be on grid for at least another 10 years. It is an issue of speed and cost, as well as ideology.
David Mowat
As an advocate of nuclear power, I accept we have not solved the waste issue, but it is one that the human race is capable of solving, whereas I am not certain that climate change is. And I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s point about cost.
Returning to the coal and gas debate, another issue is that we confuse post-2030 emissions pathways with the cumulative impact. The gigatonne target is a cumulative one. The effect of carbon and burning coal is cumulative. It is not just about post-2030 pathways or saying that gas has to be an interim energy source. In an intervention earlier, I made the point that were we able to replace all the coal in the world with gas—just like that—it would have the same effect as a fivefold increase in the level of renewable energy. We all ought to think about that statistic. This is not just about renewables. Of course they are vital, but we have to use other technologies, such as nuclear and CCS. The Copenhagen analysis and the EU’s approach have focused too heavily on renewables and not enough on decarbonisation, so I am pleased we appear to be fixing that now.
In that regard, I would make one final point. I have mentioned Austria and—to an extent—Germany as countries that are doing badly, but one country in Europe is a shining example: France has the lowest emissions, the lowest emissions pathway and the lowest level of emissions per capita and GDP, and that is because it is 80% nuclear. There is an emperor’s new clothes element to this. I wish we could be where France is.
What does all this mean for the UK? We have our Climate Change Act, and next Thursday we will get the next ratchet of that. We have to be careful that we do not act unilaterally—I have bought into all this stuff—and do not take a worldwide leadership position for a world that does not wish to or will not be led. That is why Paris is so important and why, for me, it is so disappointing that the EU submission to Paris is so unambitious vis-à-vis our Climate Change Act. The issues of fuel poverty will not be resolved by having the highest electricity prices in the world. I mentioned earlier in DECC questions that a number of EU leaders had sent the Secretary of State texts congratulating her on her announcement yesterday about removing coal from the system and replacing it with gas. I would just say that texts are no substitute for action by some of those countries. I am sure she will be telling them that in Paris, and I wish her luck.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Climate change is the biggest challenge that any of us or any future generations will face. It is absolutely right that the House should be given the opportunity to debate this important issue, particularly with Paris just a couple of weeks away. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us time to debate this subject. I shall confine my remarks almost entirely to the domestic issues and the Government’s policy on renewable energy and its impact on Britain’s CO2 reduction targets, but also on jobs more widely and the UK’s reputation going into the Paris conference.
As we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), thanks to the information we received via a leaked letter from the Energy Secretary, we now know that Britain is likely to miss our 2020 target of 15% of energy production from renewables by some margin, in all likelihood reaching just 11%. That compares to Germany, which already produces 31% of its energy from renewables. As we have also heard, the cheapest renewable energy by far is onshore wind. It is so cost-effective that it no longer needs any subsidy, but as we have also heard, it has been virtually stopped in its tracks in England by the Government’s planning changes.
Now the Government are proposing to abandon support for solar almost completely, in spite of the growing scientific and political consensus around the world that it holds the secret to our future carbon-free energy needs. The proposed cut in solar feed-in tariffs by a staggering 87% from 1 January will devastate our fledging solar industry and make meeting the legally binding target of 15% by 2020 far more difficult. At the same time, the Government are announcing huge subsidies for nuclear, gas and highly polluting diesel generators. How can that make sense?
We now face a situation in which in a couple of years’ time, renewables could be the only sector not to receive any subsidy. There is also the impact on jobs, our economy and our science base. Our solar industry alone provides 35,000 jobs, including nearly 4,000 in the south-west of England. We face losing 27,000 of those jobs nationally, including more than 3,000 in the south-west, if the proposal goes ahead unaltered. That figure is similar to—indeed, higher than—the job losses recently announced in the steel industry, but these jobs have a far lower profile because they are at small companies, they are scattered all over the country and they do not have a loud enough political voice. The irony is that by 2020 our solar industry could be operating subsidy-free. Indeed, the sector itself acknowledges the common sense in reducing the feed-in tariff, but it believes it should be done in a tapered way, not with a cliff edge, as is currently proposed. As my hon. Friend said, jobs are already being lost because of the uncertainty. We had the announcement of another 35 job losses in Exeter this week alone.
I would like to say a little about the situation facing hundreds of community renewable energy projects up and down the country in the light of recent announcements of changes to the way in which tax relief is administered. As hon. Members will remember, that was announced without any consultation on Third Reading of the Finance Act 2015 at the end of October and is to take effect at the end of this month—just one month’s notice. This, I am afraid, is a disgrace. Those renewable energy schemes at community level get off the ground as the result of the blood, sweat and tears—often over years—of thousands of ordinary, civic-minded citizens, who have now had the rug pulled from under them.
My community energy project in Exeter has been working tirelessly for more than two years preparing its share offer, but it had to rush it out this week, before it was really ready, in order to beat the loss of tax relief at the end of the month. The project has, heroically, managed to raise more than a quarter of the funds it needs, but raising the rest will be much more difficult without the tax reliefs, which have suddenly been taken away. Community Energy England estimates that £127 million of current investment and £242 million of potential future investment is at risk from the decision. When the Secretary of State responds, I would like to know whether she or her fellow Minister were consulted on the change, and if not, why not? If they were, why did they agree to it? I understand that the community energy sector feels so angry and betrayed by the decision that it is considering taking legal action, and I am sure there are many people in this House and outside who would support that.
The Secretary of State asserted earlier in departmental questions that she believed that Britain under the current Government had maintained its leadership role and its international reputation on climate change, but in that case why has Ernst & Young dropped the United Kingdom from the top 10 countries for renewable energy attractiveness? Why did the UN chief environment scientist, Jacquie McGlade, say recently on the BBC that it was
“disappointing…when we see countries such as the United Kingdom that have really been in the lead in terms of getting their renewable energy up and going—we see subsidies being withdrawn and the fossil fuel industry being enhanced”?
She went on to say that she thought Britain was sending a worrying signal in the run-up to Paris by shifting away from clean energy just when the rest of the world was rushing towards it.
David Mowat
I made the point earlier that one of the issues we face is that we confuse decarbonisation with renewables, and I think many of the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks are along those lines. He talked earlier about Germany, which has 34% renewables but very high emissions because it is building coal-powered stations. The Government’s position is to reduce carbon, but not just by using renewables.
Mr Bradshaw
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman: it is not an either/or. What he says about Germany is absolutely right and is due in large part to the, in my view, unusually foolish policy decision by the Merkel Government to withdraw from nuclear. Germany is paying a high price for that, and it is a very good lesson to those of us who advocate an anti-nuclear policy.
Caroline Lucas
I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis. Real analysis of what has happened in Germany shows that the reason why coal has come up and taken that space is the lowering of the price, not least because of the dash for gas in the US which has resulted in a low price for coal. That is what has undercut the situation in Germany, not the fact that it has had to get rid of nuclear.
Mr Bradshaw
I am not going to have a ping-pong about it, but I am sure there is a price driver as well. The simple fact is that Germany needed that coal because it had abandoned nuclear energy so suddenly.
When the Secretary of State responds at the end of this debate, I want her to explain to the House and the British public why the Government have adopted the approach they have on renewables since the election. I want an honest assessment from her, given what I have said, of how she feels that has impacted on Britain’s reputation internationally and on our leadership role. I would also like a clearer explanation than we have heard so far from the Government of how they intend to close the gap between our legally binding 2020 target and the current trajectory.
I remember climate change summits not that long ago when Britain was a world leader. The commitment, hard work and leadership of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Prescott and my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) delivered real and vital progress globally and at home. Even the current Prime Minister felt the need for a while at least to pay lip service to this agenda, but I am afraid that since 2010, and particularly since this year’s election, the Conservatives appear to have stopped even pretending to take climate change seriously. They are doing real damage to our renewable energy industry, and I believe they are damaging Britain’s reputation in the process.
I hope we will see more progress and a more positive approach in the run-up to Paris, and I hope that the Secretary of State and her colleagues can persuade the rest of their colleagues in government to take this—the biggest challenge both in Britain and globally—far more seriously than they are.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I too welcome this cross-party debate. It is essential that we work together not just nationally, but internationally, as so many of my colleagues have said. Climate change is bigger than the internal political debate. It was my work over many years as a television environment correspondent that really put climate change on my radar, which is why I wanted to speak in today’s debate. It showed me that tackling this issue is pivotal to the future of the planet.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this debate, but we should also be praising the Pope for focusing on this issue in his encyclicals. It is the Pope who has raised the issue of climate change and its inextricable links to poverty, as mentioned earlier, and that has put the issue right at the top of the agenda—and amen to that. As a good convent girl, although not a Catholic, I know that when the Pope speaks, we listen.
Speaking as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I am heartened that the Pope has made the direct link between climate change and the sustainability of the planet. If we do not tackle climate change, the biodiversity of our environment will be in jeopardy, and if we do not look after our land, our soil and our water for the long term, not the short term, we will not be able to feed the population. There will be increased famine and floods, our natural world will be decimated, and we will head for environmental disaster. There is no beating about the bush on this.
By setting a new set of sustainable development goals running until 2030, I am pleased to say that the UN has recognised that we must act in this area. I am also pleased that we have a 25-year environment strategy right here in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in which climate change is firmly embodied. I shall press to ensure that we have a firm strategy for putting that into place. Lord Krebs, chairman of the Climate Change Committee, specifically highlighted that recently in a sustainability conference. I am confident that our Government are taking this on board.
Just yesterday, as mentioned earlier, the Secretary of State said that we are committed to delivering our climate change commitment and that we are the greenest Government ever, so she must stick by it. She echoed the past words of the Prime Minister, who said the same thing not long ago in Prime Minister’s Question Time. He said that climate change was the “greatest danger” we have ever faced. I believe he is a great leader, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) said, and we need him to champion the cause.
The Climate Change Act 2008 gave us the tools to become a low carbon economy. No other country has commitments to match those Climate Change Act commitments, and we also have the independent Committee on Climate Change, which must keep holding our feet to the fire to ensure that we remain committed to cutting by 40% our 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and to have reduced the six greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050.
As a new Conservative MP, tackling climate change is a personal priority for me. It may seem strange, but in Taunton Deane, there is a great appetite for this. I was approached by an incredible number of people who raised the issue of climate change during my electoral campaign. They included groups such as Transition Taunton, Transition Athelney, the Quantock Eco group, and wildlife groups such as the Somerset wildlife trust—I declare an interest as a trustee—as well as farmers who had to combat flooding. They all came to me, some travelling to London, to urge me to press our Government to ensure that we keep to our climate change commitments. That is another reason why I am speaking today.
We have heard that Governments have agreed to limit global warming to 2 °C, which means that greenhouse gas emissions will have to fall by 80% to 95% by 2050. The statistics were eloquently put by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South. We need in Paris a clear global climate deal that sets out how each country is going to achieve that. But it is not all about what goes on internationally. We have to lead by example at home, as there is an indissoluble link between our methods of energy production and emissions. I think everybody is quite clear about that. Cutting emissions relies on transferring to a low carbon economy.
Yesterday’s announcement by the Energy Secretary to phase out all our coal-fired power stations by 2023 means that we are leading the way in this area, and we are one of the very first countries to make that commitment to phase out fossil fuels. It is a great message with which to head to Paris. As the Secretary of State said earlier, many people are talking about it. Coal is the most polluting way to generate power, and it still produces 30% of our energy. Coal plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and this is one of the main reasons why we are facing the challenge of climate change. Running one large coal plant full time as far ahead as 2030 would provide only 3% of our electricity, yet it would use up 50% of the UK’s emissions targets, so it makes absolute sense to get rid of coal-fired energy.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I completely agree with my hon. Friend and with the Secretary of State’s statement yesterday. I understand that Indonesia is planning to build coal-fired power plants equivalent to about two thirds of the entire UK grid capacity. While it is great that we are doing this, we are a very small player. That is why Paris is so important. We can lead by example, but we need the rest of the world to follow. Otherwise it is literally fiddling while Indonesia burns.
Rebecca Pow
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am coming on to talk a little more about the international context. He is absolutely right, but that is not a reason for us not acting. We still have to do everything we can to set the example, and then we need to go along and hopefully encourage others to join the team.
Caroline Lucas
I agree with much of what the hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree that it is not just about setting an example, but about recognising historic responsibility? If we are looking at the cumulative emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere, the UK is one hell of a lot more responsible than Indonesia.
Rebecca Pow
I am not going to disagree with that, but it is again no reason for not doing something. That is historic, and we did not have all the science at that time. We do have the science now, which is why we are going to move forward.
David Mowat
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is quite right that the UK is more responsible than Indonesia, but that is why it is disappointing that Germany is building brand-new coal-fired power stations, as in Holland. The point about Indonesia is right; it does not apply to Germany. While we are on the subject of coal, we need to understand that the world is still increasing its use of coal in absolute terms at a faster rate than its use of renewables.
Rebecca Pow
I thank my hon. Friend for that valuable intervention. While we are talking about the best kinds of energy that we should use, it is of course important to mention nuclear energy, which is another crucial part of our clean energy strategy. I mention it in particular because Hinkley C is on my doorstep and it will have a massive knock-on effect on Taunton Deane. It is the first new nuclear power station that we have built for 20 years. This is low carbon energy, and it will provide 7% of our energy requirements and keep the lights on for 6 million homes. It is so important as the baseload of non-fossil fuel energy.
The right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), who is almost a parliamentary neighbour, was talking about jobs lost in the renewables sector, but 25,000 jobs should be created with the development of Hinkley C, and 5,000 of them are going to be in Somerset. Hinkley C will spawn a raft of low carbon technologies, which are already starting up. That is very positive and heartening, and we should raise the flag, because this is the direction in which we should be going. Moreover, this power station is largely fuelled by private investment, which we must encourage, because we cannot keep demanding that the state supply everything. It is a model for the way forward, and I have high hopes that it will be used as a model for other nuclear power stations built in this country.
We have made progress on renewables, although things are changing slightly at the moment. It is welcome that 16% of our energy comes from renewables, and that £42 billion has been invested in renewable energy so far. Yes, the tariffs are changing, but the Secretary of State is considering what to do about solar companies that are in that “in-between” phase. We are continuing to encourage the use of offshore wind, which is a valuable addition to our energy supplies. However, in developing what I would describe as a new model for energy production in the UK, we must ensure that it does not damage the environment. As I said earlier, it must be sustainable. It must also be affordable, involving the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer. We must meet the Government’s fuel poverty targets, and we must do so at a time when the country is still in debt. The Pope was at pains to point out that energy costs must not penalise the poor and the vulnerable.
Given that we are getting hot under the collar, this is an appropriate moment at which to mention heat. A third of our emissions in the UK result from the inefficient use and waste of heat. I have spoken to the Secretary of State about the issue, and she assures me that the Department will look into it. It is a difficult issue to deal with, and it is expensive, but it is essential that we tackle it at a later stage. Decarbonising heat from buildings will definitely help us to close the carbon gap. Local authorities could work with low carbon roadmaps. The development of zero-carbon homes—which we should encourage when it is possible—and of more localised heating systems, such as district heating systems, will also help us to cut our emissions and secure higher energy efficiency, lower carbon emissions and less climate-warming.
Steve Brine
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way a second time. She is being very generous.
During the last Parliament, I served on the Bill Committee that considered what became the Energy Act 2011, which created the green deal. Like many other Members on both sides of the House, I am disappointed that the green deal is not continuing, although it would have been crazy to continue with something that was not working and was not delivering as we wanted it to. I hope my hon. Friend agrees that the issue of existing housing stock and its emissions is still critical, and that we need to reinvent the green deal in a new form in order to address it.
Rebecca Pow
I too was concerned about the green deal, but it clearly was not working. It was so complicated that there was no take-up. I know that lessons will be learnt, and I think that eventually we will come up with some sort of plan to make houses more efficient. The builders are certainly not averse to that.
As we have just heard, the UK is responsible for only 1.5% of the world’s carbon emissions, whereas China, for example, produces 26%. This is a global issue, and I am pleased that the Prime Minister has announced the provision of £5.8 billion of aid to help developing countries to tackle climate change through the international climate change fund between 2016 and 2021. I am also pleased that we are contributing £720 million to the green climate fund.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mr MacNeil
The lady is very honourable, and very generous; too generous, perhaps. As she says, the UK is responsible for only 1.5% of global emissions while China is responsible for 26%, but China’s emissions percentage reflects its percentage of the world’s population. Per head, the UK’s emissions are far higher.
Rebecca Pow
That is a good point, although China’s population is already falling, and we hope that it will continue to fall. We have to advise other countries, which is why Paris is so important. We must set the trend, and explain why it is important for others to buy into this.
David Mowat
It is interesting to note that China’s emissions per capita are the same as ours this year. I know that that does not detract from the point about embedded carbon, but it is interesting none the less.
Rebecca Pow
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.
Trees have been mentioned only briefly, but I am a great tree person, and I must speak up for them. We must encourage partnerships to reduce deforestation. We need to work with countries such as Brazil to stop the cutting down of rain forests, which is the single largest contributor to the release of carbon. Reducing cutting will have an enormous impact on climate change, and will also maintain our biodiversity—and placing a value on the benefits of biodiversity is part and parcel of the climate change debate. In that context, I am pleased that the Government are now talking about the importance of nature capital. Maintaining tree cover, whether it is done in Brazil or elsewhere in the world—including on the Somerset levels—will reduce flooding and soil erosion, aid soil maintenance, and give us cleaner water.
The Pope has called for increased action. We should bear in mind that not everything can be achieved in a stuffy room in Paris; a lot can be done there, but we in the House can do a lot as well.
Rebecca Pow
I will not, because I am about to end my speech.
I urge you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to join me and play your part in cutting emissions by running your washing machine on a very low heat. I do that, and the washing is still clean. You can also reduce your wash time, and you can turn down the heating or not put it on at all: my husband hardly ever lets me turn ours on. You can also use public transport, and grow your own food. Look after your soil!
Those are all things that we can do at home, but Paris is important in the long term. It is essential that the Government work to get the very best that they can out of it, and that we continue to lead by example.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I do not want to impose a time limit as such, but if Members speak for no more than 10 minutes, everyone will have an equal amount of time.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). She stressed the importance of combining the twin goals of tackling climate change and poverty globally, and I could not agree with her more. We must show a way forward that is about hope and optimism, and about making it clear that tackling climate change need not lead to impoverishment. Something that our country and other developed countries can contribute to—and, in a sense, we may be a bit jealous in this regard—is the ability of many countries to leapfrog over where we are to a cleaner and greener future. We can enrich the lives of communities and villages and children who live without light, which affects everything that they do in their daily lives.
If we do not challenge climate change, we will not tackle the potential for conflict in the world. The impact of climate change on our food production and water supplies is a starting point for more conflicts. Those who own the means of food production, and have access to and control of water supplies, can be a force for bad as well as good in the communities around the world in which they live.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is kicking off what will clearly be a fantastic speech. The present appalling situation in which people are fleeing Syria could occur again, through devastation caused by climate change or, as she says, because people simply want access to drinking water.
Caroline Flint
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Part of the challenge for all of us is the need to demonstrate, through discussions not just in the House but in our communities and with our partners around the world, that events happening thousands of miles away can have a knock-on effect here in way or another. I believe we have already seen in our own country some of the impacts of climate change. I think the public know that. That is why I thought it was important when my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), as leader of the Labour party, when we had those terrible floods here, said that we should look at tackling climate change as a national security issue. That important point was well made then and it has as much relevance today.
Clive Lewis
The National Academy of Sciences in the United States recently described climate change as a “threat multiplier”, particularly in the context of the middle east, where war, drought and hotter weather will mean a greater chance of increased pressure on water supplies, food and agriculture. That will have an impact on the potential for war and civil war in that area. My right hon. Friend raises an important point.
Caroline Flint
It is an important point. We should all be mindful of that. We should ensure that we do not approach this with an island mentality and that we recognise how those links should lead us to step up even more and paint the portrait of what is happening. We have to speak in pictures. Words, stats and learned prose have their place, but we have to draw a picture of what could happen if we do not step up and make some serious changes.
Caroline Flint
I am going to make a bit of progress because I have been forewarned by Mr Deputy Speaker, who said that we should try to limit our time.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate. I was happy to sponsor it. I would also like to mention some people from my constituency. I recently received a copy of a CAFOD petition organised by Gillian McCallum, a constituent, on behalf of two parishes in Don Valley, Christ the King Church Rossington, and Holy Family, Finningley. It called on the Prime Minister to show leadership on climate change. I know they will be pleased that the House is taking note of the Pope’s encyclical today.
I was also delighted to welcome students from McAuley school, a Catholic school in my constituency, when they were here for the “For the love of” Climate Coalition event in June and talked about how important the issue was to them. Last year, I was at that school and met some people from Peru, who vividly talked about the impacts of climate change on their communities and livelihoods. Speaking to those bright young pupils about climate change—all of us have probably spoken to such pupils in our constituencies—provided a vivid reminder of the fact that, although we are seeing the effects of climate change already, it is their generation and their children and beyond who will have to live with the consequences if we do not get this right now.
I also pay tribute to the city of Paris, which has been defiant in the face of the brutal murders there last weekend, and I commend its decision to go ahead with holding the Paris conference in a few weeks.
As shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, I led a debate on the road to Paris on the first Opposition day of this Parliament. I did so because the Paris conference means that this year is a vital year for climate change, but also because I wanted to voice the concerns of many that a Conservative majority Government might lead to the consensus on climate change formed in 2008 becoming less secure. In that debate, I asked for a number of reassurances about the Government’s approach in this vital year.
It is important to the success of Paris that the agreement includes a review every five years, so that ambition can be ramped up as progress is made, and that it includes robust and consistent reporting mechanisms so that every country can have confidence others are playing by the rules. I was pleased to see the Secretary of State commit to that as part of the UK’s demands. However, with weeks to go, this debate gives us the chance to look at what else has happened since that June debate.
We now have 140 intended nationally determined contributions submitted by countries that will be attending the talks. Although we know those submissions do not achieve the crucial target of keeping us under 2° of warming, significant progress has been made. The bilateral agreement between the US and China is one important step that would not have taken place without the process we have. When we think of the many years fighting for climate action, and the long road from Kyoto, we know this is no small step.
For the US, Obama has signalled the intention to ramp up investment in renewables, alongside a role for nuclear and carbon capture and storage, and to prioritise energy efficiency to cut bills as well as emissions. China has pledged up to 1,000 GW of new clean capacity by 2030. However, we have a long way to go, as the opposition of India and Saudi Arabia to a review mechanism in the G20 communiqué last week shows. But the momentum being generated is important in and of itself. If the direction of travel is right, 2° can be kept within touching distance. Not only that but we can reduce the atmospheric pollutants that kill people here and in the developing world, a point made recently by the eminent Lord Stern, as well as by the Pope.
The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) made an important point. He is right: the EU submission is lower in terms of its ambition on targets than our own enshrined in the Climate Change Act 2008, but that is why we need leadership. I would still like to see the EU raise its ambition but it does have in its submission the line, “at least” a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, so there is still scope for the Prime Minister to press the point home that we can do better than that and we can do more. I am not ashamed, and I am not suggesting the hon. Gentleman is, that we are leading from the front. We should tackle those individual countries that talk the talk but do not walk the walk and point out when there are inconsistencies in the way they are delivering their energy supply and reducing their emissions as a result.
However, the Prime Minister’s leadership has to be backed by leadership at home. I was concerned when the Secretary of State said that the UK should cease to play a leadership role and move “in step” with the rest of the world. As we have heard, since the election, a number of policy changes are affecting our ability to meet climate change targets and to create that important investment and those important jobs. We have seen the two cheapest forms of renewables undermined, onshore wind and solar. We have seen the green deal axed. I will make no bones about it: I thought the green deal was never a good deal anyway and we tried to effect some changes in the previous Parliament, but the fact is that it has been axed and there has been nothing to replace it.
The ECO—energy company obligation—has not served the needs of those most affected by fuel poverty. As a result of changes to the structure of that scheme, 400,000 fewer homes have been insulated. The zero carbon homes plan has been scrapped, an issue I feel close to as a former Housing Minister. When we set the target on that, in some ways, for the construction sector, it was not about the target date; it just galvanised the sector to think differently about how construction could play a part in ensuring that we have more energy-efficient homes that reduce emissions as well. Renewables have been forced to pay the climate change levy and the contracts for difference auction has been delayed.
The news from Government that a date has been set for phasing out unabated coal generation is welcome, as we know coal is the biggest emitter and the dirtiest pollutant. However, it is ironic to say the least that the Drax power station, which relies on coal to create its electricity, has been so undermined in recent times in its efforts to move to renewables and its support as an important partner for CCS. I urge the Government: please do not give up on CCS. We need it for industrial processes such as steel production as well as for electricity generation. Also, there is huge potential for the by-products from that process to create a market that could be good for our economy as well. It seems that that is an important area in which we can lead and not just follow others.
Nuclear is important, too. The hon. Member for Warrington South and I agree on that, but again let us look at the history. Part of the reason that this country and Parliament decided to look at nuclear again was that we wanted to commit to more ambitious climate change goals. I am proud that the last Labour Government took a very difficult decision on that. I remind the House that the Prime Minister said that it should be a last resort and the Liberal Democrats were against it, full stop. So I will not take any lectures about how slow the process has been. It has been difficult. We need to know now what the Government are going to do to ensure that that can play a part in decarbonising our generation.
The last six months have been disappointing, and the policy framework and certainty just are not there. His Holiness said:
“Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.”
None of us can dispute that. He then expressed a shared love of our planet, saying
“The entire material universe...the soil, water, mountains, everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
He also said:
“Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home... Truly, much can be done”.
His words speak to those of faith and of no faith. What they all share is an optimism that humankind, with the knowledge we have today, can save our planet. I stand with those people. I hope the Government will stand with them too.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I, too, congratulate the sponsors of the motion, and in particular the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on her substantial contribution.
It is clear we all agree today that climate change is the biggest challenge facing the planet and its people. It exacerbates the existing challenges of poverty, conflict, disease, resource depletion and population displacement and it increases the risk of greater insecurity around the world, reversing the progress made to a more peaceful and just world. The opportunity in Paris in a couple of weeks should not be overlooked, and in the light of the dreadful atrocities of last week, that opportunity is even more important. By the end of this year the city should not be remembered only as a target of terror, but as the cradle of a climate deal that cares for our communities and our “common home”, which, as we have heard, is how Pope Francis describes the planet in his encyclical on the planet Earth.
I thank the Members from various different parties who signed the early-day motion I tabled recognising and welcoming the encyclical when it was published. That was an extremely prophetic call from the Pope. I enjoyed the slightly theological exchanges between the hon. Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and for Bishop Auckland. Catholic social teaching is not usually either/or, and I have something to say about the messages the Church has produced going back over 150 years, as well as more recently—the Pope’s immediate predecessor Benedict XVI should be given credit for the work he did on the environment and this year we mark five years since his visit to the UK. Catholic social teaching does not prescribe specific courses of action; it outlines a direction of travel and broad principles, and it is then for decision makers, including all of us here today, to make judgments on the right course of action.
It is right to describe much of what Pope Francis has said as a prophetic document, in particular in paragraph 49 where he says that
“a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
That is the challenge before us today.
I also recognise the comments of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) that many religious leaders, and indeed secular leaders, of good will are behind this call. What the encyclical represents—at least if we come from that perspective—is the pinnacle of a global consensus that now is the time for action. That was ratified, as it were, at the UN back in September when the sustainable development goals were agreed by every single member state.
Robert Flello
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we leave it much longer, we will have gone past the time for action?
Patrick Grady
I do agree: the window of opportunity is closing, which is why the need for action is all the more urgent. That is perhaps why the SDGs, unlike the millennium development goals, particularly emphasise in goal 13 the need for urgent action on climate change. We have heard a lot about energy as well, and goal 7 commits the global community to providing
“access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.”
That is a huge and significant challenge and some of our exchanges on how best to do that have been very important.
Scotland, of course, is committed to playing its part as a good global citizen. It has some of the most ambitious targets for carbon emission reduction in the world, and, despite challenges, it remains on course to meet them. It is worth noting that the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 was passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament—there were not the three votes against that we heard about here.
Under the current and former First Ministers, the Scottish Government have also championed the concept of climate justice in their approach to climate change. Climate justice recognises that the poor and vulnerable at home and overseas are often affected first and hardest by climate change, yet have done little or nothing to cause the problem. If we adopt that justice principle, we have to take a human rights-based approach to the heart of decisions on sustainable and equitable global development, and it reinforces the strong economic case for a swift transition to a low-carbon economy that can still deliver jobs, investment and trade.
There is a particularly innovative approach through the Scottish Government’s climate justice fund, and I declare an interest here as before the election I worked for the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, which received grants from that fund. That employment gave me the opportunity to see at first hand the impact of climate justice funding, which is helping communities in rural Malawi overcome the effects of climate change through irrigation and sustainable agriculture projects.
Importantly, the climate justice fund is additional to the Scottish Government’s international development fund. It recognises that tackling the impact of climate change means going beyond traditional aid flows and structures. It would be useful to hear from the Minister what discussions she has had with the Scottish Government about this model and whether the UK Government are prepared to learn any lessons from it. This is particularly relevant given research from CAFOD which shows that the vast majority of UK Government support—43% of their total funding for energy projects overseas—is still going to fossil fuels
One reason the Scottish Government are able to be so ambitious is the widespread and unambiguous public support for action on these issues. At the climate lobby here at Westminster in June, many of the SNP MPs—43 of our 56 MPs—were lobbied by constituents. They had travelled—by sustainable and low-carbon methods, I am assured—all the way from Scotland to speak to us about the need for urgent action. I look forward to joining many thousands of others at Scotland’s climate rally a week on Saturday in Edinburgh, which will also send a powerful message to world leaders attending the talks in Paris.
Public support for political action also represents an appetite for deeper and more sustainable changes in our daily lives. People will make lower carbon choices if they are given the opportunity to do so. In my own city and constituency, we have seen a great uptake in cycling since the introduction of a bike-hire scheme, for example, but Governments have a role to play in promoting lifestyle change. Again, therefore, it would be interesting to hear the UK Government’s views on this matter.
I said to the Prime Minister during his statement on Tuesday that his attendance in Paris would be an act of leadership and solidarity, and I welcome the previous confirmation from Ministers that Scottish Government Ministers, and, I believe, representatives from the other devolved Administrations, have been invited to attend as part of the UK delegation and will be present in Paris as well. It is important that Heads of State and Government take part in the conference and do not simply leave negotiations to Ministers or officials. That will be not just an act of defiance in the face of terrorism, but a clear signal of what global priorities can, should, and must be: collective action to tackle climate change, which will otherwise remain the biggest threat to peace, security and the sustainability of our common home.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on taking a lead in securing this important debate. It could not be more timely, not only because of the Paris climate talks that are due to start in 10 days’ time, but because just last week the World Meteorological Organisation warned that global average temperatures are set to rise by 1°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. As the WMO’s secretary general, Michel Jarraud, put it,
“We are moving into uncharted territory at a frightening speed...The laws of physics are non- negotiable.”
While that is the crucial context for the Paris climate talks, the challenge of climate change is about much more than degrees Celsius and parts per million. That is why the Pope’s encyclical matters. It forces us to confront the reality that our response to climate change goes to the heart of who we are, and the values that guide our decisions collectively and as individuals.
Similarly, I welcome the leadership that other religious figures and organisations have played. I referenced the Islamic leaders’ initiative earlier, and I also want to pay tribute to the many innovative initiatives in my own constituency, especially that of the Brighthelm church, the first church in the UK to divest by pulling its funds and investments out of fossil fuels.
The case for the Government to adopt a scientifically literate and cross-governmental approach to climate change is coming from many directions—faith groups, business, civil society and, most recently, from the Governor of the Bank of England. It is increasingly clear that there is a strong economic reason to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, greener energy future. Back in September, Mark Carney issued a blunt warning to the fossil fuel industry that investors face what he called “potentially huge” losses from climate change action that could make vast reserves of oil, coal and gas “literally unburnable”. That is because, to remain under the 2° threshold, we as a global population must burn no more than 886 billion tonnes of carbon between the years 2000 and 2049, according to the International Energy Agency.
The global oil and gas companies have declared the existence of 2.8 trillion tonnes of carbon reserves, and their shares are valued as though those reserves were burnable, but the Carbon Tracker Initiative has warned investors that
“they need to understand that 60-80% of coal, oil and gas reserves of listed firms are unburnable”.
That is because, if we burn them, the atmosphere will warm to a catastrophic degree. The threat of ending up with assets stranded by tougher rules to curb climate change could affect the nearly 20% of FTSE 100 companies in the natural resources and extraction industries. As Mark Carney has said:
“Once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late”.
Within the investor community, the early adopters have already begun a substantial movement to divest from fossil fuels, a movement representing $2.6 trillion in assets under management. The world’s largest institutional investors, including the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth and Rockefeller Brother funds, have all expressed their concern about carbon-related investment risk, and they are already adjusting their portfolios accordingly by moving out of fossil fuel holdings.
I believe that Parliament should be taking a lead on this too. That is why I am engaged in an ongoing and, frankly, very lengthy correspondence with our own parliamentary pension fund managers. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us today that she will use her good offices to make them look at this more seriously and with more urgency because, to be frank, I have seen nothing to suggest that they are treating this with any urgency at all.
Divestment also models more broadly the kind of commitments we should expect to be taken by Governments, yet on the challenge of redirecting finance—both public subsidies and private capital—away from fossil fuels and into low carbon energy, our own Government’s policy too often involves doing exactly the opposite. We have seen the ending of subsidies for onshore wind, the slashing of solar subsidies, the awarding of tax breaks for fracking and for offshore oil and gas drilling, the application of the climate change levy to renewables, the ditching of zero carbon homes, the removal of community energy tax breaks and the funnelling of export credits into hydrocarbon projects abroad—the list goes on and on—yet not a penny is being put into the new public infrastructure fund for energy efficiency. Then yesterday, the go-ahead was given for a whole new dash for gas.
The Secretary of State has been treating us to a masterclass in cognitive dissonance. She continually speaks of competiveness being at the heart of our energy system, yet her Government have committed to subsidising outrageously expensive nuclear power stations while slashing support for solar and wind, which are more popular, cheaper and faster to deploy.
Robert Flello
On the basis of that list—that litany of failures—that the hon. Lady has just read out, can she imagine one of the attendees at COP21 saying to us, “Hang on a second. Who are you in the UK to preach to us, given that this is what you have done”?
Caroline Lucas
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to suggest that international leadership has to depend on domestic action at home; otherwise, it has absolutely no credibility. That is where I fear that this Secretary of State is letting us down.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Lady is putting forward some very good arguments. There is an underlying assumption that going green and acting to reduce carbon emissions come at a cost. However, I want to put on record that I recommend Amory Lovins’ TED talk—a well-spent 27 minutes and 10 seconds—entitled “A 40-year plan for energy”. It underpins some of her arguments and shows that we will not necessarily lose out financially by adopting green policies. On the contrary, it demonstrates that we could gain financially and that they could provide a boost to our economy.
Caroline Lucas
Indeed we will benefit economically. We will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, because the green economy is far more labour intensive than the fossil fuel economy that it will replace. That will help us out of our economic difficulties, rather than being a distraction from them.
At the risk of being a little more controversial, I want to say a few words about nuclear power—as though we have not already—and in particular about the issue of baseload power. There is plenty of evidence that those who think that we need nuclear for baseload power are peddling myths based on last-century thinking on energy systems. None other than Steve Holliday, the chief executive officer of National Grid, said recently that the idea that we need large power stations for baseload power was “outdated”. He also said:
“From a consumer’s point of view, the solar on the rooftop is going to be the baseload. Centralised power stations will be increasingly used to provide peak demand”.
He also said that energy markets
“are clearly moving towards much more distributed production and towards microgrids”.
Let us take an example from international best practice. The Kombikraftwerk project in Germany shows how a 100% renewables system can be made to work, using variable technologies such as wind and solar backed up by dispatchable ones such as hydro, biogas or biomass—in the UK we could add tidal—and reinforced by a variety of storage methods, with demand-side measures reducing overall demand and flattening peaks.
It is not just in Germany that that can happen. Recently, a study for Greenpeace set out a similar scenario for the UK. It showed that it is possible for the UK’s power system to be nearly 90% renewably delivered by 2030, while electrifying 25% of all heating demand and putting 12.7 million electric cars on the road. However, that is achievable only if we cut demand for space heating by 57% in the next 15 years. That is doable, but it is a major challenge, which again underlines the need for the Chancellor to make energy efficiency a top infrastructure investment priority in the spending review later this month.
These are the kind of positive measures that would make a real difference to reducing emissions while creating jobs and lowering fuel bills. Let me highlight a few more that would enable us to look back on the Paris COP in a positive light. First, as others have said, we must raise ambition before, not just after, 2020. We already know that the INDC—intended nationally determined contributions —pledges will not be sufficient to keep temperatures to below 2°, never mind the 1.5° demanded by more vulnerable nations and many campaigners. That means that Paris must produce a framework to ensure that commitments are rapidly strengthened, with ratchet mechanisms for countries to scale up their national plans every few years, starting straight away.
Does the Secretary of State accept that an honest analysis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s budgets for a “likely” chance of not exceeding 2 °C, accompanied by even weak allowances for equity, would require the EU to deliver at least an 80% reduction in emissions from its energy system by 2030, with full decarbonisation afterwards? That figure is roughly in line with a recent civil society review, highlighted by Oxfam and others, which found that national pledges add up to barely half the emissions reductions needed. Global ambition therefore needs to at least double by 2030.
Secondly, we need a long-term goal to phase out fossil fuels and phase in 100% renewable energy by 2050 at the latest. Countries such as the UK, which are rich financially as well as in bountiful renewable energy resources, should get there faster. It is a scandal that the Government are taking the UK in precisely the opposite direction, with the slashing of support for renewables, a reckless dash for gas, and increasing subsidies for fossil fuels.
Thirdly, Greens are calling for the Paris protocol to establish adequate and predictable international climate finance for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, as well as a functioning mechanism to address loss and damage. We could find that money from the revenues from market-based instruments to reduce global aviation and shipping emissions.
Fourthly, we need to kick the fossil fuel industry out of the negotiations. Governments have been meeting for more than 20 years, yet greenhouse gas emissions have not decreased and the climate keeps changing. The forces of inertia and obstruction prevail, and the fossil fuel giants and the politicians who do their bidding are responsible. That is why I am calling for the fossil fuel lobby to be kicked out of the UN climate negotiations.
Finally, we need to maintain human rights at the heart of our work to tackle the climate crisis. The respect, protection and promotion of human rights are prerequisites for effective global climate action. And, very finally, I want to highlight another imperative for ambitious outcomes at Paris—namely, our collective security. The reality of climate change as a threat to national security is something we hear more often from the military than from politicians. For example, just four months ago, the US Defence Department sent a report to Congress warning specifically of growing instability as a result of climate change.
More specifically, a major peer-reviewed study in March made a link between climate change and the Syrian civil war. Here in the UK, last year’s Ministry of Defence report, “Global Strategic Trends—Out to 2045”, warned that if global temperatures continued to rise, the consequent droughts and food shortages could trigger widespread social unrest—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) says that that is absurd. I suggest that he reads retired navy Rear-Admiral David Titley’s report, which puts forward the theory that the droughts in Syria are likely to be caused by accelerating climate change, which has led to more people leaving rural areas and coming into the cities, adding to social unrest. These things are being said by serious people.
In conclusion, for months and years to come, thinking back to “Paris 2015” will bore a terrible, painful hole in people’s hearts and minds. For the sake of our individual and collective security, we should work hard to ensure that Paris 2015 is remembered for the climate talks as well.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this debate. In my experience, if we ask most people what they want politicians to do, we find that they want us to work together to tackle the really big challenges, and that is quite hard in this place, as any newly elected Member soon comes to appreciate. However, there was one moment a few years ago when this place really did come together; as my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) pointed out, the Climate Change Act 2008 was supported by almost everyone in this House, and rightly so. It was groundbreaking legislation, setting out the structure we need to tackle one of the key problems of our age. The Climate Change Committee, by setting out the carbon budgets—we anticipate the next one soon—creates the framework within which investors and innovators can operate with some certainty, and without which we would not be able to make progress. It is a model of how a modern competitive economy can operate, with markets regulated in the interests of the common good. It is good for citizens, good for the environment and good for business; this is the model of how a modern economy looks to many of us in the Labour party.
How disappointing, then, that even with this excellent model, recent actions by the Government have taken us backwards. Their erratic U-turn on renewable subsidies; the selling off of the Green Investment Bank; the green deal disaster and binning of the decade-long zero-carbon homes plan have left the green energy sector infuriated and non-plussed, and left investors nervous. We are already lagging behind Germany, India, Japan, China and the United States in green investment, and cutting our commitment to renewable energy is hardly likely to improve matters.
Yet, what an opportunity we have. There is huge interest in these issues in Cambridge, and I commend to the Secretary of State the Cambridge climate message, which is supported by an impressive array of local organisations. They are clear that they want COP21 to be a success, not a cop-out. Cambridge and the wider East Anglian region is at the forefront of the clean-tech revolution, with more than 1,000 businesses already active in the sector, ranging from product development specialists to multinational enterprises with global reach. Some 10% of the UK total of low carbon and environmental goods and services companies are in the region, which means that the per capita concentration of companies is twice the national average. That emerging cluster is supported by a network of world-class universities and research centres, a highly skilled workforce and some of the world’s leading technical consultancies. Growth there can be built upon to bring about a halo effect for similar success outside our region, but it depends upon attracting investors. At the moment, these investors are scratching their heads and closing their wallets when faced with the Government’s constantly shifting policies on green energy.
I recently met people from Cambridge Cleantech, a highly effective members organisation supporting the growth of clean-tech companies in the greater Cambridge area, with the clear ambition further to develop Cambridge as a leading clean-tech centre in Europe. To fulfil that ambition they need to see better-defined, more stable Government policies that influence confidence in clean-tech investment.
Daniel Zeichner
Not subsidies. One of the outstanding local projects, Cambridge Retrofit, is a network of public and private sector organisations working together to bring at-scale retrofits to the building stock of the Cambridge community.
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. What we know is that when the private and public sectors work together effectively, we get a market that works. The problem in the current situation is that without investor certainty, the market does not work.
Let me return to talking about Cambridge Retrofit, which I commend to the right hon. Gentleman. Led by Professor Doug Crawford-Brown at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, it is helping the UK to meet its CO2 emission reduction targets, while helping the community reduce energy bills and supporting local businesses. When completed, the project will make a massive 20% to 30% reduction in carbon emissions in the Cambridge area. This shows that it can be done; it is about political will and political leadership, and that is what we need in the run-up to Paris.
We need—in fact, the wider world needs—to hear from this Government a clear assurance that they intend to prioritise innovation and reinstate long-term policies that will demonstrate their confidence in clean, green energy and technology. Attracting investment to this sector will help us deliver on our national energy, economic and environmental ambitions, and help the UK meet its international obligations and achieve a just transition. This House has shown before that it can rise to the challenge to come together to meet the great challenges of our age. My question is: can the Government?
Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
I add my thanks to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate to happen, in incredibly timeous circumstances. The debate has been very enlightening and well-conducted. The importance of the COP21 meeting should not be understated. The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that he was confident that a deal would be struck; the issue was whether we got a good deal or not. I wish to talk a little about what that good deal should look like.
As we have heard, the UN has analysed the INDCs submitted by 90% of the countries on Earth, suggesting that if they are met, we will get down to a 2.7° increase in temperatures. That represents huge progress from the 4° to 5° that we would have with no change, but it is still not enough. An increase of 2° C is the Rubicon that we must strive not to cross, as the impact on life on this planet if we get things wrong almost does not bear thinking about. As we have heard from a number of hon. Members, the impact will be harshest on the poor. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) has said, those who have contributed least to global warming stand to lose by far the most. As one of the planet’s earliest industrialised nations, and as a major producer and exploiter of carbon dioxide in terms of fossil fuels, we have a moral responsibility here.
One really encouraging sign, which has been touched on in this debate, is that there has been a decoupling of growth and carbon emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, at the global level we have 3% growth, with flatlined emissions. From the UK perspective, we are talking about 2.8% growth, with an 8.4% reduction. The comments about not offshoring are pertinent, but if we are having 3% growth globally with no increase, the suggestion is that it is possible to achieve growth and prosperity, which is required, but without the detrimental effects on our planet and the ensuing impact on populations—and then the knock-on effect on our economic prosperity.
What do we require? The commitments to seeking five-yearly reviews are fundamental. Whatever deal we get cannot be seen as enough in and of itself; it will have to be reviewed and improved upon, which will require concerted effort from Governments across the Earth. We also need the commitment to finding the money that is required—$100 billion has been suggested in order for us to feed in the required changes. That money needs at least in part—we hope it will be a considerable part—to be new money, because if it is a redistribution of existing aid, we will not meet the dual aims. We have heard about the sustainable development goals, which are fundamental. These things go hand in hand, and we cannot be seen to be taking money from sustainable development, in terms of some aspects of eradicating poverty, and putting it into climate change. There must be a combination of moneys and a concerted effort to ensure that we do this.
The action we will take in Paris, the words we will use and the power that we will exert—the soft power, in the form of diplomatic pressure on the rest of the world to take a lead—must be backed with action at home. The Secretary of State’s announcement yesterday on coal can be welcomed by most of us. I do not think that commitment should be understated—it is hugely important—but it should not be overstated either. It needs to be taken in consideration with some of the other things the Government have been doing, which we have heard about and which are damaging to our attempts to meet our climate change commitments. Mention has been made of the changes on onshore wind and solar, the removal of the climate change levy from green energy production, the scrapping of the commitment to zero-carbon homes—in England and Wales, I assume—and the decision to privatise the Green Investment Bank. That headline of scrapping coal will be the thing that many in the world will see, and it does provide a certain legitimacy to the Secretary of State and to the UK Government in arguing for change, but let us hope that people do not scrape too far beneath the service, because if they analyse this Government’s action in depth they will find that the world-class rhetoric is not borne out by action here.
As we have heard, the change on coal and its replacement with gas can make a significant contribution, but it will also lock in change, potentially for 30, 40 or 50 years. I have this ask of the Secretary of State: when we are looking at that new generation of gas-fired power stations, can we consider how we can use them, or at least make them ready to be adapted, should CCS be commercially deployable? If they are built ready to adapt to that technology, it will mitigate the amount of carbon that we cannot afford to have released.
I hope that in the autumn statement and the comprehensive spending review next week, the commitment to the funding of CCS is still there. That is essential, and we back the go-ahead of both Peterhead and White Rose. I agree with the Climate Change Committee’s assessment that we need at least another two projects coming out of this Parliament. That is probably the easiest way to adapt to a low carbon economy, but it requires support. Being at the forefront of that technology could allow us to benefit financially as well as ecologically.
I support the calls for a reconsideration of the policies around renewable energy. Again, we need to look at the economic case. I come back to the IEA, which has suggested that, in the coming years, 60% of all money that is spent on energy infrastructure will be on renewables. That is hugely important. The Secretary of State is very keen on offshore wind, and she will know that we have the potential to become a world leader in that area. We also need to see what more can be done with solar energy and onshore wind. I welcome her suggestion this morning that there is an open mind to the possibility of subsidy-free onshore wind, and a willingness to engage with the industry to make that happen.
We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North about Scotland’s climate change legislation. We are on track to meet our agenda. It is ambitious—moderately more so than the UK agenda as a whole. We are uniquely placed to contribute to the UK’s carbon reduction and to take more than a fair share of global reductions.
Callum McCaig
The right hon. Gentleman mentions subsidies from a sedentary position. In her speech yesterday, the Secretary of State acknowledged that no form of new generation will be built without subsidies. That is the reality of the energy climate in which we work today. Whether we like it or not, subsidies are required. If we take in carbon costs, the area that is most likely to be developed without subsidy is onshore wind, which, ironically, is the one that has been ruled out.
I welcome the fact that Scotland will be able to play its part in the UK delegation. Our story, as part of the UK story, is compelling, and I look forward to the UK, with Scotland playing a leading role, taking this matter forward, showing true global leadership and ensuring that we get a deal that is worth its name.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and the Backbench Business Committee for not only initiating this debate, but putting on the parliamentary agenda an issue that will be the defining test of our generation of politicians and people.
In just a few days’ time, the world will meet in Paris, which has, in recent days, been the site of so much distress and despair. The attacks that took place at the weekend were acts of hatred, designed to divide us, crush people’s hopes and destroy lives. At the landmark summit, the UK will have the opportunity to show real leadership, to give hope to people around the world and to take real action, collective action, on one of the most pressing issues of our times.
This is urgent. For years, Governments around the world have agreed that temperature rises should be limited to no more than 2°. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) said, this month we have learned that the world is already half way to that critical threshold.
Last year, scientists at NASA said that global temperatures have risen to their highest recorded level. With the exception of 1998, the 10 warmest years on record have all been since the turn of the century. Humanity’s greatest scientific minds have warned us time and again that the warming trend is now unmistakeable, and that climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is already happening.
We are running out of time. This is a direct threat to our national security. Global warming is already worsening extreme weather, putting at risk homes and livelihoods across our islands from worse and more frequent flood events. After the most intense period of rainfall in the record books caused Britain’s worst-ever floods last winter, the head of the Met Office warned that
“all the available evidence suggests there is a link to climate change.”
Climate change is a threat to our broader economic prosperity and to the families and businesses that depend on a growing economy. New research for Aviva Investors found that if temperature rises of up to 5° of warming occurred, it could result in $7 trillion of losses, which is more than the total market capitalisation of the London Stock Exchange. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) reminded us some moments ago, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has said:
“Climate change will threaten financial resilience and longer term prosperity”.
He warned:
“Once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late.”
Climate change is also a threat to public health. A major commission by British doctors, published in The Lancet earlier this year and backed by the World Health Organisation, found that rising temperatures constituted a threat to people’s wellbeing because of heatwaves, the spread of infectious diseases and crop failures.
Launching the commission’s findings, Hugh Montgomery from University College London told reporters:
“Climate change is a medical emergency. It demands an emergency response.”
This is an issue of social justice. All of us have a duty to protect some of the poorest people in the world, and here at home, from threats to their security. That is why I do not believe that we or anyone else can afford to turn our back on the issue.
Pope Francis was right when he called action on climate change
“a matter of justice...a question of solidarity.”
He said:
“It is the poorest who suffer the worst consequences.”
When world leaders meet in Paris for UN talks to try to finalise a new global agreement, it is imperative that the outcome keeps the goal of climate safety within reach. Nobody expects that the Paris summit will completely solve the carbon problem, but it is a moment when we will stand at a crossroads. We have a real chance to establish a pathway to the ultimate goal of a global economy that does not rely on destroying the world’s rainforests and burning highly polluting fuels, and that seizes on the opportunities presented by modern clean energy technologies.
The Government should know that they have our full support in the UN talks to strive for an agreement that includes ambitious climate plans from all countries towards the ultimate goal of a completely carbon-free global economy in the second half to the century. It was encouraging to see the Prime Minister and other G7 leaders back this target when they met in June. I hope this will now become a truly international commitment when Governments meet in Paris in a few days’ time.
As the cost of clean technologies continues to fall, the Paris accord must include an important commitment to strengthen national plans every five years towards achieving this global long-term goal. I had an exchange this morning with the Secretary of State and I was pleased to hear her express her support for this.
We should start from where we are. Some climate change impacts are inevitable as a consequence of the carbon pollution that is already in the atmosphere, so I welcome the Government’s commitment to direct substantial aid towards the poorest and most vulnerable communities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) knows and reminds me so often, we must take steps to adapt to worsening extreme weather and rising seas through the hurricane-proofing of schools and the building of sea walls.
The UK goes to the Paris summit with a proud history of action on climate change. It was Tony Blair who put the issue on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council and the G7. It was my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North and his brother who passed into law the world’s first-ever Climate Change Act. It was Gordon Brown who took action in Copenhagen to win agreement from other world leaders to set up the UN’s global climate fund to help the poorest countries in the world to protect their citizens from the impact of stronger hurricanes and rising seas.
I am proud that we doubled renewable energy generation and put in the work to make sure that the UK was a global leader across a range of clean energy technologies. I am proud of the jobs and the opportunities for young people that those projects have created across the length and breadth of Britain, including in my own constituency. Two thirds of the renewable projects that came online in the past five years started under the Labour Government. But as we were told by my right hon. Friends the Members for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who did so much to keep this on the agenda in the previous Parliament, we cannot ignore the fact that the legacy of the UK’s leadership at home and abroad is now at risk.
We cannot make progress towards climate change safety while we are unravelling all the policies at home that will help us shift towards a low carbon economy. Let us consider what they are. Solar energy support has been cut by almost 90%. The only nuclear power station on stream has been delayed yet again—delayed twice under this Government; delayed yet again. Energy efficiency programmes are being cut in real terms. Carbon capture and storage projects have not been delivered. Onshore wind farms are being blocked, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig) said, even where they enjoy local support. The Green Investment Bank is being sold off without a proper mandate to invest in new green clean energy.
The Energy Secretary was right yesterday when she said that ageing coal-fired power stations would be closed within the next decade and should be replaced with more modern technologies, but new cleaner power stations are not being built at the rate required to replace them and to secure our energy supplies. I will take no lessons from Government Members about Labour’s record on this. We delivered a record number of gas power stations. The nuclear projects that the Secretary of State is working on were initiated under Tony Blair. They have twice been delayed on this Government’s watch. When this Government came to power, they inherited a 16% power surplus. It is now down to 5% and National Grid is having to use emergency measures to safeguard our energy supply.
The Government do not appear to have any kind of plan to ensure a just transition that protects the communities that are dependent on those industries for their livelihoods and to ensure that the workforce remain in good, skilled jobs. Only yesterday the Secretary of State acknowledged the role that coal miners have played in this country, doing dangerous and difficult work that changed lives here and boosted our national prosperity. As we move into the future, the skills, the patriotism and the work ethic of people in coalfield communities ought to be our greatest national asset, but where is the industrial strategy that will safeguard jobs and skills in those communities and help us build a new, clean energy system?
The present chaotic, contradictory approach to energy policy has been criticised by the CBI and by Ernst and Young for causing serious confusion. It puts off investment that we badly need for our energy security, and it sends a hugely damaging signal at a time when Britain must harness the momentum that exists internationally to get a deal to tackle the threat posed by climate change. This will be the defining test of our generation. It is a test that we cannot afford to fail. It is right that the Secretary of State has come to respond to the debate herself. I applaud her for doing so. She will have heard what hon. Members said today. She will have heard the words of Pope Francis. I urge her to change course, and if she does so, she will have our full and guaranteed support.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
I thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and the Backbench Business Committee for calling this important debate at this crucial time as we enter the climate negotiations in Paris. I thank all those who participated in it. It has been truly inspiring and interesting on account of the many different points of view expressed.
The hon. Lady spoke clearly about the Pope’s encyclical and underlined His Holiness’s points about how it is incumbent on all politicians to limit the increase in climate change in order to protect the poorest of the world, who are already the worst affected by dangerous climate change. She spoke also about the imperative of legally binding agreement—that is our aim—and moved on to comment about sanctions. However, the situation is more delicate than that. Her emphasis on sanctions, the legally binding aspect and the outcomes thereafter misses the point about the intended nationally determined contributions—the INDCs. We are tantalisingly close, I believe, to a successful outcome in Paris. We now have countries involved in these debates and conversations in reaching for an agreement in Paris who were not participating 10 or 15 years ago, but we have to tread very carefully in relation to what is perceived as national sovereignty. I take her advice in terms of wanting this to be legally binding, but I urge her not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) gave us a helpful run-down on the Pope’s central theme about man, nature and God. He suggested that we do not “weaponise” what the Pope said. Perhaps Labour Members might remember that as we debate this important issue. I am grateful for his eloquent summary of the encyclical.
I can tell the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) that the same people with whom he was in discussions at Copenhagen are still on the circuit, and they remember him fondly and with respect, I am happy to say—although mentioning Copenhagen at the Paris negotiations is like mentioning Voldemort to small children. I share his view that what happens after Paris is key. As he will know, we are ambitious to get a deal in Paris, but what is really key is the nature of the reviews and how binding they are going forward. He will also be aware of how difficult it is to get certain countries to commit, and how delicate it is, as we approach Paris, to try to keep everybody in the tent and yet to have an ambitious deal. The world sought to build on progress in Copenhagen, though the high expectations were not met. The Copenhagen accord did result in a number of countries pledging to reduce emissions by 2020, but we have moved on. Climate change is almost universally recognised as a serious threat to global prosperity, security and wellbeing, and more and more countries are taking action in response.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) is right that the UK’s ambition is one of the toughest in the world. He made the important point that nuclear power is a critical part of our low carbon future, and he reminded us that achieving our reduction in emissions is not all about new renewables but also about low emissions at least cost. Innovation is important, and progress in low carbon energy and storage is driving down the costs of climate action. The cost of low carbon technology is falling sharply. Solar costs have fallen by 80% since 2008, and wind turbine costs have fallen by 27% since 2009. I would say to the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) that that is why we are reviewing the costs and reducing subsidies, and it is right to do so. We now have 8 GW of solar—I would not describe it as a “fledgling” industry—and I hope that we will have much, much more as we go ahead.
My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) spoke well about her contribution and experience as an environmental commentator. I am grateful for her comments and her involvement in this debate.
The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) made the key point that we can have emissions reductions and grow our economy. I agree. We are seeing the uncoupling of growth and emissions. This year’s PricewaterhouseCoopers low carbon economy index shows for the first time that while global GDP grew by 3.3% in 2014, energy carbon dioxide emissions rose by only 0.5%. The UK is at the forefront of this development, cutting our emissions by 8.4% last year against a backdrop of a growing economy. The UK is already benefiting from the transition to a low carbon economy. In 2013, the UK’s annual turnover in this sector was £122 billion, equivalent to twice that of the auto manufacturing industry and food and drinks industry.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) highlighted the importance of climate justice, and asked particularly about climate finance. This is a critical area for a deal in Paris. The pledge is to demonstrate that the developed world can mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries. The UK continues to play a leading role in that, and it is right that the Prime Minister was able to increase our pledge in order to support it.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) shared her regular view that we are making insufficient progress, but I agree with her on the implications of climate change for the wider economy, as set out by Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England.
The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) is a new Member of Parliament, but nevertheless he has learned the skill of calling for unity but then attacking Government policy. I urge him to look at the full statement I made yesterday, which set out a full energy policy, and I hope he will see the pattern in it.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig) made some interesting comments and we agree with him that it is possible to have both growth and a reduction in carbon emissions. I was also delighted to hear his support for our policies on offshore wind.
The final speaker was the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). I am delighted to say that we welcome her commitment towards, and share her feeling of urgency for, what we are trying to achieve, but it is disappointing that the Opposition choose to weaponise our differences in focus, because we should be taking a cross-party approach. However, I will glide over that and simply agree with her that we are united as a country and as a House in wanting an ambitious, legally binding deal in Paris, with regular reviews and a long-term goal. Paris will not be the end but the moment when the world changes direction and kick-starts a revolution to a new kind of growth and development.
Helen Goodman
I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed to this excellent and worthwhile debate on a very important issue. Over the next few weeks, many people will have their eyes on Paris, hoping and praying for a good agreement. I will give the last words to Pope Francis, who asks
“that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.”
He says:
“Enlighten those who possess power and money
that they may avoid the sin of indifference,
that they may love the common good…
and care for this world in which we live…
help us to protect all life,
to prepare for a better future”.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes the Pope’s Encyclical, entitled Laudato Si’, Our Common Home, on climate change and international justice which is an important contribution to discussions on this vital subject; further notes that the 2015 climate change conference will be held in Paris between 30 November and 11 December 2015; and calls on the Government to recognise the significant support for a successful outcome to the conference which should commit to take further steps to tackle climate change effectively in the UK and around the world before 2020.
New Cancer Strategy
(9 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House notes the findings of the independent cancer taskforce published in July 2015; and calls on the Government to publish an action plan on implementing the new cancer strategy.
I want to begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting this timely debate. I also thank fellow officers of the all-party group on cancer, some of whom are going to participate in this debate, and the officers of the other cancer-specific all-party groups, who joined me in applying for this debate. This therefore represents a coming together of all the cancer-related APPGs. Although we want to raise specific issues, we are all agreed on the importance of debating the new cancer strategy delivered by the cancer taskforce.
I hope you will not mind, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I mention the fact that on 8 December the all-party group on cancer will hold our annual Britain Against Cancer conference in Central hall. It is the largest gathering in the country of the cancer community, and I warmly invite all Members to join us on the day. My thanks would not be complete if I did not also thank the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), who is sitting on the Front Bench, having stepped into the shoes of the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who has responsibility for cancer. Unfortunately, she cannot be with us today, but she is a good friend of the cancer community. To help my hon. Friend on the Front Bench, I sent him an advance copy of my speech. He may not be able to answer all of my questions from the Dispatch Box, but I look forward to receiving his written responses to those that he cannot answer today.
Perhaps we need to remind ourselves of the challenge. There are currently 2.5 million people living with cancer in the UK, and by the end of next year it is expected that 1,000 people will be diagnosed with cancer every day. Macmillan Cancer Support has suggested that in a few years’ time, one in two people will have been affected by cancer.
The challenge of delivering world-class cancer outcomes for all patients is growing ever greater. Hospital admissions for cancer in England have gone up by 100,000 a year compared with five years ago. For 17 months, the NHS has missed the target for cancer patients to receive their first treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral. Our outcomes continue to lag behind our European counterparts. Research has shown that the one-year cancer survival rate in the UK is about 13 percentage points behind the best in Europe, which is about 81%. That may not sound like a big figure, but it means that in the region of 10,000 lives a year are lost needlessly, in large part because the cancer was diagnosed too late.
That is the backdrop against which the cancer taskforce delivered its recommendations for a new five-year cancer strategy in July—something that the whole cancer community welcomed. Like others who are campaigning for improvements in cancer services, I was disappointed that the cancer taskforce report ended up being a report to the NHS and its arm’s length bodies, rather than a report of the NHS and its arm’s length bodies. That was not the original intention. However, that should not detract from the excellent work that went into it. Our congratulations should go to Mr Harpal Kumar for his efforts and hard work in preparing the strategy.
The recommendations of the strategy are based on evidence and advice from organisations across the cancer community, including the all-party parliamentary group on cancer. It covers the whole cancer pathway from early diagnosis to care after treatment and at the end of life. It aims to deliver a radical improvement in cancer outcomes by 2020.
Since its publication, the strategy has been welcomed by the Government, the health sector, the charities and the cancer-related all-party groups in this place. Attention must now turn to the implementation of the taskforce’s report. I congratulate Ministers on pre-empting the spending review in at least two ways by committing the Government to two of the key recommendations in the strategy. First, there is a commitment to ensure that all patients receive a definitive diagnosis within four weeks of their referral from a GP. Secondly, there is a commitment to ensure that all patients are offered a recovery package by 2020 and to develop a new metric on quality of life.
However, the taskforce has been clear that the recommendations set out in the strategy will deliver a step change in outcomes only if implemented as a whole. It is therefore important that there is urgency in implementing the remainder of the strategy. If he can, will the Minister outline today when he expects to publish the implementation plan and what degree of consultation he envisages before its publication? What assurances can he give that Ministers will ensure that the implementation plan contains clear deadlines and earmarked resources for implementing the strategy’s recommendations?
May I touch briefly on the importance of earlier diagnosis, which is one of the key priorities identified in the strategy? That point is of particular interest to the all-party parliamentary group on cancer and the other cancer-related all-party groups. As some Members will be aware, the all-party parliamentary group on cancer campaigned tirelessly on improving early diagnosis—what we call “cancer’s magic key”. The logic behind our campaign is exceedingly simple: the evidence shows that people who are diagnosed earlier are more likely to survive for over one year and, therefore, to survive cancer generally.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend and all the cancer APPGs on securing this important debate. Early diagnosis is absolutely key, as he rightly points out. Regrettably, my mother died of acute myeloid leukaemia in 2012. She was diagnosed on the day before her death. We really do need to bear down on this issue. Will my hon. Friend pay tribute to charities such as Bloodwise that do such important work in highlighting this area of cancer?
Mr Baron
I will do so by all means. Let me express my heartfelt sympathies to my hon. Friend as regards his mother. He is absolutely right that charities such as Bloodwise, as well as many others across the charitable sector, realise the importance of earlier diagnosis. I will give him one statistic that directly answers his question. I spoke at an event about bowel cancer yesterday. The statistics quite clearly show that 90% of people diagnosed in the early stages of bowel cancer survive for more than 10 years, but that figure drops to just 5% if they are diagnosed at a later stage. That is the difference that earlier diagnosis can make.
The logic behind focusing on earlier diagnosis is very simple. We have found over a number of years that the NHS is as good as any other healthcare system at getting patients from the one-year point after diagnosis to the five-year point, but is poor at getting them to the one-year point in the first place. That suggests that it is not good at detecting cancer. We lose the vast majority of those 10,000 lives in the early phase—up to one year—and then it is simply not possible to catch up. We therefore need to do more on earlier diagnosis.
Getting the NHS to focus on the one-year figures will encourage initiatives on the frontline to promote earlier diagnosis. By putting the one-year figures up in lights, we can ensure that the local NHS realises that it is being monitored. It will therefore be up to the local NHS to introduce and adapt a range of initiatives that suit the local population best, whether they are elderly people, black and minority ethnic populations or whatever. The initiatives range from everything from encouraging better screening uptakes to encouraging better awareness campaigns when it comes to education, better diagnostics in primary care and better GP referral rates, all or any of which could be approved locally to drive up earlier diagnosis.
I suggest that earlier diagnosis, as well as being better for patients, can also save the NHS money. Incisive Health and Cancer Research UK published a report last year that set out the cost savings of diagnosing a patient early. One example is in colon cancer. Stage 1 treatment costs about £3,300, while stage 4 treatment costs £12,500, which is a notable difference. If we look at the range of cancers and the number of cancer patients involved, we can see that we could save hundreds of millions of pounds if we raised our game and diagnosed cancer early.
The all-party group on cancer and the wider cancer community, including the Cancer Campaigning Group, have worked collaboratively with the Government and NHS England—I congratulate the Government most heartily on listening to our concerns—and have campaigned together to get the one-year figures into the DNA of the NHS. We have managed to get them into the NHS outcomes framework and the commissioning outcomes framework.
Last year, our efforts culminated in a successful campaign to ensure that a one-year cancer survival rate indicator is included in the delivery dashboard of the clinical commissioning group assurance framework from this April. For the moment, that is the primary mechanism by which CCGs are held to account. Many CCGs have told us that it is the primary tool they use for determining priorities at local level. With the one-year figures now up in lights in the top tier of NHS accountability, commissioners will be encouraged to take action in their local area to improve earlier diagnosis and ultimately to improve cancer survival rates.
Many people may think, “Job done. We’ve managed to get the one-year rate into the DNA of the NHS. We’ve managed to get it on the radar screen of CCGs. Is there anything else we should be doing except following through on those initiatives?” However, many of us are concerned that the recently proposed changes to the accountability system in place for CCGs may undermine this work. A few weeks ago, the Secretary of State announced a new scorecard for measuring the performance of CCGs, which will involve each CCG being awarded an Ofsted-style rating with effect from next April. Although the all-party group on cancer approves in principle the improvement of accountability, we strongly advocate, on behalf of the cancer community as a whole, that the use of the one-year figures to drive earlier diagnosis at local level is not lost throughout this process. Will the Minister outline in further detail the Government’s plan to implement a CCG scorecard and the process by which the metrics relating to cancer will be determined? Will he confirm that the focus on one-year survival rates will not be diluted?
Let me mention the reforms suggested in the cancer strategy for the patient pathway. With a growing number of people surviving cancer, it is particularly important that we make improvements throughout the whole cancer pathway, and there are two key parts to that. First, all too often patients report being treated as a set of symptoms rather than as a person, and certain groups of patients—namely older people, ethnic minorities and those with rarer cancers—report a poor patient experience. Secondly, many cancer patients lack the necessary support to get on with their lives once treatment has ended.
The all-party group on cancer welcomes the increased focus on patient experience across the NHS, but we must do more to ensure that we have the right data to drive improvement at local level. Although the cancer patient experience survey is a useful tool, too often the data are difficult to access and not widely used. The cancer strategy recommends the creation of a new metric to measure the patient experience across the whole pathway. Will the Minister set out how the Government plan to implement the strategy’s recommendation on a new patient experience metric, and say how they will ensure that data are used effectively to drive improvement at local level? Will he confirm that there will be sufficient resources for the new metric and the cancer patient experience survey?
We welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring that all patients have access to a recovery package following their treatment, but if we are fully to address that challenge it is vital that the NHS understands where it is working well and where improvements are needed. As such, it is vital that the strategy for the development of a new quality of life metric is taken forward as a priority. Will the Minister ensure that the Government’s commitment to take forward that recommendation for the cancer strategy to develop a quality of life metric is backed up with clear plans for funding and implementation?
In the few minutes that remain, let me address a couple of key issues including rarer cancers and the cancer drugs fund. It is an interesting fact that the combined number of rarer cancers—those less common than breast, lung, prostate and bowel cancer—outnumber the sum total of those more common cancers. Services for people with rarer cancers are no less important, and we must ensure that people with rarer cancers get access to the right level of specialist expertise, irrespective of where they live. The taskforce recommendation for the creation of highly specialised multi-disciplinary teams for rarer cancers is particularly welcome. Will the Minister assure the House that that will happen, and that MDTs will be supported by technology so that they can deliver specialist care without inconveniencing patients?
Research efforts into rarer cancers must be redoubled. The Government are leading the world in their investment in genomics, most notably through their 100,000 genomes project, which is sequencing the genomes of those with cancer and rare diseases in general. It is good that the project has so far fully sequenced the genomes of 5,000 patients, but will the Minister update the House on progress with cancer patients? May I suggest that, once complete, Genomics England should independently carry that research forward for the benefit of the NHS and patients, given its excellent track record?
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Is the hon. Gentleman as worried as I am that companies that are investing in finding drugs for rarer cancers are, because of their nature, small in number, and they should not be put off investing in research to find cures for those cancers because they feel that the Government—whatever party is in power—will perhaps pull the plug or concentrate only on the more common cancers?
Mr Baron
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, and one hopes that there is proper dialogue with all the parties concerned to ensure that what he describes does not happen. The approach to science must be collaborative. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas, but I suggest that the Government should be congratulated on their ground-breaking 100,000 genomes project, as long as it does not freeze out research in the private sector. I hope that there is dialogue to ensure that that will not happen. If there is not, that issue needs to be raised with the relevant bodies in this place.
On the cancer drugs fund, people living with cancer need the best treatment available. We can all agree to that. Approximately 72,000 cancer patients have benefited from the fund. That testifies to the Government’s commitment. We recognise, however, that reform is needed over the longer term. We need a longer term solution to the cancer drugs fund. The Government apparently also believe that reform is essential. Recent NHS England board papers indicated a continuing overspend on the cancer drugs fund, underlining the fact that a long-term solution is needed now.
When reforms are introduced, it will be important that the spirit of the CDF—that patients are able to gain access to the treatments their doctors recommend—is maintained at a cost that is affordable to the NHS. There have been reports about NHS England refusing to discuss some offers of cost reduction with drug companies due to the rules under which the CDF operates. That needs to be addressed urgently if the overspend is to be tackled. I very much welcome—I am sure everybody else in the House does, too—the news that the CDF consultation opened today, at, I think, 1 o’clock this afternoon. I recommend, as I am sure others do, that all relevant parties participate in this very important consultation. Will the Minister provide assurances that the NHS will be supported in demanding the best possible deal from the drug companies, because that will be an important element of the process?
I want to finish by speaking about the importance of leadership and accountability, both at national and local level. The all-party group on cancer strongly welcomes both the strategy’s recommendation to introduce cancer alliances to drive improvement at a local level, and for the National Cancer Advisory Board to provide accountability at a national level. The National Cancer Advisory Board, in particular, will be important in ensuring accountability for the strategy, and that momentum and focus is retained. It is vital that this body is set up as a priority, so we can monitor progress and implementation from the beginning and set up the right structures to ensure strong accountability. Will the Minister set out how the Government plan to monitor the delivery of the cancer strategy recommendations and to measure their success?
I thank the Minister once again for responding to the debate. I know this is not his usual brief and I would be very happy for him to write to me after the debate if he does not have the answers to all the questions at his fingertips. As ever, there are a number of areas I have not had the chance to cover. Time simply has not allowed it, but I hope they will be covered by other colleagues speaking in this afternoon’s debate.
I want to finish by emphasising the opportunity presented by the new cancer strategy. By implementing its recommendations in full, and by retaining the focus on the one-year survival rates as a means of driving forward and promoting earlier diagnosis, we have the potential to deliver world class outcomes across the entire cancer pathway: to dramatically improve our cancer survival rates, to deliver care tailored to the patient and to ensure that patients are supported. But action must be taken now. Doing nothing is not an option. The challenge, as I highlighted at the beginning, is huge, but in the cancer strategy we have a clear plan for how to make it work. I urge the Government to take action now, to fulfil our manifesto commitment to implement the strategy in full, and to deliver the care, treatment and world class outcomes cancer patients deserve.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
I should start by saying that I am, with the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), the joint-chair of the all-party group on stem cell transplantation.
I want to raise a few brief points in respect of the care of blood cancer patients who have had transplants and the ongoing care they receive. It is fair to say that at present the level of support can be described as patchy at best. There is a considerable lack of understanding of some of the issues that transplant patients face.
Anthony Nolan estimates that, by 2020, there will be 16,000 people in the UK living with the long-term effects of a stem cell transplant, and they will have a higher risk of secondary cancers, infections, particularly in the early stages, infertility and problems with muscles and joints. Then there is an area not touched on much: the psychological effects of both the diagnosis of blood cancer and a transplant. Graft-versus-host disease will affect the majority of patients in the early post-transplant period, but it can persist for many years. Some element of the disease is not necessarily a bad thing, because it shows the transplant is working, but if it gets out of hand, it can cause organ failure and a host of other problems that can, and do, kill patients. In the longer term, the effects can be as minor as skin irritation, but, if in the gut, they can lead to more complicated problems, resulting in the patient having to go back into hospital.
As I said, the flare-ups can occur not only in the first few years, but many years down the line, yet a survey of 27 transplant centres in the UK found that while they all provided support for a year post-transplant, only half followed up after five years. Importantly, only 28% offered mental health support. This problem affects not only cancer patients, but a whole host of healthcare issues: we address the physical side of an illness, but then the patient walks out the door without our addressing their mental health needs or asking how they are coping with the diagnosis and other ongoing problems.
Some years ago, I spoke in the Chamber about my son’s experience of having a stem cell transplant. We had to look for support and counselling. Children, particularly younger children, will have questions such as, “Why has this happened to me?” and “Why can’t I run like I used to?”, but we had to ask for that support. It was not necessarily there in the first place or as part of an overall package, as one might have expected.
I said in the Chamber that I was particularly concerned about the lack of support for children going back to school. I believe there are still no national guidelines for how schools should deal not only with returning pupils, but with other, particularly younger, children. How might they feel about seeing a child they have not seen for a while? The last time they saw them they looked like them, but now they might be on steroids or have no hair—a particular issue for girls, although it is not great for anybody. I was concerned about the poor provision and the lack of guidelines. Some schools do it very well, but some show very little understanding. CLIC Sargent has done a lot of work in this area, but we need to do more. We have to look beyond cancer. Cancer is what people are treated for, but there is a host of other issues around it. We need to look at the whole, rather than just the illness itself, and at how we support people after that illness.
We define the transplant period as 30 days prior to and 100 days after the transplant, but this assumes that all patients need the same support and have the same outcomes. It takes very little account of some of the late effects that patients will experience. No patient is the same or will have exactly the same demands, yet there is this idea that we can set an arbitrary period of 100 days, as though at the end of it we can say, “Well, everyone’s fine. We don’t need to give them the same level of support.” However, patients go to their local area and then we are back with this postcode lottery, where some get very good support but some get very little, particularly if people are not exactly sure where they should go to receive support.
I do not think that is particularly fair, so I would like—and I know Anthony Nolan would like—a system that looks a lot further than 100 days and instead looks for support for a five-year period at least. Clearly there will be different requirements within that. Hopefully, some patients will not need a great deal of support, whereas others may need a lot of ongoing support. We need the flexibility to respond to that, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
We need to do more on ongoing support, and we should not forget either that stem cell transplants are now evolving—they are a lot more common than they were—and it is not just blood cancers we are looking at. Through the work of the all-party group on stem cell transplantation, I know that this is an area that offers us a great opportunity. Equally, we cannot ignore the fact that 50% of transplant patients die within the first two years, so there is a lot of work we need to do—generally, it is not the transplant that kills them, but some of the associated problems and immunity issues.
Finally, let me say to the Minister that we need to look more broadly at how we support transplant patients, get beyond this arbitrary figure of 100 days, and support people with the physical illness but also, very importantly, with adjusting to some of the psychological issues that can arise.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
I must start by offering my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron)—who is smiling next to me—who I have watched over the years toiling in this Chamber in the cause of cancer patients. He has done so, if I may say so, very effectively, and not just on cancer outcomes—he focused today on one-year outcomes—but on the provision of specialist drugs for patients. He has maintained a relentless pressure on the Government and it has been a joy to serve with him as a junior vice-chairman on the all-party group on cancer.
I hope today to bring to bear some of my experience in the House, which on Tuesday Mr Speaker generously described as 28 years of experience. He might have said 28 years of pursuing an holistic, patient-centred agenda that broadens choice in the health service. If we look at the cancer outcomes report, “Achieving World-Class Cancer Outcomes: A Strategy for England 2015-2020”, we find that the key themes are integrated pathways, holistic support for patients and a patient-centred service—“Patients should feel empowered”.
The agenda we find in that report is not a new one in the House. I have referred to my long involvement in this side of parliamentary life—I have been chair of the all-party group on integrated healthcare since it was formed and before that I was chair of the all-party parliamentary group for alternative and complementary medicine, so it covers pretty much the whole of my time in the House. If we look back at the meetings of that group, we see that they offer some instruction. The first message to get across to the House is that there is no need to recreate the wheel. If we look back, as I did, at the meetings of the all-party group on integrated healthcare—I discovered that I chaired more than 100 of them over the best part of the last 30 years—we find that there has always been a strong base of holistic and personalised care, which has been developed in certain hospitals and care institutions in this country.
I looked up the information about the 2001 exhibition that we put on in the Upper Waiting Hall for providers of complementary medicine. It was to highlight particularly good practice in the integrated healthcare awards of 1999. The winner was Charing Cross cancer services for offering a multidisciplinary approach to specialist cancer and palliative care services, which integrates complementary therapies, massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and art therapy for patients receiving treatment for cancer.
If we go forward two years, in March 2003, Caroline Hoffman, a nurse consultant in cancer care rehabilitation at the Royal Marsden and editor of Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery, spoke about her experiences at the Marsden hospital. Chris Perrin, a registered general nurse who uses complementary therapies in his work, also spoke. In May that year, the then Member representing Salford, Hazel Blears, launched new national guidelines for the use of complementary therapies for long-term or chronic illness. She was then the parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, and these were new national guidelines for use in hospitals, hospices, primary care, cancer support centres and self-help groups. The document was called “National Guidelines for Complementary Therapies in Supportive and Palliative Care”.
If I blow the dust off this document, I see that it could well have been integrated into the cancer proposals that we have before us now. It looked very closely at the possible options to expand patient choice in holistic care—the very things that the new report calls on. It is worth quoting—I see my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay is looking at me intently—Professor Mike Richards, who was the National Cancer Director at the time. He said:
“A substantial number of cancer patients choose to receive complementary therapies alongside their mainstream cancer treatment. Individual patients frequently report that the use of a complementary therapy has helped them.”
He went on to say that there was
“broad agreement, however, that patients should have ready access to reliable information about complementary therapies and complementary therapy services”,
and finished by saying:
“The guidelines will usefully complement the forthcoming NICE guidelines on supportive and palliative care.”
Would that those NICE guidelines had been implemented then—all those years ago! I live in hope, particularly under the guidance of my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay and the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), that we will make more progress. In March 2011, Professor Karol Sikora, the medical director of Cancer Partnership UK and Sosie Kassab, director of cancer services at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine came to give evidence to us.
The message is that a lot of the work that this report calls for has already been done. A lot of effort has already been put in. It is instructive in going through the Macmillan contribution to the 2015 to 2020 proposals to note that it points out:
“More than one in three of cancer patients use complementary therapies and many report finding them helpful.”
Macmillan’s own “Cancer and Complementary Therapies” booklet says it would
“like to see more high-quality research into complementary therapies”.
We have been calling for that for many years. Some evidence is very good; some is not so good—but there is a lot of evidence that patients are content with these services.
Having sat through so many Budget debates, I am not normally a great one for statistics, which I know can send colleagues to sleep, but my second statistic, apart from the one that a third of all cancer patients use complementary therapies, is that one third of the incremental annual cost of cancer care—this can be seen in the small print on page 76 of this lengthy report—is for living “with and beyond cancer”. Once patients have had chemotherapy and radiotherapy, it is often to the holistic and alternative world that they turn. It is there that we find a Gruyère cheese landscape. Many of these services are not available throughout the country, and we must address that.
A number of contributions are worth quoting, but I will quote one about acupuncture. “We are Macmillan Cancer Support” says:
“Some studies show acupuncture has helped reduce sickness in people who have had surgery or chemotherapy… acupuncture may help in treating other problems such as breathlessness and a dry mouth.”
In the last Parliament I served as vice-chairman of the herbal working group, under Professor David Walker. We reported on the last day of the Parliament. The Prime Minister generously wrote me a letter, which I received this morning, saying that the Government would respond before the House rose for Christmas. Herbal medicine is part of the two-pronged Chinese approach to treatment. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond positively by recommending either statutory regulation—for which many have asked—or voluntary regulation.
As I have said, the landscape of treatment available in this country is very patchy. Let us now look elsewhere in the world. The Prime Minister said that he had been to a football match at Wembley with the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Modi, and I believe that that was also mentioned by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), my Leicestershire colleague. Prime Minister Modi is quite a supporter of complementary medicine, and India now has a Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Meditation and Homeopathy. It has a Ministry—it used to be a Department—that draws all those complementary services together. In February 2012, when Prime Minister Modi was Chief Minister, he said that
“homeopathic medicines are affordable and free from side effects”,
and that
“homeopaths should create awareness...among the people”
of an easy method of treatment. He added:
“There should not be a question of conflict between allopathy, Ayurveda and homeopathy”.
All three systems of treatment had some very good things in them, he said.
It was therefore with some surprise that I saw a headline in—I think—The Daily Telegraph last week: “Prescribing homeopathy on the NHS may be banned”. Given its widespread use in the various complementary centres in the country, I wondered what on earth Ministers were thinking of. The doctors who practise homeopathy have been regulated by Act of Parliament since 1950. Ministers have been encouraging complementary therapists to become accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, and 2,000 members of the Society of Homeopaths have just achieved that accreditation.
What could be behind what I see as a kind of madness? The answer is that a tiny lobby group is trying to stop the use of £100,000 of Government money for homeopathic prescriptions every year. When we look into who those people are, we find that they are closely aligned with the medical establishment, and have been using legal challenges to try to stop health authorities and clinical commissioning groups using these treatments. I think that that is quite wrong. During Health questions this week, I pointed out that, according to Clinical Evidence, a review published by The BMJ,
“only 11% of the 3,000 treatments looked at in clinical trials”
in the UK
“proved to be beneficial, with 50% being of unknown effectiveness.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 507.]
If The BMJ says that, why are the Government considering picking on the homeopaths? I suggest to the Minister that these people are at best foolish and at worst wicked, because they know that they are trying to remove a very valid medical system from the health service.
In support of what I am saying, in 2001 Professor Edzard Ernst, in a published overview of exemplary studies and available systematic reviews of complementary therapies in palliative care, which is included in the 2003 report “National Guidelines” I mentioned earlier, says:
“Several clinical trials suggested that homeopathy also may benefit patients suffering from cancer. For instance, a recent double-blind RCT included 66 women undergoing radiotherapy after breast cancer surgery. In addition to conventional treatment, they received either a homeopathic mixture (belladonna 7CH, X-ray 15CH, i.e. two homeopathic remedies in high dilutions) or a placebo daily for 8 weeks. The results suggested that the homeopathic mixture was superior to placebo in minimizing the dermatologic adverse effects of radiotherapy.”
If we look at the hospitals where these support therapies are offered, we see that one not far from here offers aromatherapy, homeopathy, massage, reflexology and shiatsu. This is not some tiny clinic buried in a remote part of the capital. This is Barts Health, which is the largest NHS trust in the country. It has 15,000 employees and a £1.25 billion budget.
One of the issues that my hon. Friend the Minister is going to have to address is how we get more properly regulated practitioners into the health service. If we are going to provide the cancer support that this report argues for—the holistic support, the patient-centred support—and if we are going to listen to what patients want, we need to get a greater number of professionals deployed in the health service. He and his colleagues need to look at the Professional Standards Authority, a Government organisation that has 63,000 practitioners on 17 accredited registers covering 25 occupations. The Society of Homeopaths is one of its most recent additions: it now oversees the society’s regulation. However, there are many other groups there. It is important that we do not ignore that valuable resource. One third of the costs of the whole cancer budget is going on care after treatment. We can reduce that bill by using these people. I know the field of homeopathy very well. With acute conditions, if conventional medicine and homeopathic medicine are used, one reduces the acute drugs bill and with chronic conditions one tends to increase patient satisfaction, so it is a win-win situation.
I am not going to speak for much longer as I know other colleagues wish to contribute, but I want to raise the Cancer Act 1939 with the Minister. When his colleague appeared in a Committee Room not long ago, I got the distinct impression that that was not something the Department had looked at very recently. It says—this is important when it comes to trying to get patient-centred health care and broadening the scope of treatments for cancer care:
“No person shall take any part in the publication of any advertisement—
(a) containing an offer to treat any person for cancer, or to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof.”
That means that it is illegal to advertise or promote any medicine, diets, therapies or treatments as cures for cancer. Well, most of the treatments that I have discussed and referred to today are not claiming to cure. They are claiming to help and to increase the quality of life of those who have the disease. The Advertising Standards Authority and other bodies have been very sharp with anyone who is suggesting that they can assist patients in the provision of therapies that will improve their quality of life.
There are many examples of good support services across the country. I am not going to mention them all, but I do want to mention Coping with Cancer in Leicestershire and Rutland, an independent local charity that provides practical and emotional support to anyone affected by cancer. It offers counselling, complementary therapies, befriending and drop-in centres.
We heard today on the news that in China there is now a superbug that defeats all antibiotics. The last resort antibiotic has no power, and I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that we have to go back to the future. I served on the Science and Technology Committee for most of the last Parliament when we looked at antimicrobial resistance, and I was on the Health Committee for the whole of the last Parliament when we looked at this issue. If we have not got the antibiotics and nothing is coming through the pipeline despite the efforts of those the Front Bench, we will have to go back to the future, as medicine is going back to the dark ages, as a commentator said this morning on Radio 4. That means we will have to look more at natural remedies. We will have to listen to people who have used acupuncture for thousands of years and know their way around herbal medicine.
I will end on the following note. I have served with many Secretaries of State in this House. One of them once called me the hon. Member for Holland and Barrett which I took as a great compliment as its headquarters are in my constituency. I am sure it helped me in the 1997 general election, which was not the easiest for Conservative Members. I would like to quote the former right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras, Frank Dobson. He said when he was Health Secretary:
“I believe that what works is what counts and what counts is what works. With so many threats to our health we can’t afford to ignore anything that works and is safe.”
I agree. Where patients are gaining benefits, those services should be available.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick), who painted a very broad canvas of things for us to think carefully about as we take this strategy forward. May I also begin by praising the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for his leadership in this area and for the way in which Members across the House have worked together in this important field?
It is worth saying from the outset that a large part of the challenges we face are the challenges of success. Success in tackling many cancers has led to a right and proper rise in expectations. It is therefore important to pay tribute to all who work in this field—clinicians, patient groups, charities and a host of other people and organisations—for the outstanding work they do. However, the cost and challenge of treating cancer will continue to rise rapidly during this Parliament. The “Five Year Forward View” projections indicate that expenditure on cancer services will need to grow by about 9% a year, reaching £13 billion by 2020. This growth is between two and three times the rate of other health spend.
The commitment for everyone to have access to the recovery package by 2020 and the development of a quality of life metric by 2017 are welcome, but clear plans need to be put in place for these to happen. It is vital that there are commitments, both in terms of funding and resource, to deliver the full living with and beyond cancer programme, cancer alliances and a workforce review.
A national cancer advisory board, as recommended in the strategy, needs to be set up urgently to hold all the arm’s length bodies to account on delivering the recommendations laid out in the strategy. It is vital that this board is fully independent, with an independent chair. The Government must also fund and implement the recommendations set out in the independent review on choice in end-of-life care to ensure that there is choice and quality in that care.
Such investment in the national choice offer should result in a significant increase in out-of-hospital care, including through district nurses, allied health professionals, pharmacists, social care services and specialist palliative care teams, to ensure that every dying person has access to round-the-clock care seven days a week. That investment should also result in greater co-ordination between services to improve the quality of end-of-life care and to support carers and families; more empowered patients and carers who are able to exercise greater choice in their place of death; a reduction in hospital admissions for people at the very end of their lives; and the use of the latest technologies to support end-of-life care.
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pancreatic cancer, I strongly welcome the cancer strategy, and in particular the recommendations relating to improving early diagnosis and improving patient care and end-of-life care. I am concerned, however, that despite recognising the existence of a group of cancers with high incidence but low survival rates—highlighted as group 3 in the strategy—the strategy fails to acknowledge the need for specific actions to tackle the problems unique to that group.
Pancreatic cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death in the UK, and it is a clear example of an unmet need in cancer care. On average, one person is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer every hour, yet its five-year survival rate has remained virtually unchanged over the past 20 years and remains shockingly low at around 4%. That is the worst survival rate of the 21 most common cancers.
The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay rightly welcomed the fact that the strategy recognises the need to improve early diagnosis by reforming the referral system. Improving early diagnosis is the key to improving survival rates. Only 80% of pancreatic cancer patients are currently diagnosed at a stage where surgery—the only real hope of a cure—is still an option, and only 10% go on to receive that life-saving surgery. Ensuring that more patients are diagnosed earlier, while surgery is still a viable option, is therefore essential to improving the appalling survival rates faced by pancreatic cancer patients. That is also an issue for other cancers, such as blood cancers. At present, 50% of acute myeloid leukaemia diagnoses, 37% of myeloma diagnoses and 35% of chronic myeloid leukaemia diagnoses are happening in emergency settings. I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on the excellent work being done by Bloodwise in this area.
The recommendation of a four-week diagnosis target is welcome, and I am pleased that the Department of Health has committed to looking at adopting that recommendation by 2020. I also welcome recommendation 21, which calls on NHS England to pilot the implementation of multi-diagnostic centres as a priority. Such centres would allow patients presenting with vague symptoms, such as abdominal pain, to have multiple tests on the same day, preventing the need for them to present at their GP surgery repeatedly before being diagnosed, thus speeding up their diagnosis. That could be especially significant for pancreatic cancer patients, who report having to visit their GP on multiple occasions before being referred for tests. A UK-wide survey carried out by Pancreatic Cancer UK found that 23% of pancreatic cancer patients had to visit their GP seven or more times before they received a diagnosis. The introduction of multi-diagnostic centres would therefore be a big leap forward.
The call for GPs to have direct access to investigative tests by the end of 2015 is also very welcome. None the less, it is important to ensure that GP surgeries have the imaging capacity—in terms of equipment and of staff training—to carry out investigative tests such as CT scans. Will the Minister tell us what assessment the Department of Health has made of GP practices’ current imaging capacity and the capacity that would be needed to ensure that all GPs were able to carry out investigative tests?
The measures in the strategy to improve patient experience are to be warmly welcomed. National cancer patient experience surveys show that the pancreatic cancer patient experience continues to fall short of expected standards, especially in the lack of appropriate information about their diagnosis, about treatment options and about what to expect following discharge from hospital. Access to a clinical nurse specialist is a key factor in improving the patient experience, but it is also essential to ensure that clinical nurse specialists have the resources needed to provide a good quality service. In a survey of these specialists carried out by Pancreatic Cancer UK in 2015, only 28.36% of respondents said they felt they were able to spend as much time with their patients as necessary and had enough resources to provide a good quality service.
The need for more clinical research into cancer is also highlighted by the new cancer strategy, and I strongly support this recommendation, as the kind of change needed to make any significant impact on survival rates will be achieved only through research: research that will aid earlier diagnosis and screening; research that will result in more and better treatments; and research that, we hope, will offer opportunity for a cure. Despite accounting for 5% of cancer deaths, pancreatic cancer received only 1.4% of the National Cancer Research Institute partners’ research spend in 2014. Although that is an increase on the 2013 research spend, pancreatic cancer research funding continues to lag behind many other areas of cancer research.
The strategy also makes reference to the need for
“a sustainable solution for access to new cancer drugs”.
That has exercised the minds and thoughts of Members from across this House, as well as plenty of people outside it who know a lot more about the matter. It is only a fleeting reference in the strategy, yet access to drugs is one of the most important issues for pancreatic cancer patients. In particular, pancreatic cancer patients face a persistent lack of access to treatments, making access to new drugs especially important. That is demonstrated most starkly by the removal of the life-extending drug Abraxane from the cancer drugs fund list recently. The CDF decision is compounded by the fact that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has also reviewed and rejected Abraxane for use on the NHS, on the grounds of it not being cost-effective enough. In a way, that is not surprising, as between 2007 and the end of 2013 NICE recommended only 31% of cancer drugs for use on the NHS. That is why the setting up of the CDF is to be commended, as it is to compensate for this bias by NICE against cancer drugs. The NICE scoring system is even less flexible than the CDF one. Again, it is not fair to judge a new treatment for a disease with such poor survival rates and very few treatment options on the same criteria as other treatments for other cancers and other conditions. We need more imagination and more flexibility if we are to make the strides forward that need to be made.
There is ever such a lot to welcome within the strategy, but it could have gone further, by including measures to deal with group 3 cancers. Despite identifying cancers with high incidence but low survival rates, the strategy has not yet set out any measures aimed at tackling that precise problem. Greater awareness of the symptoms of these cancers, which can be non-specific, alongside more research into diagnosing and treatments, and the creation of a fair and flexible drugs appraisal scheme remain essential. I hope that in taking the work of this strategy forward, the people involved will endeavour to put those things in place.
Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)
I, too, begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this very important debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for his endeavours. A great deal has happened since we last had the chance to debate cancer, and I am pleased to be able to discuss the Independent Cancer Taskforce’s report on a cancer strategy for England, which is a major step in the right direction for all those affected by cancer.
As chair of the all-party group on brain tumours, I particularly welcome the focus of the report on early diagnosis. A target for 95% of patients to be diagnosed within four weeks of being referred by a GP by 2020, which has recently been implemented by the Government, is absolutely crucial for improving cancer outcomes for patients, especially those with brain tumours. Currently, 58% of brain tumours are diagnosed in accident and emergency, which unfortunately is far too late for many. That has contributed to brain tumours being the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40. Patients diagnosed with brain tumours have a five-year survival rate of just 19.8% compared with cancer as a whole, where 50% of patients can expect to survive for at least 10 years. Cancer survival rates doubled between 1970 and 2010, while, shockingly, brain tumour survival rates increased by a mere 7.5%.
The current poor level of early diagnosis and a general lack of awareness of brain tumours contribute to the stories of far too many people. The Green family from my constituency had a son, Danny, who was a normal, happy, energetic 10-year-old who suddenly suffered a dizzy spell after playing football one afternoon. It was eventually confirmed by his local hospital that he was suffering from a brain tumour. Tragically, despite having an operation to remove the tumour, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Danny lost his fight for survival in July 2012. He died from pneumonia.
Although the Greens believed that something was really seriously wrong with their child, they found that when they initially took him to hospital, doctors dismissed his symptoms as nothing more than a migraine. It was only when his condition deteriorated and he collapsed in A&E that he was sent for a CAT scan and an MRI scan. Brain tumours are relatively rare, but as Danny’s mother, Lisa, says:
“They are not rare enough when it’s your relative.”
That is why the family would like to see patients with possible brain tumours sent for MRI scans much sooner than they currently are.
I very much welcome the new cancer strategy, but I have a number of concerns, including the lack of a clear, ambitious commitment to improve research. That lack of commitment impacts on the cures and treatments of the future for cancers with low survival rates, such as brain tumours. Those cancers of “unmet need” will not see the boost in survival rates that the more common cancers will, because early diagnosis and prevention alone do not affect the effectiveness of treatment to a significant extent. For example, there are no lifestyle factors that are proven to increase the likelihood of getting a brain tumour, which means that a focus on prevention will do nothing to stop the incidence of the disease, which, for whatever reason, is rising. There should be a stated priority to increase research and to find new curative and palliative treatments for rarer cancers.
The two excellent charities that I work with as part of the all-party group, Brain Tumour Research and the Brain Tumour Charity, have issued their own response to the new strategy. They, along with the two charities in my constituency, the Danny Green Fund and the Indee Rose Trust—the Indee Rose Trust is also tragically named after a little girl who lost her life at the age of three, five months after being diagnosed with a brain tumour—do exceptional work in raising awareness of brain tumours and of the importance of early diagnosis. They also increase the amount of funding for research and improving treatments.
For the strategy to be effective for people with brain tumours and to allay the concerns that I have raised, we need to focus on a few particular areas. First, we need to streamline the process of repurposing drugs. The repurposing of drugs and compounds to tackle brain tumours could open up new treatment options for patients. Repurposing refers to a process whereby a drug or a compound that has previously been used to tackle a certain illness—for example, depression—is examined and studied to see whether it can be used to tackle another illness, such as brain tumours. There is solid evidence that treatments can be developed through repurposing that are safe and effective, and that add years to the lives of patients with terminal cancers. The Government can help to streamline that process by reducing the regulation and red tape on scientists along with incentivising pharmaceutical companies to release compounds for research. The research and trials that will be sparked could result in huge strides being made in the field and in ground-breaking treatments for patients.
Secondly, we need a national register of all site-specific research to track all research work, grants and results. Currently, there is not a great deal of transparency in the research field. There is no clear idea of what research is being funded and what results are being achieved. That leads to confusion, duplication of work and a system that prioritises research in more common cancers rather that in diseases such as brain tumours. A national register will make research more transparent, reduce duplication and allow greater variation in the type and scope of research.
Thirdly, we need an innovation fund for research into rare and rarer cancers. Grant applications to existing research funding bodies require evidence of previous research—pilot work as well as published results. That results in something of a catch-22 situation. Applications must be deemed low risk in nature and as having a high likelihood of success before a grant is awarded. That means that there has to be a pre-existing bank of evidence. Novel research, particularly relating to brain tumours, suffers as a consequence of a lack of existing research. This ring-fenced fund should be set aside for areas of new research on rarer cancers and diseases. There should be a lower threshold for grants to be awarded in new projects, or in existing schemes such as the 100,000 genomes project. This stimulus will create a new wave of research that previously would not have been possible, widening our knowledge of cancer and creating the treatments we need.
Finally, we would like the Government to devote an absolute amount to brain tumour research. Brain tumours represent 1% of cancers diagnosed, yet 3% of cancer death. Within the innovation fund a consistent or growing absolute figure should be devoted by the Government to brain cancer research. Some 16,000 people are diagnosed with a brain tumour every year, and those affected are disproportionately children and young adults, who may have young children themselves. I hope that the Minister will commit to implementing and funding the new cancer strategy so that those 16,000 people, and indeed the tens of thousands more diagnosed with other forms of cancer, get access as quickly as possible to the treatment and the funding for research that they need to give them the best chance of survival.
Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I am vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on cancer and on breast cancer. I welcome the strategy and the hard work of those who have put it together. Looking at a situation with a fresh pair of eyes is always beneficial, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) pointed out.
My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) highlighted one of the problems: there are more than 200 types of cancer, which makes it highly complex to deal with unless we have an overarching strategy. That goes not only for the cancers and their different forms, but for how we approach the use of drugs, research into them, and so on.
The new cancer strategy has the ability to be transformational, inspiring us to lead the world or at least to match those who are ahead of us. That is where we should be in patient outcomes. For me there are positives, but in order to achieve these things we need full implementation and adequate funding. There are some key asks—the national ambition for early diagnosis is probably one of the principal ones. As individuals we can help in diagnosis by presenting early enough. Some 20% to 40% of people find out that they have cancer only when they present at accident and emergency, and by then it is usually too late, so early diagnosis is key. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay referred to the figures for bowel cancer. Some cancers have much better outcomes if diagnosed early. That gives people a better quality of life and a better journey through the cancer path.
The strategy asks for a definite diagnosis within four weeks of referral, to be achieved by 2020. Ensuring that CCGs are held to account for improving one-year survival rates is crucial to drive early diagnosis. How will we hold the CCGs to account and make sure that rates are improving from June 2016? Linked to this is the way in which we improve cancer commissioning, as we have heard. The current picture is fragmented and confused.
Accountability, responsibility and transparency are needed, and with modern advances in medicines and diagnostics flexibility is hugely important, as is communication. Currently no one body or person at local, regional or national level holds responsibility, and this does not aid clarity in the system. Clinicians and patients are liable to fall foul of duplication or fall through the gaps, wasting precious time and resources, which neither the NHS nor the patient on the receiving end can afford.
The creation of cancer alliances can support the commissioning process and ensure that the strategy is delivered. Living with and beyond cancer is a growing challenge. There will be 3 million of us by 2020 and 4 million by 2030. Speaking from personal experience, I know that being a cancer patient is at times a bit of a challenge. Being medicalised is no fun, as I know, but both the new five-year guidelines on living with and beyond cancer and the new quality of life metric that has been spoken about are vital to drive service improvements. As the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said, sometimes it is the not-so-obvious things that people need help with. His child needed help in comfortably settling back in at school and ensuring that those around him understood the journey, too.
Scan anxiety sits heavily on people who are being tested to see whether they have cancer. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) did a lot of work in that area before she came to this place. It puts a great deal of pressure not only on the individual but on their family.
Under the strategy, those living with secondary cancer have emerged as a very distinct group. For example, 36,000 women are living with secondary breast cancer, and to date their needs have been neglected. The ambition of the strategy is to focus on the long-term quality of life, including for those who
“are living with an advanced and incurable form of the disease”.
This highlights the importance of multi-disciplinary teams in planning the care of all cancer patients.
The NHS is changing and adapting. Ensuring that the organisation has the right skills in the right places is the key to delivery not only of our cancer strategy but of many of the ambitions we hold. The strategy asks for everyone to have access to clinical nurse specialists, and I would wholeheartedly support that. Today, as I stand here, I would like to say a huge thank you to our nursing profession—a highly skilled group of people. I know from constituents and others that their professionalism, care, and, at times, very “no nonsense” approach has been as important as anything else in the recovery process.
If the aims of the strategy are to be achieved, working smarter and doing things differently may well be the key. Nurse consultants are now becoming a feature in the profession, and workforce planning will be crucial. The strategy focuses on the needs of older people and those from the black and minority ethnic community, who are often much more reticent about going to seek help. We know that we are living in an ageing society. The upside is that we are living longer; the downside is that there are more health challenges. In 1949, at the start of the health service, 50% of our population died before they were 60. Thankfully, that is not the case nowadays, but the strategy highlights the need to focus on treatment for older people—another sign of the changes in our NHS.
The cancer strategy is to be applauded in calling for a national action plan to address obesity. That is welcome, but there are individual responsibilities too. Obesity is a known causal risk factor in breast cancer and many other cancers. There is good evidence to show that five 30-minute bits of exercise a week, like a brisk walk, would help not only with obesity but with the likelihood of the disease recurring. There is plenty for people to do in this regard.
I would like to mention drug innovation and the cancer drugs fund. How will the cancer strategy’s recommendations on NICE guidelines on the use of bisphosphonates be taken forward? I would really appreciate understanding a little more about how we are going to use off-patent drugs and drugs that have been shown to have a secondary purpose beneficial to cancer patients. I would like to see communication between clinicians, pharmaceutical companies and others so that we can ensure, along with the accelerated access review and the cancer drugs fund, that we are getting to patients, in a timely fashion, the drugs they need and deserve.
Finally, I ask that the right accountability structures are in place, and that the national cancer advisory board ensures that what needs to be done is being done to secure optimum patient outcomes for all.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), particularly as she ended by referring to off-patent drugs. She spoke powerfully on Second Reading of the Off-patent Drugs Bill, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) only a couple of weeks ago. This debate draws on many points made in previous debates, including that Second Reading debate and Westminster Hall debates. There have been debates about the cancer drugs fund, specific cancers and, recently, secondary breast cancer.
I am an officer of a number of all-party groups, including that on cancer, which is so ably led by the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who secured this debate. We have also heard from colleagues who are members of other all-party groups, including the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who is on the all-party group on pancreatic cancer, and the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who is doing so much to raise awareness and to promote action on and understanding of brain tumours.
I welcome the fact that the Backbench Business Committee has afforded us this opportunity to join up what might otherwise appear to be disparate work. The APPGs are not rivals—their efforts are entirely complementary. The cancer strategy is a benchmark document and this debate gives us an important opportunity to consider how we can marshal parliamentary effort and will behind it. We need Ministers in the Department of Health and elsewhere to know that we are not taking it for granted and that, just because we have had unmet need for a long time, that should not continue to be the case. I would like to hear a Minister tell us that their portfolio means that they see themselves as the Minister for meeting unmet need. If they set that target and seek to make that change and turnaround, they will have many backing vocalists from the different all-party groups.
Other hon. Members have said that there may be some issues with aspects of the cancer strategy, but it clearly lays down some important standards, not least on a recurring message that the APPGs get from the evidence we receive, namely the question of early diagnosis.
Mr Baron
The hon. Gentleman is a good friend of the all-party group on cancer. He will already know this, but it is worth putting it on the record that the separate all-party groups on cancer are endeavouring to get their act together and to speak with one voice where there is a common interest—and there are many when it comes to cancer.
Mark Durkan
I fully recognise that point. That was what I was trying to say when I said that the APPGs are not rivals. This debate allows us to bring together their work and their common message, and to acknowledge the work of the hon. Gentleman and the chairmen of the other APPGs. In that regard, I should also mention the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). She cannot be here this afternoon, but she has done so much on the all-party groups on ovarian cancer and on breast cancer.
Early diagnosis is a common theme and the issue is not just about making sure that there is more access to diagnosis. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds has mentioned how many people end up being diagnosed in A&E, which is not what should happen. Although certain cancers raise more sensitive and technical questions than others, there needs to be more awareness among GPs, and diagnostic tools are also key. However, this is about not just ensuring earlier diagnosis with better use of diagnostic tools, but ensuring much clearer referral pathways. The cancer strategy sets a target of making sure that, by 2020, 90% of people are diagnosed within a month to see whether or not they have cancer. That is a very good working standard.
All the APPGs, particularly the all-party group on cancer, have strongly suggested that the indicator of one-year survival rates would be a very good test of our ambitions and efforts and of the actions of health authorities. That working standard needs to be adopted, because it would help us to monitor and manage our progress.
I am conscious of the fact that I speak as a Member from Northern Ireland, whereas the cancer strategy and much of this effort relate to England. However, as everybody knows, in a lot of these areas we are talking about predictive policy. When we set frameworks or national strategies on particular diseases or illnesses for the NHS in England, they can extend, through policy airspace principles, to the devolved areas. That is one reason why I have no hesitation in joining in the work of the APPGs here—it helps to advance understanding at home.
Of course, that was not the case with the cancer drugs fund. We do not have a Northern Ireland version of that, which has led to the frustration that was identified by the late Una Crudden, who suffered from ovarian cancer. Many of the drugs that were available in England under the cancer drugs fund had been the subject of clinical trials in the excellent centre in Belfast, yet they were not available to patients in Belfast.
The success of the cancer drugs fund has shown its limitations, which is confounding us in thinking about how to develop and replace it. When considering the future of the cancer drugs fund and what will succeed it, I ask him to think not just about doing something for England and then seeing whether the devolved Administrations can match it or do better, but about the possibility of a UK-wide funding pool for some of the newer drugs and for some innovations in research and diagnosis, such as molecular diagnostic testing, which comes under the cancer drugs fund. Perhaps this is a conversation that we need to have with the Chancellor in the context of his announcement next week and what will happen beyond that. I am saying not that it should all be funded by London, but that there could be a pool of money to which the devolved areas contribute, with common standards and bands. It might be that certain groups of patients would then be covered by further arrangements made at the devolved level.
The more commonality and consistency we can bring to funding, the better. It would make it so much better for the many good cancer charities and policy advocacy groups that work with cancer patients, which have to busk around the different Administrations to see who has what bit of money. That also creates a lot of confusion at the parliamentary level. It is hard for us to join up our efforts and marshal our arguments when we are dealing with different structures and systems. The more commonality we can create in funding, particularly in the area of innovation, the better.
Perhaps there should be a UK-wide effort, or perhaps it should go beyond the UK. The British-Irish Council includes all eight Administrations on these islands, including the south of Ireland. Perhaps there should be a common effort at that level, given some of the clinical networks that will be involved. When we consider the rarer cancers that will not be treated in some of the other places, perhaps a more united effort would help to take the thinking forward. A lot of the ingredients in the cancer strategy for England might best be brought forward as part of a combined strategic effort on cancer across these islands.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing this incredibly important debate along with the hon. Members for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) and for Bosworth (David Tredinnick). I welcome the considered way in which he set out the issues in his opening speech. He raised a series of important questions for the Minister on earlier diagnosis, the measurement of the performance of CCGs, patient experience metrics and the cancer drugs fund. Those are all important issues that are set out in the strategy. I echo his tribute to the various all-party parliamentary groups on cancer. They do an extremely good job of highlighting these issues in Parliament and we all welcome the contribution they make.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) for raising the important issue of blood cancer. His family experience highlights the lack of support, particularly for children, during the period beyond cancer. The strategy tries to begin to address that issue. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) for his speech, as well as for his work as chair of the all-party group on pancreatic cancer. He quite rightly pointed out the very poor survival rates for pancreatic cancer and the difficulty of getting referrals for diagnosis from GPs.
I echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris). She raised important issues regarding the repurposing of drugs, particularly for the treatment of brain tumours. The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) also made valid points about how the various groups should not be seen as rivals. Indeed, they should be united behind this one strategy, the full force of which has been expressed today.
I also echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds. She pointed out that, with more than 200 different types of cancer, an overriding strategy is needed. She reminded us of the shocking statistic that about 20% of diagnoses take place in accident and emergency, which really highlights the challenge we face in making correct diagnoses. She also highlighted the policy gap in relation to off-patent drugs, which we recently discussed in the Chamber.
All Members speak on this matter from experience, which is sometimes of a very personal nature. It is the personal experience of many of those who have contributed to the strategy that we are debating that makes the document so powerful. We know that one in five people who are diagnosed with cancer feel they are treated as a set of symptoms, rather than recognised as a person. We clearly need to change that. The very moving speeches today help us to remember that behind every statistic there is a person with a family and friends.
The Opposition welcome the recommendations of the independent cancer taskforce, many of which build on proposals that the Labour party set out before the election. We hope that the strategy will be implemented in full. It has the potential to deliver improved outcomes for patients, while also delivering better value to the taxpayer. However, as several hon. Members have said, we will realise such benefits only if the recommendations are delivered in full, with front-loaded investment. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the funding required to deliver the strategy will be included in the comprehensive spending review next week. He may be under instructions not to pre-empt the Chancellor’s big day, in which case we hope that the mood of the House can be conveyed to the right hon. Gentleman.
There have been some positive developments on cancer drugs and screening in recent years, but our progress on cancer care has stalled to some extent. The target to treat at least 85% of cancer patients within 62 days of being urgently referred by their GP for suspected cancer has been missed in successive quarters across England for almost two years. Of the 21,629 patients who waited more than 62 days in 2014-15, 42% waited between two weeks and one month after the target date and about a quarter waited for even longer. As Cancer Research UK has pointed out, this is not just a missed target; patients are being failed when they have to wait too long for treatment.
Another concern is that, despite progress in improving some cancer survival rates over the past decade, we still lag behind the best-performing countries. As several hon. Members have mentioned, it has been estimated that up to 10,000 deaths each year in England can be attributed to lower survival rates compared with those in the best-performing countries. As hon. Members have repeatedly pointed out, diagnosis of cancer at a later stage is generally agreed to be the single most important reason for the lower survival rates in England, so it is vital that we do better not only on early diagnosis, but on prevention and awareness.
With a total of 95 recommendations, the strategy will need consistent political and financial support if it is to be implemented in full. We welcome the possibility of a national cancer advisory board, which, as the report states, would allow a mirror to be held up to the NHS on progress in implementing the strategy. No doubt the precise make-up of such a body would be a matter of detail, but we are keen to ensure that there is an independent chair, as has been mentioned, and that patients’ voices are heard on that body.
With so many individual recommendations in the report, it is impossible to do them all justice in the time available. For those unable to read the entire report, I suggest that the principles set out on page 16 are a very helpful overview of the core aims of the strategy. I do not propose to go through all 95 recommendations—we certainly do not have time to do so—but I want to talk about one or two areas.
I want to speak about the quality of life after treatment and about end-of-life care. One of the most compelling and difficult debates in which I have been involved during my short time in the House was that on the Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill. One message that came through loud and clear in the debate was that there are massive differences in the quality of palliative care available. Evidence consistently shows that far more people diagnosed with a terminal illness would prefer to die in their own home than currently get the chance. That is not an easy conversation to have, but we must get better at it.
I was pleased that the report acknowledges the clear link between cancer and poor mental health. Around 10% of patients with cancer will develop serious depression, and around half of all patients have some unmet need six months after treatment has concluded. Proposals to improve detection of mental health issues and to integrate better the various treatments are to be welcomed, and will hopefully lead to better patient outcomes.
However, the strategy goes well beyond that and, as we have heard, it recognises that support for patients post-treatment in terms of lifestyle, finances and work must be hugely improved. Secondary cancer is also a huge problem, and we must ensure that care after cancer is just as good as treatment of it. I am glad that the Secretary of State has committed to the development of a quality of life metric. Improvements to the system must ensure that how well people are living is just as important as how long they live for.
Too many people are left to fend for themselves in a complicated, bureaucratic maze, while having to cope with unmet physical, emotional and financial needs—my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside set out starkly some of the challenges that individual patients have to deal with. Nobody should have to go without help after suffering the hardship of cancer treatment, and we hope it will be possible to ensure that everybody with cancer has access to a recovery package by 2020.
In the short term, steps can be taken to make life easier. Macmillan Cancer Support has calculated that the financial impact of a cancer diagnosis makes someone on average £575 a month worse off. That is why proposals in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill to take away £30 a week in unemployment support allowance from those with cancer who are placed in the work-related activity group seem at odds with what is set out in the strategy. We need joined-up thinking not just across the health service, but across the Government and the whole of society. The report estimates that by 2030 the number of people in work who will be affected by cancer is set to increase by 1 million, and although there is statutory protection under the Equality Act 2010, in reality someone is 1.4 times more likely to be unemployed if they have cancer.
The greater role that wider society can play is set out clearly in the report, which calls for
“a radical upgrade in prevention and public health.”
If we are to make this strategy work, we must consider forming a new tobacco control strategy, and a national obesity strategy that goes beyond the responsibility deal, which is largely limited to reducing the prevalence of obesity in children. The strategy is right to include an ambition to reduce the prevalence of overall adult smoking to less than 13% by 2020. It is not difficult to imagine that current measures will do much to make that happen, and I am pleased that the report includes a recommendation that the NHS should work with the Government to deliver and implement a new tobacco control strategy within the next 12 months.
This is a matter of equality. We all know about the diverse life expectancy figures in different parts of the country, and about how a difference of just a few miles can mean huge gaps in life expectancy. There would be around 20,000 fewer deaths per year across all cancers if socioeconomically deprived groups had the same incidence rates as the least deprived. Smoking plays a large part in that, and more than half of the inequity in overall life expectancy between different social classes can be at least partially attributed to higher smoking rates among the less well-off.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) deserves praise for her marathon effort to ban smoking in cars with children, and such measures will further deter smoking and encourage people to give up. However, even before that strategy has found its feet, it has been undermined by another huge cut to the public health grant for local councils, which will almost certainly mean that smoking cessation services are slashed.
If we are to take the Government seriously on public health, and if this strategy is to work, it must be supported fully. In-year cuts to public health funds go wholly against the strategy, and are contrary to any strategy that seeks a sustainable health service moving forward. As many experts have said, these cuts will end up costing more than they save. They are a political choice, and we should send a strong message to the Chancellor that they should not go ahead.
The introduction of the cancer drugs fund has been a positive development, and it delivered important benefits to patients over the course of the last Parliament, which we welcome. However, 19 treatments were cut from the cancer drugs fund at the beginning of the year, and another 18 went this month. Charities estimate that more than 5,500 patients a year will now be denied access to these life-extending treatments. Will the Minister tell the House whether he supports the removal of those treatments, and, crucially, what support will now be given to the thousands of patients who will miss out on the drugs in the future? I appreciate that this is not an easy situation, but it seems particularly cruel to give people hope and then to take it away.
I want to mention the need for renewed focus on treatments other than drugs. Before the election, Labour promised to create a new cancer treatment fund to look at all treatments available. Surgery and radiotherapy are responsible for nine in 10 cases where cancer is cured. The taskforce concluded that in a number of areas access to treatments such as radiotherapy are not at the level they should be. About half of all radiotherapy machines are reaching the end of their useful lives. We need to upgrade them so we can deliver safer care. We should also enable the more widespread use of modern radiotherapy techniques. Some 38% of cancer patients in England currently have radiotherapy as part of their treatment, but evidence from abroad suggests that this should be closer to 50%. We need to understand why there is this difference and to work towards correcting it.
I have touched on only a few parts of the strategy, and I hope there is recognition that there are wider challenges beyond the strategy itself. Where the Government are clearly working towards the aims of the cancer strategy, they will have our support. I would therefore like to ask the Minister what steps the Department will be taking to ensure that comprehensive implementation plans are laid out for the strategy as a whole by 31 March 2016.
Many Members will have lost someone close to them as a result of cancer. We owe it to everyone affected by this terrible disease to implement and support in full the recommendations set out in the strategy, so we can take further steps towards finally beating cancer.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ben Gummer)
It is a great pleasure to respond to the excellent speeches that have formed this interesting and remarkably well-informed debate. I echo the thanks given by the shadow Minister and others to my hon. Friends the Members for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) and for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) for securing the debate in such a timely manner. I do not think that even they would have anticipated it coinciding with today’s launch of the consultation.
The debate touches on the lives not only of everyone in this House but of everyone in the country. The frustrating regularity of cancer diagnosis—in the past week, two of my friends have had a cancer diagnosis confirmed—is shared by Members and by people watching this debate across the country. That is why this is such an important and salient issue for all our constituents. I am therefore very grateful to hon. Members for both speaking on this matter and for bringing it to the attention of the House.
At the start of my speech, it is worth reflecting that we are able to speak about this issue from a position of celebrating the success of the past few years. There have been quantum leaps in the treatment, diagnosis and survival rates of cancer. More than half of people receiving a cancer diagnosis now live 10 years or more, a remarkable statistic that would scarcely have been believed 20 or 30 years ago. The fact that we are able to speak frankly about this at all, with the very personal speeches hon. Members have given today, marks the end of the dangerous taboo surrounding talking about cancer. Happily, we are now able to replicate that fight in relation to mental health and end-of-life care. The work done by cancer charities over many years, to talk about cancer and to make it a live issue in the public imagination, is now reflected in other important areas of care.
Mr Baron
The Minister is absolutely right to say that we have made great strides, and the Government are to be congratulated on playing their full part in that, but may I gently remind him that as we have made great strides, other countries have also made great strides? The debate is largely about the fact that we are still well behind European averages on survival rates. The first year survival rate in this country is 69%, whereas in Sweden it is 81%. That apparently small difference accounts for about 10,000 lives a year in this country being needlessly lost because we diagnose too late. I am sure the Minister will agree that there is still a lot to improve on.
Ben Gummer
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I was not trying to offer mere bromides. Indeed, I was about to say that although we perform well in many clinical areas, we perform badly on cancer compared with other countries. We have made significant progress over the past few years, but we are still not where we should be: at the top of the pack. There are many reasons for that, some of which we understand and some of which we do not, but it behoves us all to do something about it, which is why the taskforce was set up. In that regard, I add my thanks to Harpal Kumar and the many people who contributed to the taskforce’s conclusions.
I am speaking to an expert audience here—I am conscious that almost everyone who has spoken has considerably greater expertise in this area than I do—so I will not rehearse the history of the taskforce or its recommendations. Importantly, there is now a consensus about what needs to happen. Various things have to happen if we are to deliver on the aims of the taskforce.
Ben Gummer
We should indeed. I found the hon. Gentleman’s remarks extremely interesting; I learned a lot from them.
I want to answer hon. Members’ questions as well as I can, although I am conscious that I am answering them on behalf of the public health Minister, who has responsibility for cancer and has considerable expertise in this area. She is sorry she cannot be here. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) asked some salient questions. The first was: when will the taskforce conclusions be implemented? He will know that the new national director for cancer has just been appointed, and I met her yesterday. As he knows, she is an immensely impressive women, having run one of the foremost cancer institutes in the world, and she is aware that one of her initial tasks is rapidly to set out an implementation plan. In doing that, I know she will want to speak to the all-party group on cancer as soon as she develops her plans in order to keep its members abreast of developments and to hear their views about the pace of implementation. I will ensure that officials write to Members with any further details about implementation.
My hon. Friend asked about the CCG scorecards. I understand the nervousness—I detected it in his voice—about the complex measurements and the dashboard being translated into apparently simple measurements in the scorecard. I want to give him some reassurance. The scorecards used for hospitals are immensely complex and have behind them a huge amount of data that are then distilled into simple scorings, the point of which is to provide clear accountability and transparency to patients and people living in CCG areas, who, at the moment, have no grip, because we do not give them any, on how well a CCG is performing. The expert panel looking at the operation of the scorecards will be out for consultation next month and will report back before the scorecards are put in place in April. I know it will listen carefully to his comments about one-year survival rates and the detail of how the scorecards are put together, but I am clear that the oncological experts on the panel will not want to undermine the work done on the various metrics and the dashboard.
My hon. Friend spoke with eloquence about genomics. It is of course true that the reason we are able to make increasingly rapid progress is that cancer is a genetic disease, and genetics and genomics are the great new frontier in medical innovation. In a sense, therefore, dealing with cancer and drugs for cancer will be the tip of the spear when it comes to developing all new drugs in the decades ahead. It is very exciting, but presents massive challenges to funded healthcare systems around the world. It is in trying to find a way of affording the new drugs that are coming online, but also releasing the unique possibilities that the NHS offers, that we think we are in such a strong position to offer opportunities both to those wanting to research cancer from an academic point of view and to those businesses and companies doing so in order to develop drugs.
The point of saying that is that the cancer drugs fund, which many Members referred to in their speeches, will necessarily have to change in response to the significant changes of the last few years. To the shadow Minister’s point about the cancer drugs fund, I would gently say that it was an innovation personally promoted by the Prime Minister in 2010. He has made a personal commitment to it, so all Members should take solace from the fact that he will be watching carefully how the fund develops. It has risen from a few hundred million pounds to over £1.2 billion. That demonstrates a commitment that was not present before the cancer drugs fund was invented. Its size is such that it now makes up a considerable part of the overall drugs spending of the NHS.
I hope hon. Members will take comfort from the fact that the consultation announced today by NHS England aims to build on the success of the cancer drugs fund, to incorporate the new structures that need to come about as a result of the significant changes in genomic research over the last five years and to align the general research, licensing and funding of drugs through NICE with the principles of the cancer drugs fund, so that we have a far more integrated system in future. I would encourage all hon. Members present to contribute to the consultation on the cancer drugs fund and thereby help to inform the second stage of its existence, when that comes about—I imagine at some point next year.
David Tredinnick
I may be pre-empting what my hon. Friend is about to say, but on the point about widening the scope of drugs, which he has alluded to, will he take note of the remarks about broadening the scope of patient choice and the range of therapies available, and perhaps using Professional Standards Authority-regulated professionals rather more?
Ben Gummer
I will, and I was about to move on to my hon. Friend’s remarks. He made a similar point—that great progress had been made but there was still much to be done. He spoke with eloquence and detail about complementary treatments, in which I have absolutely no expertise—I shall have to disappoint him on that. I know that he has written to me about the regulation of herbal medicines. I have today spoken to the Minister for Life Sciences, and I know that my hon. Friend will be receiving a full response about the various issues he has raised.
In response to my hon. Friend’s points about complementary treatments, I would say that it is very important when spending taxpayers’ money on cancer treatments that there is a solid evidence base for what we do. However, his point is well made—that the entire person needs to be taken into account when considering treatment. That can also involve people living with cancer, not just the treatment of it.
It was very nice to hear the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) speak. It was also good to hear him speak from a personal point of view—it was good of him to share his sorrow regarding his son. On the stem cell transplantation issue that he raised, I can tell him that the recovery package as part of the taskforce’s recommendations that the Government have already moved on will apply to blood cancer patients who have undergone stem cell transplantation. The Government are very supportive of the work by the Anthony Nolan trust and other charities, but I will make sure that the hon. Gentleman gets a fuller response on the specific issues that he raised, so he can be satisfied that we have taken into account the particular difficulties and challenges facing those who have undergone stem cell transplantation.
It was a great pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin). I have a particular affection for him, not only because he helped me on the way through King’s Cross the other day, but because he spoke just before me in my maiden speech—we made ours at the same time. This is a good point at which to reflect that the Member who spoke after me was the former right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, who is much missed in this place.
The hon. Member for Scunthorpe brought to our attention the issue of rare cancers—specifically pancreatic and blood cancers. I would like to reassure him about research. He will know that Cancer Research UK has looked specifically at the rare cancers and has prioritised work in the areas where it feels additional research funding and effort need to go, which include blood and pancreatic cancers—and, indeed, brain cancers, which my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) mentioned. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe also raised the issue of GP imaging capacity, and I would like to reassure him that, as part of the ACE programme—Accelerate, Co-ordinate, Evaluate—by NHS England, imaging will be expanded within primary care. I hope that I will be able to write to him with further details.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point for her fascinating speech and for bringing to our attention the very sad story of her constituent Danny Green. Her point about a national register for off-label drugs was well made, and I know it is an issue that the Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), is looking at actively. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point made a point about research,. She will be aware that it is always difficult to try to divvy up research funding, but I will make sure that her point is reflected back to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) made some very good points about joined-up care. It is certainly the case that we need to see such care across the NHS.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) spoke about the cancer drugs fund, and made an interesting point about a UK-wide set of arrangements. I shall certainly pass on his comments to the Minister responsible for cancer. He also spoke about molecular diagnostics, and I would like to reassure him that, in England at least, we will significantly roll out molecular diagnostics as a result of our acceptance of the principles of the taskforce recommendations.
Finally, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), the shadow Minister, rightly made some points about public health strategy. It is, of course, difficult to make sure that we balance the books, while keeping to our manifesto pledges. His points about tobacco and obesity were well made, and I know that the Government will be coming forward with obesity plans in short order.
With no more time available to me, I would like to thank Members for their full, excellent and expert contributions to this fascinating debate. I hope that the Government have shown the kind of progress and commitment to this important area that they are so keen to see.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
That leaves one minute for John Baron to conclude the debate.
Mr Baron
That is very kind and generous, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I would like to thank all who contributed today—it proves how much expertise has been brought to bear in such a well-informed debate from all sides. I would like to thank the Minister once again for stepping into the cancer Minister’s shoes and for answering our questions. I am sure he will want to answer some further questions in writing. I would like to thank him, too, for taking on board the importance that the whole cancer community attaches to the one-year cancer survival rates as a means of promoting earlier diagnosis. I thank him for that.
I leave the Minister and the House with just one thought. There are not many areas of Government policy that could save 10,000 lives a year if we raised our game on earlier diagnosis. We need a policy that will match the best internationally. We have that capability in our hands: let us hope that we seize the opportunity.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes the findings of the independent cancer taskforce published in July 2015; and calls on the Government to publish an action plan on implementing the new cancer strategy.
Business without Debate
Mesothelioma Compensation (Military Veterans)
(9 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
David Mackintosh (Northampton South) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to speak about mesothelioma compensation for military veterans. I am pleased that it follows such an important debate on the wider cancer strategy. I also thank the members of the public who have taken the time to come and watch our proceedings from the Gallery, and who signed the petition. It is encouraging to see such strong public support for change, and I am glad that I have the chance today to bring this issue further into the spotlight. I pay tribute to other Members who have raised the issue, including my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who has done so much work on it in the past.
Before I speak about the specific case of my constituent and the problems he faces, let me explain what we are talking about today. Most people who are suffering as a result of exposure to asbestos have been compensated thanks to the Mesothelioma Act 2014, which was passed during the last Parliament and which allows those who were diagnosed with mesothelioma on or after 25 July 2012 to apply for compensation. However, when Parliament reviewed the Act in July 2013, Lord James of Blackheath noted that although civilians suffering from mesothelioma would benefit from it, naval personnel with asbestos-related illnesses would be left behind in terms of financial reparations.
Given its association with asbestos, mesothelioma usually affects individuals who have worked in professions such as carpentry or construction, but it has also afflicted a large number of veterans, particularly naval personnel who worked as engineers in the boiler rooms of ships, and it is on that specific aspect that I intend to focus.
Service personnel and veterans are unable to sue for injuries and illnesses sustained before the introduction of the Crown Proceedings (Armed Forces) Act 1987. The only avenue of redress open to veterans with mesothelioma is the war pension scheme, which awards regular payments for life. It is difficult for the scheme to accommodate serious long-term illnesses, as it cannot award large lump sums to those recently diagnosed with terminal conditions. As a result, although service-related mesothelioma attracts a 100% war disablement pension, veterans who are single, divorced or widowed stand to receive considerably less compensation than their civilian counterparts.
For example, whereas a 63-year-old civilian claimant would be awarded about £180,000 in compensation under the Government’s diffuse mesothelioma scheme, a veteran of the same age who lived for one year would receive just £32,000 under the war pension scheme. In fact, many veterans would receive even less. That is at odds with the armed forces covenant, which states that members of our armed forces community should experience no disadvantage as a result of their service, and it is an unfortunate anomaly in the system. I am sure other Members will agree with me when I say that I do not believe the House intended to cause such discrimination against military veterans, but that is the situation that confronts us today. I certainly commend the Government for all their work on the armed forces covenant.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour on securing the debate. Does he agree that military veterans are among the very best in our society, and that, far from being prejudiced in any way by their military service, they should be rewarded? When an ailment has resulted from their service, should not the Government do everything they can to ensure that they are adequately compensated?
David Mackintosh
I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for raising that point. I do agree. I will talk later about my constituent. I think that Members will agree that he served our country admirably and went over and above what was asked of him.
I was talking about the armed forces covenant. I congratulate the Government on everything that has been done so far. Clearly, there is more to do. The covenant has enshrined two underlying principles in law. Members of the armed forces community should face
“no disadvantage compared to other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services”
and
“special consideration is appropriate in some cases, especially for those who have given the most such as the injured or the bereaved”.
As leader of Northampton Borough Council, I signed the Northampton armed forces community covenant in 2013 further to embed those commitments in my local community. I am pleased that that has been taken up by so many other local authorities around the country.
I move on now to the case of my constituent Mr Fred Minall, a veteran who is affected by this. He first raised the issue with me when he was diagnosed a few months ago. Mr Minall is a naval veteran who is suffering from mesothelioma as a result of exposure he received while on active duty between 1957 and 1965 with the Royal Navy. When Fred came to see me to tell me about the problems he was facing, I was very moved. I was also shocked that an anomaly in the system had put him in this position, and concerned that there may be many other veterans such as Fred who are suffering from mesothelioma but who are not receiving the support available to other sufferers outside the military.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend have any idea how many naval veterans in total may have mesothelioma now? How many people are we talking about?
David Mackintosh
I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for raising that matter. I will talk about that later, but the Royal British Legion estimates that about 2,500 British naval veterans will be affected.
Mr Minall was not able to make it to the Chamber today to watch the debate, as he is undergoing chemotherapy. I know that he is watching at home and that he is pleased that we are able to debate this subject in greater detail and ensure that the issue, which affects a lot of people around the country, receives the attention it deserves. Fred has asked me to say on his behalf:
“Mesothelioma sufferers have little time left, and so we entrust Parliament to make a wise and fair decision, backdating any awards agreed today to the same date as if discrimination had been avoided in the 1987 Act. Why should these brave men and women endure discrimination, just when they learn they will die, due to events so long ago, during their dedicated service to Queen and Country? They should be aided and rewarded, not penalised.”
It is hard to disagree.
Mesothelioma is an extremely aggressive form of terminal cancer that is usually caused by exposure to asbestos and affects the pleura of the lungs. The disease can take decades to materialise but, once diagnosed, most sufferers die within one or two years. According to research from the Royal British Legion, with which I have been working closely on the issue over the past months, it is projected that just over 2,500 British naval veterans are likely to die from mesothelioma between 2013 and 2047. There is currently no cure for mesothelioma, which means that it is even more crucial that we are able to help our constituents by doing all we can now.
What can the Government do to help constituents such as Fred overcome the hardship they face? The Royal British Legion has suggested that the Government should offer military veterans the choice between receiving a lump sum compensation payment that is comparable to the sums awarded under the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme and a traditional war disablement pension. Veterans with mesothelioma should be allowed to choose the form that their compensation takes. We recognise that, for veterans who live for some time, or have a spouse or partner, that should be their choice. The traditional war disablement pension may work out more generous than the lump sums awarded by the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme. I have already mentioned the armed forces covenant principle that those who are bereaved should, where appropriate, be eligible for special consideration. As such, I would not wish any changes in policy to come at the expense of that arrangement.
We should place great importance on the health and well-being of our veterans and I believe wholeheartedly that they should be treated fairly. I am pleased to hear that the Government are committed to ensuring that those who serve in the armed forces and their families, regular or reserve, past and present, are treated with dignity and receive the care and support they deserve, but this is an anomaly that we need to look at.
I am pleased that the armed forces covenant is enshrined in law so that our forces’ families face no disadvantage compared with other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services. I look forward to hearing the views of hon. Members from across the House, and also to hearing the update my hon. and gallant Friend the Minister is able to provide to me, my constituent and other hon. Members’ constituents who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in this most difficult situation.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Northampton South (David Mackintosh), and I thank him for allowing me to speak in this debate, which he secured, as this is an issue that causes me great concern, as it clearly does him. I completely agree that the case of Mr Minall perfectly illustrates the need for us to have this debate, and to have it now; unfortunately, people such as his constituent do not have the time for us to waste.
I must also applaud the Royal British Legion, whose campaign in this area calling on the Government to find fairer ways of compensating veterans suffering from this devastating condition, has been very effective. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am aware of many positive developments in the way in which veterans are dealt with across the UK. There have been a number of debates in recent months in this House where this has been usefully discussed.
In Scotland we have a newly appointed veterans commissioner, effective local veterans champions such as those the hon. Gentleman mentioned, innovative housing projects and links with many excellent charities. However, in the UK context, it is none the less true that the issue of mesothelioma represents a gap in our approach to veterans, and one that I sincerely hope we can address.
The hon. Gentleman has already told us what a terrible disease mesothelioma is. There are few things more difficult to deal with for sufferers and their families than the kind of body-blow that a diagnosis of mesothelioma brings. Rectifying this unfair treatment will not make anyone suffering from this disease any better, but it might improve their quality of life during the time they have left, and it might mean that they and their families have significantly less financial anxiety than they may at present.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect anyone in this situation to feel disappointed, because they are being treated less well than their civilian counterparts. That is no way to support our service personnel, and I do hope that we can hear some positive words from the Minister on that.
It is clear that thousands of people who served in the armed services prior to 1987 have been exposed to asbestos while under military orders and have subsequently been diagnosed with mesothelioma. They are suffering from this disease because of the job they did in our armed forces, but clearly at present they are not entitled to the full compensation that others are.
We have heard that around 2,500 ex-service personnel are affected in this way, and every one of them has served this country and has the right to expect to be compensated fairly. Veterans lose out very significantly when compared with civilians in the same position. These civilians may be eligible for up to £180,000 in compensation, but the ex-service personnel may be eligible for only £31,000.
In 2008 the Labour Government published the Command Paper “The Nation’s commitment: cross-government support to our armed forces, their families and veterans”. It stated:
“The essential starting point is that those who serve must not be disadvantaged by virtue of what they do.”
More recently Prime Minster David Cameron has said:
“Our Armed Forces Bill will ensure Parliament holds the Government to account on the central principle of the covenant that military personnel will not suffer any disadvantage as a result of their work”—
and, of course, they should not be disadvantaged. It is not right morally, and it is not fair, but clearly some ex-service personnel are being disadvantaged. This is a breach of the military covenant that we hear so many fine words about.
The military covenant commits the Government to removing this disadvantage. This situation is most certainly a disadvantage at a most difficult time in people’s lives. We need to deal with it, and do so quickly. Let us back up our words with action. The Royal British Legion summarises the situation perfectly when it says it is
“unfair and has to change”.
As the hon. Member for Northampton South told us, in 2014 the Government set up a scheme to pay compensation to civilians, which is very welcome. However, like the hon. Gentleman, I would like to note that a word of caution about the issue of veterans was already being stated when the Mesothelioma Act was being reviewed in July 2013, but so far that issue has not been resolved. It is our duty to deal with this now, before more ex-service personnel have their final months blighted by financial worry and inequity.
I also note that the independent medical expert group for the new armed forces compensation scheme expresses the view that the war pension scheme is unable properly to recognise the impact of asbestos-related cancer. As we have heard, the Royal British Legion suggests that veterans diagnosed with mesothelioma should be able to choose between receiving a traditional war disablement pension and a lump-sum compensation payment broadly similar to that awarded under the new Government scheme. That would quite reasonably allow ex-service personnel to take account of their particular health and family situation and decide which route was the more appropriate.
The Royal British Legion is clearly not a lone voice in this regard. It has support among Members on both sides of the House, as evidenced by a recent early-day motion, and from Seafarers UK, the Royal Navy & Royal Marines Charity, Poppyscotland and many other organisations. I note that, at a meeting of the Central Advisory Committee on Pensions and Compensation in June this year, the Minister committed to looking at this issue and said that he understood the urgency involved. I am pleased about that, because it is an acknowledgement of the importance of the issue. However, having read a transcript of a debate in this place in February—some 10 months ago—I note that a commitment was also made at that time to look into this matter urgently. It was also noted in that debate that nothing had happened following a previous commitment to deal urgently with the matter five months before that. I therefore have some anxiety about how urgently this is being dealt with, and I hope that the Minister will be able to allay my concerns.
Veterans who develop mesothelioma from working with asbestos while in the Navy can be left tens of thousands of pounds worse off than their civilian counterparts. This is unfair; it is a clear breach of the military covenant and a completely unacceptable way to treat terminally ill veterans. I agree with the Minster that the matter should be dealt with urgently, and I hope that we will hear something today about positive progress and about how we can move this forward.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)
I start, of course, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (David Mackintosh) on securing this debate to discuss compensation for our military veterans who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma. I recognise that mesothelioma is a devastating disease that changes the lives not only of the people who are diagnosed but of those who care about them—their families and loved ones. I recognise that this is an important subject to hon. Members across the House and that it is something we all feel strongly about, as evidenced by the correspondence I have received, as well as by the recent letter from the Defence Committee and the early-day motion that some hon. Members have signed. This is also a subject that is close to the hearts of our constituents.
I would like to pay tribute to all those who have taken the time to contribute to the discussions on this subject, some of whom I have engaged with, including the Royal British Legion. I welcome the statement read out by my hon. Friend concerning his constituent, Mr Fred Minall, who I understand has been diagnosed with mesothelioma as a result of his service in the Royal Navy during the 1950s and ’60s. This was something I was very sorry to learn of. Let me reassure all hon. Members that I recognise the need to act swiftly and that I am extremely sympathetic to this cause. I can assure them that I am minded to find a solution, and have been working with my officials to do so, and crucially to do so quickly.
I would like to pay tribute to all our armed forces—those still serving and those who have served. This is particularly relevant at this time of year, as we remember their commitment and sacrifice in serving this country. We owe them all a debt of profound gratitude. This Government and I, as Minister for Veterans, are committed to doing all we can to honour that debt of gratitude. That is why we have put the armed forces covenant, which represents the moral obligation we owe to those who serve or have served, at the heart of our national life and enshrined its principles in law.
Our commitment to doing the very best we can for our veterans is genuine and unswerving. However, it is a commitment that we need to frame within the context of fairness and reality. Mesothelioma is a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, and 40 years or more can often pass before it manifests itself and an individual is diagnosed, tragically with a short life expectancy thereafter. That is why it is so important to ensure that we get the support right for those who are affected by the disease.
Bob Stewart
Will the Minister give me his reassurance that modern-day sailors are not threatened when they are working in boiler rooms today? We have some pretty old ships, and they might still have asbestos on them.
Mark Lancaster
Indeed, and I will move on in a moment to the action that the Royal Navy has taken. If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will come to that shortly.
In the light of what I was describing, I want to explain the support that is currently in place for our armed forces veterans who are diagnosed with mesothelioma. Asbestos was identified as causing mesothelioma in the 1960s. At that time, certain types of service in the Royal Navy were identified as particularly increasing the risk of exposure for armed forces personnel. When this was identified the Ministry of Defence started to address the matter quickly. By the early 1960s, the Royal Navy had already introduced new insulation materials on ships and on shore, as well as providing respiratory protection for those personnel who were most highly exposed. That was extended to all personnel who were classified as “at risk” in the following years, and by 1973 the risk of asbestos exposure for members of the Royal Navy was very low. It was not until 1987, however, that the Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations were introduced by legislation. As I have indicated, most of the cases of exposure to asbestos were between the 1950s and the 1970s. Under current arrangements, those armed forces veterans who are diagnosed with mesothelioma are able to claim compensation under the war pensions scheme—this applies to service before 6 April 2005.
The war pensions scheme allows an individual to claim the maximum war disablement pension, supplementary allowances and, in many cases, automatic entitlement by an eligible dependant to a war widow’s or widower’s pension. The Mesothelioma Act 2014 enabled the establishment of the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme. This pays a one-off lump sum to an individual who is diagnosed. That legislation is aimed at those individuals where there is no existing employer to sue. As an enduring employer, the Ministry of Defence has provided for veterans who are diagnosed for a significant period before this through the war pensions scheme. Under the war pensions scheme, claims are settled quickly, so that the early payment of compensation can begin and claimants can be assured that their dependants will be provided for after their death.
It is important, however, that we consider how veterans are treated under the Act. The matter for consideration here is whether the current arrangements for veterans continue to meet the needs for which they were designed. I would again like to thank the Royal British Legion and those who have contributed to the discussion on compensation for veterans who are diagnosed with mesothelioma in the light of the Act—I welcome their engagement. I acknowledge the argument they are making that the Ministry of Defence should offer veterans with mesothelioma the option of a lump sum in compensation which is broadly comparable to that awarded under the Act. During the last Central Advisory Committee on Pensions and Compensation meeting in June, to which the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) referred, ex-service organisations were updated on our consideration of this issue. Let me outline what steps we have taken so far.
Ministry of Defence Ministers commissioned advice from the Independent Medical Expert Group to look at mesothelioma and the awards paid through the war pensions scheme. I want to take a moment to explain some of the observations of the group. It advised that mesothelioma is unique in some respects and considered how awards were made under the war pensions scheme. The group commented that the regular income stream structure of the war pensions scheme addressed the needs of those whose civilian employability was compromised. It observed that the very poor prognosis for the majority of individuals diagnosed with mesothelioma meant that this structure offered only limited benefit in life to the sufferer—I realise that that is a crucial point. However, unlike industrial injuries disablement benefit, the war pensions scheme maintains support to eligible dependants after the pensioner’s death through payments of tax-free dependants’ benefits. While this generosity has been acknowledged, I recognise that the Royal British Legion has raised the position of single, widowed or divorced claimants, and although I am unable to offer a final solution to the House today, I can confirm to hon. Members that I am reviewing the provision that is currently available. I intend to make an announcement regarding the matter of lump sum payments very shortly.
As hon. Members will recognise, this is a complex matter that has required detailed consideration, and close consultation and engagement with colleagues across Whitehall. However, I hope to be in a position to make an announcement as soon as possible. To that end, I hope to update the charities at the forthcoming central advisory committee meeting next month.
In conclusion, I wish to again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South for calling for this debate on what I recognise is an emotive subject. Let me emphasise again that we place great importance on the health and wellbeing of our veterans and are absolutely committed to treating them fairly. As my officials continue to consider the details of this complex matter, I intend to remain fully engaged, but please rest assured that I am dedicated to bringing this matter to a swift conclusion.
Question put and agreed to.
Universal Credit (Work Allowance) Amendment Regulations 2015
(9 years ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 10 / Noes: 7 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Universal Credit (Work Allowance) Amendment Regulations 2015 (S.I. 2015, No. 1649).
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
The Opposition do not support the regulations. We have a number of concerns not only about the substance of the Government’s proposals, but about the way in which they have been brought forward. During the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012—you may remember that, Sir Edward—Ministers were fond of drawing an analogy between universal credit and a bookcase. The 2012 Act created the basic framework for the new benefit, but left most of the detail to the regulations, which would fill in the gaps, Ministers said, like books filling empty shelves. To pick up that analogy, more than three years have passed and the bookcase is now in a pretty sorry state. It has been hacked away at over the years, with no one paying much attention apart from, of course, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has been paying a great deal attention to it. The bookcase is now in such a precarious state that the wrong sort of book placed on the wrong shelf in the wrong order at the wrong point could cause the whole structure to collapse.
I do not know if hon. Members have had the sorry experience I have had of going to IKEA and buying and then trying to assemble Billy bookcases, which I understand are some of the best sellers. I have a number of children, all of whom have had more and more books, and putting those bookcases together is very difficult. One has to press in a little metal thing and bang away at it, and it goes too far or gets lost, so instead of four little bits of metal holding up each shelf, there may only be three, so the books have to be put on the shelves in a way that stops the bookcase falling over altogether. That has been my experience, so when reading through previous comments comparing universal credit to bookcases, I cannot help but think of the Billy bookcases in my children’s bedrooms that are in a very sorry state. That, I am afraid, is where we have got to with universal credit. The regulations we are debating today are exactly the sort of book that could turn over the whole bookcase. In a non-metaphorical way, they will put the entire structure of universal credit under such strain that it may no longer be able to bear the weight of the expectations that Ministers have given us all about what universal credit will mean.
The regulations propose significant cuts to the work allowances within universal credit. A household’s work allowance sets the ceiling for what they can earn before their universal credit starts to be withdrawn. The idea underpinning one of the main objectives of universal credit is that hard work should be rewarded. We all agree with that. In practice, the work allowance was supposed to ensure that those who moved into work for the first time would not face a financial penalty if they did so. The 2009 paper entitled “Dynamic Benefits”, published by the Centre for Social Justice, is sort of the Old Testament of universal credit—I do not know where Ministers are proposing to put this particular book on the bookcase, because it is the sort of thing that could topple the whole thing over by itself—and it said:
“For those capable of working, work should always be preferable to benefit payments as a route out of poverty. Those on low earnings, and those working part-time, should retain more of their wages. Hence, we propose increasing the earnings disregards, and reducing the highest benefit withdrawal rates.”
Well, hooray! We would all agree with that.
After the 2010 election, the coalition’s White Paper built on that theme and warmed to it, singling out work allowances as a specific example of how the new benefit would help to meet the Government’s objective of making work pay. The fact that the disregards would be more generous than those under existing benefits and tax credits was a key feature of work allowances, according to the White Paper. The argument went as follows:
“People will generally keep more of their earnings for themselves and their families than is currently the case… Universal Credit will ensure that all amounts of work will be more financially rewarding than inactivity and remove the current barriers to small amounts of work.”
So all amounts of work will be financially rewarding. That is what universal credit was supposed to be about. That is what the Old Testament said, and that is what the White Paper said. That sounds like a reasonable argument, and we would support it. However, these new regulations turn that argument completely on its head: not only do they cut some households’ work allowances almost in half, but they remove some people’s work allowances altogether. Does the Minister realise that? Is the Department aware that that is what it is doing?
According to figures compiled by the House of Commons Library, the changes will result in families in a range of different circumstances losing out, whether they are in work or not. The most startling effect will be on households with no dependent children. Whether singles or couples, they will no longer have any work allowance at all. From the moment they start working, they will lose benefits. There will be no work allowance. Is the Minister aware that that is what the regulations do? For those families, the cuts will mean immediate withdrawal of 65% of their universal credit from their first hour of work. In practice, the change is likely to cause losses of between £800 and £900 a year. If we add tax and national insurance, the figure could be 75% or even higher.
It is hard to imagine a situation more starkly in contrast with the original purpose of universal credit. Do the Government know that? Or, because there is no impact assessment, is the Minister unaware that this will happen? That is not all. Even more severe will be the impact on people—likely to be single parents—moving into work for the first time. As is so often the case with these Tory welfare reforms, single parents will be hit harder than anyone else. Single parents—by whom we usually mean single mothers—will, in some cases, have their work allowances reduced from £9,300 a year to just £5,000 a year. Under the current higher work allowance, a single mother who earns the minimum wage can work for up to 22 hours a week on universal credit before she reaches her limit. The cuts will mean that she will start to lose support the moment she works more than 12 hours a week. It is quite shocking that a single parent with two children could face losses in excess of £2,000 a year as a result of the cuts, even if she works full time and gains from the higher minimum wage.
We all want children to be brought up in households where a parent is in work, giving those children a good example, where it is practical, of the best way to live, so why are the Government making it so difficult—again—for single parents? Are they unaware that this will happen, or are they doing it deliberately? If they are doing it deliberately, what is the rationale? How can it be justified?
If this is what the Government meant by changing work incentives, the incentives are surely being changed in exactly the wrong direction. That cannot be what the Secretary of State meant when he promised repeatedly that universal credit would “make work pay.” I suggest to the Minister that
“it is one thing to wag our finger at people who are unemployed and say that they must go to work, with a sort of moral purpose to that. Of course it is quite meaningless to someone if you are telling them that and they think they are going to lose money, or certainly not gain any money”.
I could not have said that better myself, but I did not say it first. Does the Minister know who did? She must be aware. I am sure that she has a copy of the Secretary of State’s collected speeches by her bed and knows that it was he who said that in early 2011, when he was speaking about how the work allowances would improve incentives to work for low-income households.
The cuts mark a radical shift away from the principle that work should always pay. If the Minister does not want to take my word or the word of the House of Commons Library, there are others. Just a few weeks ago, witnesses from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation made the same point when giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee on the Government’s tax credit cuts. The witnesses argued that
“more of the debate should be focused on what we have done to the original purpose of universal credit in these drastic cuts to the work allowances”.
They said that, because of the changes,
“the structure of what will end up as universal credit has…been fundamentally changed”.
Universal credit will not be universal and it will not make work pay, so what is the point of it? Why are the Government proposing to change it again? We share those witnesses’ concerns. It is bitterly disappointing that Ministers are pressing ahead with their plans before responding to the considered arguments of independent experts. Perhaps we should not be surprised by the Government’s reticence on the question of how work allowances can possibly be cut without affecting incentives to work. If I am honest, I do not expect the Minister to square the circle today, because she cannot. It is perfectly clear that in making these regulations the Government have wilfully failed to take notice of any evidence on their probable effects. They should have—or perhaps they have looked into it and do know the effects, and they have just not shared them with us. But we have found out from other sources.
The Social Security Advisory Committee said of the regulations that
“the impact needs to be analysed carefully and the policy about work incentives should be derived from strong evidence.”
Well, where is the evidence? The Committee was concerned that
“there may be an uneven impact on individuals”—
that is true—and expressed disappointment with the
“lack of statistical analysis to support the view that the abolition of the work allowance for several UC categories will not deter people from seeking work”.
Too right. In the House of Lords, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was similarly unimpressed, issuing a report that said its members were
“disappointed that no impact assessment or similar statement has been provided showing how many people are likely to be affected by these changes and to what degree.”
It is not just the lack of an impact assessment that is disappointing, or the fact that the proposals have not been subject to any form of consultation, or that the Government seem wilfully to have failed to look at the evidence or, indeed, even tried to look for any—all of which are, of course, problems in a democracy. More troubling still is the way in which the Government have sought to implement these cuts by the back door. They have put them into regulations that would not be subject to a vote, or even a debate, unless they were prayed against. They have tried to slip them through without people noticing. The controversy generated by their proposed cuts to tax credits, which in many ways mirror the proposals we are discussing, ought to have made Ministers pause for thought before they moved forward with equivalent cuts to universal credit.
The Government may have won the election, but they have a majority of only 12. In my respectful submission, they should not be behaving with the arrogance of a Government with a majority of 120, but this behaviour shows that sort of arrogance. They have shown the same degree of indifference to public opinion that they have shown to evidence of the impact the proposals are likely to have on working families. Ministers may have assumed—perhaps quite correctly—that cuts to universal credit would not provoke the same level of concern as cuts to tax credits. There is, of course, less of a sense of urgency when it comes to cuts to a benefit that, for many people, may be several years away and that seems to be continually retreating into the distance, but however distant a prospect universal credit seems to us today, we should be none the less concerned about what the proposals would mean for working families on low incomes, whether the impact is felt in one years’ time or 10 years’ time.
The fact is that if—I repeat: if—Ministers are right when they say that most people in the current system will have transferred to universal credit by the end of this Parliament, all the arguments we have been having about tax credits in the past few months will no longer be relevant, and the arguments I am making today will be. We will have done a disservice to the people we represent if, in five years’ time, we look back and wonder how we let this Government get away with making such significant cuts with so little scrutiny. These cuts will not be passed unchallenged. The Opposition will be voting against them today.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I shall be brief, because the hon. Lady said a lot of what I wanted to say. The real issue for the Scottish National party is the fact that these changes will disincentivise work. That is our concern. If we are to incentivise work, the work allowance should be increased, not cut.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. What assessment has been made of the effect of the changes on working families and their ability to take on part-time work? Is it not the case that the proposals will disincentivise work and lead to workers reducing their hours? Will there be any mitigation for the effect on their benefits? Has the Minister read the IFS report that says that the measure
“weakens incentives for families to have someone in work”?
Will carers be affected? I am thinking particularly about a qualifying young person with caring responsibilities. Lastly, what assessment will there be of the fact that, as discussed in the Adjournment debate last night, we know that staff at the Department for Work and Pensions are among the lowest paid in the civil service? Will there be a negative impact on those staff?
The Minister for Employment (Priti Patel)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Before I address the points that have been raised, I should say that it is important to remember the fundamental principle of the design of universal credit. It has been designed to transform people’s lives by taking on the highly ambitious task of reforming the welfare system and the labour market, so as ultimately to generate wider economic benefits in excess of £7 billion every year.
The welfare system we inherited from Labour was not working. Welfare spending on people in work rose from £6 billion in 1998 to almost £28 billion in 2010; yet during that time, in-work poverty increased by approximately 20%—that figure is from the statistics on households on below-average income. The Government are quite rightly changing that situation by moving from a low-wage, high-tax society to a high-wage, low-tax one. As a result, more people will be supported by the wages they earn and the benefits they receive. That is better for them as individuals and for the country and the economy as a whole.
Universal credit will remove the barriers that prevent people from finding work by increasing their hours and earnings. The system we inherited made welfare more attractive than work for millions of people. By contrast, universal credit incentivises work, renews personal responsibility and, importantly, rewards positive work choices.
Removing the current requirement in the tax credits system to work 16 hours per week and having a single taper rate of 65% are at the heart of that approach. Those changes will ensure that universal credit reduces gradually as a claimant’s earnings increase, so that they will not lose their benefit all at once if they are on a low income. In addition, universal credit stays with claimants as they move into and progress in work, and increase their earnings. That gives them greater confidence and freedom to take up more work without the worry of additional bureaucracy and form filling that might have occurred if they lost their job or their circumstances changed.
We should make no mistake here: universal credit will make a huge difference in its own right to families up and down the country. Creating those greater incentives to find a job will mean that up to 300,000 more households will be in work and around 3 million households will gain, on average, around £180 per month. The removal of the 16 hour a week threshold is expected to help up to 100,000 additional families, with improved incentives for 700,000 out-of-work lone parents to take their first supported steps into work, something that we should all welcome.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
Will the Minister comment on the impact on the under-25s, who do not gain from the new living wage and will be severely affected by these measures?
Priti Patel
There is no doubt at all that universal credit will have a powerful and positive effect on labour market participation. The under-25s will benefit in due course from the increase in the personal allowance, which will mean that they keep more of the money that they earn. Those aged 18 to 21 will benefit from the new schemes that the Government are bringing in to support more work and training, and give help in getting on apprenticeship schemes. The positive choices will be out there for them to gain skills and get their foot closer to the labour market through the support of universal credit as a structure and through our work coaches, who will support them in work and will be of great benefit to them.
We can already see that universal credit is working and is changing lives across the country. It is now available in more than 500 jobcentres nationwide, covering more than 270 local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales, including the constituencies of many hon. Members on the Committee—Dudley North, Glasgow South West, Alyn and Deeside, and Islington South and Finsbury. Opposition Members will welcome the fact that universal credit is helping their constituents to look for work, to enter work more quickly and to earn more money in work.
Universal credit is a transformational system in the way it provides support, breaking down the barriers that prevent people from gaining work. Our network of trained and dedicated work coaches is transforming the relationship that we have with claimants and, importantly, that they, in turn, have with the labour market. We are supporting people from various backgrounds—including, importantly, people with disabilities and health conditions —into work by forging strong partnerships with key employers, ranging from National Grid to Barclays. We also have the Government’s Disability Confident campaign, which puts people at the heart of securing employment opportunities.
Many parents have previously cited, and currently cite, childcare costs as a specific barrier to entering the labour market. Universal credit currently covers up to 70% of eligible childcare costs, but, from April next year, we will increase that to 85%. That will make an enormous difference to people’s lives, with an increase of up to £1,368 per year for every child.
Emily Thornberry
I applaud the right hon. Lady’s cheerful rhetoric in the face of my questions to her. However, is it not right that single parents’ work allowance will be cut? Is it not also right that people without children will have no work allowance at all?
Priti Patel
As I said—I will restate this for the benefit of the Committee—universal credit will support people with no children and others in increasing their working hours. Of course, that is the purpose of universal credit; it is not about having a system that supports people endlessly in receiving allowances. The point is that work incentives have been improved in universal credit, and they are much better and clearer than those in the legacy system. That applies to people of all ages who are on universal credit.
I should emphasise for the Committee that, in looking at not only universal credit, but welfare reforms on the whole, we should be clear that the Government have faced difficult choices in addressing the fiscal position we inherited, and I touched on the welfare legacy we inherited in 2010. The changes to the work allowance should be considered as part of the wider package of support for claimants. Universal credit still provides better support than the current system, including by providing dedicated work coaches who can give advice on job applications and interviews. I would like to think that all Members in the House would welcome that.
Universal credit also supports flexible working by reducing or removing the administrative burdens that existed previously when an individual in or out of work claimed different benefits. I emphasise again that the removal of the 16 hours worked per week threshold allows people to take up jobs for any hours. That, in itself, incentivises people to work more hours.
Margaret Greenwood
The Select Committee report on tax credit cuts also raised concerns about cuts to universal credit and urged the Government to pause before continuing. Why are they pushing ahead with the cuts to universal credit before responding to that report?
Priti Patel
The hon. Lady touched on tax credits, and she will, rightly, have to wait until next week’s spending review to hear what else will happen in that particular space. However, I emphasise again for everybody on the Committee, including the hon. Lady, that the incentives to move into work and to increase hours will be strong in universal credit. They are far better than the system of benefits and tax credits that they replace. Moreover, universal credit ensures that those on very low incomes are protected. The Budget changes will also need to be considered as part of the wider Government support that we have put in place for working families, much of which I have touched on. Help can be targeted much more effectively at those who face the biggest barriers to work than through a blanket work allowance for all claimants, and I am sure all Members will agree with that.
Beyond universal credit, the Government have set out a vision for a higher-wage, lower-tax and lower-welfare society. As a first step, we have raised the personal allowance to £11,000 for the next tax year, and we have pledged to increase it again to £12,500 by the end of this Parliament. We have introduced the new national living wage, which will come in next year. As we have stated previously, that is forecast to reach more than £9 by 2020, based on the recommendation from the Low Pay Commission.
We expect many universal credit claimants to respond to these changes by actively seeking more work. We will rightly support them in that. I remind the Committee that in the current welfare system more than 500,000 people would lose more than 80p for every extra £1 they earned. Virtually no one will face that level of withdrawal rate under universal credit.
Emily Thornberry
I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady but she is just not right. People without children will not have any work allowance at all. They will therefore be losing 65%. When tax and national insurance are added to that, they will be losing more than 70%. Some will work for £1 and get only 30p of it.
Priti Patel
With respect to the hon. Lady, she is wrong, because universal credit will offer real support to people in work. I have touched on the wider package of measures, many of which were announced in the Budget this year by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. Importantly, not only will universal credit offer support into work, but it will continue to be a vital safety net for the most vulnerable in society.
The package of measures announced in the Budget ensure that welfare will be put on a sustainable footing. We acknowledge that these are wider and difficult decisions but they are the right ones that put work first, restore fairness to the welfare system and the taxpayer, and importantly will continue to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable in society.
Emily Thornberry
We have had no answer on whether people without children would get no work allowance, or whether the Government knew that and are prepared to press on anyway. We do not know the justification for that. We have had no answer regarding the impact on single parents and the fact that the work allowance will be halved for them. We have had no answer on whether the Government knew that or why they did not consult on it. We have had no answer on why the Government have not answered the Select Committee before pressing on. We have had no answer on why there has been no impact assessment.
We have had—and I respect the Minister for it—a great deal of cheerful rhetoric. I do admire the way she presses on and gives such a confident performance in the face of overwhelming evidence. The Opposition will be voting against.
Question put,
Draft International Fund for Agricultural Development (Tenth Replenishment) Order 2015
(9 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Desmond Swayne)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft International Fund for Agricultural Development (Tenth Replenishment) Order 2015.
If the Committee obliges me by agreeing to consider the order, it will allow the Secretary of State to fund the International Fund for Agricultural Development, which is an international financial institution—in effect, a bank—and also a special agency of the United Nations, focusing exclusively on provision for the rural poor.
The 10th replenishment, which covers the period from 2016 to 2018, is intended to raise $1.44 billion in order to disburse loans and grants to the tune of $3 billion. The United Kingdom’s share is to be some £57 million, which equates to some £19 million per year. That is an increase of £2 million per year from the last disbursement —the last was £17 million per year—or of some 15%. I believe that that increase reflects the identity of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and its objectives as well as our own preoccupations, particularly in preparing for climate change and gender issues. We will remain the second largest donor and an active member of the governing body.
On 3 November, I launched our new agricultural framework at the all-party group on agriculture and food for development. At the centre of our new approach is support for smallholders. That is vital because they feed a third of the world’s population and indeed, in developing countries, feed 90% of the population. If the world is to support some 9 billion souls by 2050, despite the disadvantages of climate change and the increase in plant and animal disease consequent on climate change, we will need to maximise the productivity of those smallholders and their economic potential. In effect, we will have to enable them to become commercial farmers.
That is why we support the International Fund for Agricultural Development, an organisation dedicated to eradicating rural poverty and hunger in developing countries by improving smallholder incomes and food security. The fund approaches smallholders as businesses. It invests in rural projects designed collaboratively, in partnership between local communities, Governments and other partners. It is a participatory process. The focus of the fund increasingly is to empower women and girls, and that is consistent with the new global modus operandi of leaving absolutely no one behind.
Increasingly, the fund is focused on building resilience to climate change. It runs the largest global fund dedicated to supporting the adaptation of smallholders to climate change, to which we have contributed significantly—I am afraid that the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme comes with the unpleasant acronym ASAP, but perhaps there is urgency in the agenda. The fund is consistent with and abides by the international aid transparency initiative.
Let me highlight some of the fund’s results for the last year. Its beneficiaries increased to 114 million, exceeding its target for this year of 90 million. As for rural micro- finance, its projects saw 19 million voluntary savers, 72% of whom were women, and 6 million active borrowers. As for the training that it provides to smallholders, 3.5 million people, 49% of whom were women, were trained in crop production, practice and technology. It trained 1.2 million people in business and entrepreneurial skills, and 2.9 million, 43% of whom were women, in livestock husbandry and technology. It repaired or constructed some 12,427 miles of rural roads; for those who prefer to think in foreign money, that is some 20,000 km. It also set up some 35,000 marketing groups.
I recommend that the Committee continues to support the International Fund for Agricultural Development in the vital work that it does to reach the world’s poorest and to increase food security and growth by empowering the Secretary of State to make this disbursement. I commend the order to the Committee.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The Opposition welcome the Government’s increased replenishment of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. It comes at a crucial time, particularly with the financial issues facing the World Food Programme and the ever-decreasing levels of food security, which are partly due to climate change.
I was particularly interested to hear the Minister say how the fund reaches out to women; for instance, 72% of borrowers are women. That is very important. Women are often the backbone of agricultural work in the countryside in the global south. As I have said, however, there are ever-decreasing levels of food security in some of the poorest parts of the world and in principle, therefore, this replenishment seems an excellent use of money.
However, despite Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to the target of 0.7%, we see increasing challenges to it and attempts to divert the funds to other areas of Government spending. For example, I understand that at a recent meeting of the OECD there was a bid to say that Governments could use aid money to help to settle refugees not just for 12 months but for three years. We would oppose that change, because it would seem to be an unnecessary degradation of aid funds.
We must defend our overseas aid budget. To do that, we must ensure that what is spent is not only transparent but effective, regardless of what type of agency it is given to. Whether someone is a Daily Mail reader or a lady on the high street in Accra, they have the same interest in aid and development; they want to know where the money is going. It is widely held that multinational agencies are perhaps less stringent in their monitoring of outcomes and Her Majesty’s Government need to ensure that that is not the case in practice, and that it does not even appear to be the case.
We note that the Government have given generously to the fund, and they have even specifically given money in the past few years to alleviate the effects of climate change. However, getting money out of the door means nothing if steps are not taken to make this process sustainable.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development has focused particularly on the effects of climate change on agriculture in poor rural communities. Although climate change is not the subject of this statutory instrument, Her Majesty’s Government should note that unless we reach a global deal on carbon emissions in Paris in a few weeks, many of the agricultural projects that we have funded and continue to fund will be under threat.
In conclusion, we support the replenishment in principle. We advise the Government that we want maximum transparency and accountability on the fund’s outcomes. With the upcoming Paris climate change summit, the UN World Food Programme’s problems and, above all, the effects of climate change on global food production, the replenishment could not be more timely.
Mr Swayne
I thank the hon. Lady for her support for the order. I take her concerns seriously and share a number of them. She began by applauding the 72% share of borrowers. I hope that I did not mislead her, but it is the savers of whom 72% are accounted for by women. I hope that the 7th Cavalry to my left will shortly supply the figure for the number of female borrowers, but I am not convinced that it will happen in time.
Mr Swayne
The hon. Lady is quite right, because they are so often faced more fundamentally with the consequences of borrowing and not having saved sufficiently. They are much more on the frontline, particularly in agriculture. I found striking the number of female-led households and smallholdings in which they are actually the farmer.
On the fear of the diversion of aid, I remain absolutely comfortable with the focus we have placed on the national interest. I am conscious that a majority of my constituents, many perhaps readers of the Daily Mail, disapprove somewhat of international development aid. When they are confronted with a disaster, however, they put their hands deep into their pockets. They thoroughly appreciate the action that the Department for International Development and the Government take on their behalf, and they add their own money. They have less understanding and information about the continual need for international development expenditure to build resilience —if they had, they would support it—so that countries can actually survive disasters in the way that Nepal did. One way that I want to try to engage the public is by persuading and showing them that reducing poverty is in our national interest. Hence the focus that we have placed on international development in the national interest. It is a way of persuading the public.
Ms Abbott
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. As he says, the British public are extraordinarily generous, among the most generous in Europe, when it comes to humanitarian disasters, but my point was that the public, whether his constituents or mine, are much more positive about aid and development when they can see concrete outcomes, such as a clinic, helping female agriculturists, or malaria nets. When they see international aid being spent on consultants, budgetary support or other such intangible things, they worry that the money might be being diverted.
Mr Swayne
I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. That is why we are so concerned to see tangible results from our expenditure. We believe that we are one of the most transparent aid organisations in the world. We have the development tracker and our website provides the results of all the projects that we have invested in. That has to be our main effort for exactly the reason that she has set out. She said that there was a concern that multilaterals might be less stringent at tracing funds and making clear where money is going. I share her concern.
We are currently working through the multilateral aid review, in which we closely examine the fit with all our international partners to ensure that their view of the development agenda fits with ours; that they share our focus on women and girls, on climate change and on economic development; and, equally, that they meet the standards we require on transparency. I hope that we continue with a consensual approach to international development. I am confident that we share the same aims, even if we might differ on some essentials. Nevertheless, I thank her for supporting this order.
We published our agricultural strategy at the beginning of this month, and it identifies three different types of economic situation among small farmers. A group at the top already have access to capital markets and to markets in which they can sell their products, and they are doing reasonably well. At the bottom, a number of people will need to get out of agriculture in the medium term and move to the towns—such progress in urbanisation will continue—to find a better job that can sustain their income. Our job as donors is to help them through that process, to provide support to ensure that they secure a livelihood and to protect them during that process, which is why we are working with the International Labour Organisation in south Asia through the work in freedom programme to protect people, particularly women, from being trafficked as they move from agriculture and rural villages into the industrial townscape.
In the middle, a much greater number of smallholders could, with a small amount of technical support, a little bit of capital or infrastructural development such as the provision of a road to help them get to markets, become much more productive and effective. The International Fund for Agricultural Development is critical in addressing that bulge in the middle and making farmers much more productive.
On the hon. Lady’s concerns about the transparency of the order, the International Fund for Agricultural Development maintains a stringent, independent assessment organisation to hold it to account, rather in the way that we are held to account by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. The International Fund for Agricultural Development shares our zero tolerance of corruption.
Question put and agreed to.
Housing and Planning Bill (Fourth sitting)
The Chair
I welcome Committee members back to the Housing and Planning Bill Committee. We now come to the line-by-line detailed consideration of the Bill. It might help new Members in particular if I lay down a few little house points before we begin. First, anyone who lets electronic devices go off inadvertently will be in deep trouble, and I will be extremely cross. Beyond that, although under the rules of the House it is perfectly acceptable to use electronic devices, particularly for purposes connected with a Bill Committee, I personally think it looks rather bad if we all use them all the time to clear our inboxes. I think we should use them to a minimal degree when we have to. That seems to be a sensible approach, although theoretically they can be used with decorum.
The same rules on general conduct apply in Committee as apply in the Chamber with regard to dress, eating and drinking, modes of behaviour and modes of address. All those things are precisely the same in Committee as they are in the main Chamber. I tend to apply that rule fairly strictly. Call me a dinosaur if you will, but I think that is the best way to conduct the business of a Bill Committee.
Before we begin, we first have to consider a motion to amend the programme motion that was agreed by the Committee on 10 November. The motion is on the amendment paper and stands in the name of the Minister. I remind Members that, under Standing Orders, if any Member objects to such a motion, it will lapse. In other words, when the Minister moves the motion to change the programme motion, if any Member indicates to me that they object to it, it will not be allowed to be made.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
I beg to move,
That the Order of the Committee of 10 November 2015 be varied as follows:
1. Paragraph 3 of the Order shall be omitted.
2. Proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 17; Schedule 1; Clauses 18 and 19; Schedule 2; Clause 20; Schedule 3; Clauses 21 to 55; Clauses 84 to 86; Schedule 4; Clauses 87 to 90; Schedule 5; Clause 91; Clauses 56 to 83; Clauses 92 to 102; Schedule 6; Clauses 103 to 121; Schedule 7; Clauses 122 to 127; Schedule 8; Clauses 128 to 134; Schedules 9 and 10; Clauses 135 to 139; Schedule 11; Clauses 140 to 145; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I look forward to working with the entire Committee, you and the team that will support us over the next few weeks as we go through the Bill.
The motion will allow part 5 of the Bill, on housing, estate agents, rent charges and other changes, to be considered before part 4. The proposed order will allow the discussion of clauses 85 to 88, which pertain to private rented accommodation, to be considered after parts 2 and 3, which also pertain to rogue landlords and the private rented sector. It will help to support a less fragmented debate on rented housing. There was much discussion on Second Reading about protection for tenants, so I would welcome being able to bring forward our discussion on clauses 85 and 86, which are concerned with houses in multiple occupation, and clauses 87 and 88, on tenancy deposit information. That will allow a debate on the private rented sector provision more broadly.
I have been advised by parliamentary counsel that the simplest way to achieve that aim is to move the whole of part 5 ahead of the debate on part 4. Although we will get to part 4, on social housing, slightly later, there will be ample time to discuss the measures in that part of the Bill, and Committee members will have more time to consider their views on part 4 before we get to the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chair
The motion the Committee has just agreed to revises the order in which it will consider the provisions of the Bill. It does not affect part 1 of the Bill, and therefore does not affect the provisional selection and grouping of amendments for today. However, I and Sir Alan Meale, my co-Chairman, will revise our selection grouping for the parts of the Bill affected by the changes to the programme motion that the Committee has just agreed to.
I have a word to say about amendments. I should make it plain to members of the Committee that we do not intend to call starred amendments—in other words, amendments that have not been tabled with adequate notice. The required notice period in a Public Bill Committee is three working days. If you wish to table an amendment for Thursday, that has to be done by the rising of the House on Monday. If hon. Members want to table an amendment for discussion on Tuesday, that has to be done by the rising of the House on the previous Thursday. You have to table amendments by Monday evening for discussion on Thursday and by Thursday evening for discussion on the following Tuesday. Until such time as amendments have fulfilled the three working days’ notice laid down under Standing Orders, they will be starred amendments and therefore not normally called unless, under exceptional circumstances, whoever laid a starred amendment requests that it should be called. I hope that is reasonably clear.
The selection list for today’s discussions is available in the room and, as I understand it, on the internet. A glance at that list shows how the selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. Broadly speaking, amendments on the same issue or similar issues are grouped together. The Member who has put his or her name to the leading amendment in the group is called first. Other Members can then catch my eye and seek to speak on that amendment or any other amendment in the group. A Member may speak more than once in the debate on a group if he or she wishes, particularly if the debate is on more than one amendment.
At the end of a debate on a group of amendments, I will call the Member who moved the leading amendment again and, before they sit down, they will need to indicate whether they seek to withdraw the amendment or divide the Committee. That seems fairly clear. If any other Member wishes to press any other amendment or new clause in the group to a vote, they must let me know—I will not know unless they indicate to me that they seek to press their amendment or new clause to a vote.
I will work on the assumption that the Minister wants the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments that he has tabled. If there are any differences from that, he will have to let me know, but that is probably unlikely.
Decisions on amendments take place not in the order in which they are discussed, but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. In other words, debate on a particular amendment occurs according to the selection list, but decisions are taken when we come to the clause that the amendment affects. New clauses will be decided after we have finished with the existing text: in this particular case, that is after clause 145 of the Bill.
In addition, I and my co-Chairman will use our discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses and schedules following debates on amendments. Broadly speaking, if there has been a fairly full debate on the matter under discussion, it will not be necessary to have a stand part debate, whereas if there are not many amendments to a clause or schedule, we will have a stand part debate. That, however, is a matter for my discretion.
I hope that explanation is helpful, but I am happy to answer questions on other points of order if there are any.
Clause 1
Purpose of this chapter
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 59, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, after “promote” insert—
‘new homes across all tenures, including’
The amendment would change the purpose of the Bill to the supply of more housing across all tenures rather than starter homes.
May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Gray? The Opposition think that the Bill is a huge waste of an opportunity to get the housing we so desperately need to solve our housing crisis across all tenures. The amendment seeks to ascertain why starter homes have been prioritised in housing delivery over all other measures that would seek to raise housing supply to the level needed across all tenures.
There seems to be consensus among almost all commentators in the housing world that we are not only experiencing a housing crisis, but not building enough homes across all tenures and that we have not done that for quite some time. We feel that in particular in the supply of affordable homes.
Contrary to what the Minister usually says, no one Government are responsible for that. Indeed, the previous Government, of whom he was a member, are not immune from criticism of their housing supply record. However, I am getting ahead of myself—I will come back to that. There is, as I said, pretty much a consensus, shared by organisations as diverse as Crisis, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the Local Government Association, the CBI and many others, that we need to be building well in excess of 200,000 homes a year if we are just to meet the demand from new household formation.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation summed up the position that we face excellently in its briefing on the Bill. It says that we need to deliver on average between 240,000 and 245,000 new homes per annum in England and that, of those, 78,000 must be in the social sector to meet need. That point was echoed by Shelter, which in its evidence pointed out that England needs to be building at least 250,000 homes a year to meet demand. Its estimate is that 50% of those new homes can be delivered by the private market, but that 20% need to be for intermediate rent or low-cost home ownership and 30% need to be low-rent, affordable homes.
Given the Minister’s oft-cited comments about Labour’s housing record and his amnesia about the last five years, I thought I would put the figures on the record as part of my overall point, in moving the amendment, that more starter homes are indeed welcome. I make that point very clearly but will probably have to reiterate it again and again as the Committee proceeds. We are not against the idea of starter homes, but they are the only products that are needed to increase supply. This is a specific question to the Minister: why are the Government making them such a priority—a priority greater than, or to the exclusion of, everything else that could be deemed affordable?
Let me go back to the figures. In 2011-12, we started to build 110,000 homes in England. That was well short of the number needed. I would say that the Minister did really well or his predecessor did, because in 2012-13 the number of homes had risen—but oh dear, no it had not. It had fallen, from 110,000 starts in 2011-12 to 103,000 in 2012-13. However, to give the Government their due, by 2013-14 the figure was 134,000 and in 2014-15 it was 137,000. We can see a gradual increase, but it was half of what was necessary to deliver the homes that we need. It is true that when Labour left office, starts were down owing to the recession, but before that—this is a critical point—starts were at 170,000 for 2007-08. That was not enough, I know, but it was not the appalling position that the Minister would often have us believe.
That was starts, but I shall talk now about completions. In 2013, when the Minister took office, we had only 138,000 completions. By the way, I have taken the figures from the Department’s website. Over a number of years, simply not enough homes have been built. I was therefore curious, when I saw the Department’s press release praising itself for delivering a net increase in supply for 2014 of 170,000 homes, as to how that had been achieved. There is such a big difference, apparently, between 2014-15 and 2013-14. There is indeed a rise, on the Department’s figures, from 136,000 to 170,000, but on closer examination that is partly—in fact, in large part—due to changes in relation to permitted development and change of use, allowing offices to move to residential. Unless the Minister has his sights on using a great deal more of our office accommodation for housing, that is hardly a sustainable position. Indeed, one wonders whether the self-congratulation on 170,000 net dwellings is not a little overdone, because what the Minister and the Department do not put on their website in the same press release is what was happening to the net housing figure before the recession hit. That is really interesting, because the net supply of dwellings in 2005-06 was 202,000; in 2006-07, it was 214,000; and in 2007-08, it was 223,000 dwellings. The 170,000 figure is welcome, but we should not overdo how great it is because it is nowhere near the level of net supply that we managed to achieve in the pre-recession years from 2005 to 2007.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
We all want to see more social housing and affordable homes. Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem may be that the definition of starter homes is too narrow? There are many examples in our region of the north of England—Gentoo, for example—of rent-to-buy options, which could considerably improve the prospect of increasing the number of affordable homes.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It struck me yesterday, as I went through the evidence to the Committee, how many people commented on their concern that such an emphasis on starter homes risks crowding out other sorts of low-cost home ownership. They suggested that perhaps the Government should have looked at other ways of supporting people into home ownership, rather than concentrating on starter homes as much as they have done.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend concerned, like me, that it is not just affordable rent that could be crowded out? The British Property Federation believes that starter homes could kill off the build-to-rent sector, which is one of the fastest-growing in the UK.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Yes. That is a very worrying piece of evidence. Interestingly, it is not only the British Property Federation that thinks so. I was looking, as one does, at comments made by the Mayor of London. I notice that the Mayor’s office is concerned that the measure might crowd out other initiatives by the Mayor to support people in moving from renting into home ownership.
Clearly, the issue is not one that we have dreamed up out of nowhere. Out there in the real world, people who are responsible for supporting the delivery of housing and, indeed, producing housing, are concerned about the impact of the Bill, and particularly the clauses in question, on the viability of other products.
Brandon Lewis
Perhaps I may clarify something. What the hon. Lady said is not quite what the Mayor of London said. He is entirely supportive of starter homes and that is clear from the record.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I know that the Mayor’s office has made positive comments about encouraging starter homes. However, the Mayor has also said that he is—or at least people in his office have said that they are—concerned about how the Bill will be implemented, and about powers that will be given to the Mayor to prevent damage to other products that he already makes available. The Opposition have been explaining that there is considerable concern about the possibility that the clauses will crowd out other useful products that exist to support people into home ownership.
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
The hon. Lady has made much reference to the building of social housing, and how she would like that to be incorporated into the clause. Will she explain why fewer council houses were built between 1997 and 2010 than between 2010 and 2015?
Dr Blackman-Woods
Yes, I can do that easily and am happy to refer the hon. Lady to the figures I gave a moment ago. The last Labour Government supported housing associations to build social homes for rent. That is why the figures for social rented homes—[Interruption]. If Conservative Members want to look at the figures, they are on the DCLG website and they break down how affordable homes are delivered, and under what tenure. They make it clear that in 2003-04 about 20,000 homes for social rent were being built. By the time the recession hit, that had increased to about 37,000 or 38,000 homes a year.
That was not enough, but it was more than when we came to office. Last year, in that same category the number was 10,000. Perhaps we did not build enough homes for social rent, but the situation was a lot better than now.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
Obviously the hon. Lady would not want to give the Committee the wrong impression. She has made reference to conversations or what the Mayor’s office may have said. Will she later today come back with some hard evidence—some quotes for the Committee of what the Mayor is supposed to have said—so that we can clearly understand what was said, and the context?
Dr Blackman-Woods
The hon. Gentleman does not have to look very hard, because the front page of Inside Housing of either this week or last week has comments from the deputy Mayor about how concerned he is. Perhaps that is contrary to some evidence that was given to the Committee, but there is some concern in the Mayor’s office about how starter homes might negatively affect what I think is the rent-to-buy scheme.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I have a soft spot for the hon. Lady, who is playing a sticky wicket particularly well. We should be basing our scrutiny on facts and demonstrable evidence. Surely she would concede that the expert witnesses we heard, notwithstanding the fact that Build to Rent is quite a new regime, did not come forward with anything other than anecdote. They did not provide any evidence whatever Build to Rent would be “killed off” by starter homes. Surely she would concede that. Perhaps in a year we will find evidence, but at the moment that is not the case.
Dr Blackman-Woods
That is actually a very helpful suggestion. Maybe we should suggest during the Bill’s progress through Committee that monitoring arrangements should extend to reviewing whether the Bill is working in its intent of getting more people into home ownership, particularly people who would not be able to get on the housing ladder in the open market. Perhaps I will take on board the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion and introduce an amendment later in the Bill’s progress.
Mr Jackson
The hon. Lady can take her own amendment; she does not have to pinch mine.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Indeed, but I could be supportive if the hon. Gentleman wanted to introduce one on that basis.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I just had some figures brought over to me to answer the question about council housing and housing association builds over the last couple of Parliaments. I am sure that the hon. Lady will join me in welcoming the fact that taking council housing and housing association starts together, in the last Parliament, 2010 to 2015, there were 153,000 starts in those tenures, compared with 149,000 in the last four years of the last Labour Government. The current Administration have built more council and housing association units, when taken together. I am sure that the hon. Lady will join me in welcoming that.
Dr Blackman-Woods
The difficulty is that I have tried to separate out the number of homes built for social housing and at genuinely affordable rents, rather than including, as the tables do, figures on housing built at 80% of market rents, which I think a lot of us would accept are unaffordable for many.
Grahame M. Morris
My hon. Friend is making a completely sensible point. I think that most of the Committee would agree that there is a consensus that we need some 250,000 houses a year. In our scrutiny of the Bill, the question is whether we are doing everything that we can to encourage not just the private sector but the public sector to build their share. Our contention, and the point that she is making well, is that we could do rather more in passing the Bill to encourage that.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that intervention, and for bringing us back to the real focus of the amendment, which is why the Government are not doing more to produce greater output in terms of housing delivery across all tenures. Most people would think that a reasonable question to ask, given the severity of the housing crisis that we face.
We must also question whether measures in the Bill are making an increase in housing units more difficult from the key sectors: local authorities and housing associations’ homes for social rent. We know, and a number of people have commented, that measures in this Bill and the Welfare Reform and Work Bill could make it more difficult for local authorities and housing associations to build homes, due to the combined impact of loss of rental income.
We are not criticising the reduction in rents; that is not the point. The point about the rent reduction is that less money will be available for local authorities and housing associations to build homes. That is simply the point that they are making. If the Government want to reduce rents—we think it a laudable objective to reduce the rents of people in social housing—it should be done in a way that does not impact negatively on the ability of housing associations and local authorities to build more homes. Unfortunately—we have seen this in some of the detailed evidence given by housing associations and local authorities—reducing rents reduces the amount of money available to them for short-term and longer-term investment in their current stock and building for the future. That does not seem to be a sensible approach.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
I have to disagree with the hon. Lady, because the Bill protects those on the lowest income by reducing their rent. It is asking those on the highest income to pay to stay at market rents, and that money can be used by councils or housing associations to build more housing. There is already legislation on a voluntary agreement for those who earn £60,000 a year or more. We heard in evidence sessions that housing associations are not using the powers, and the Bill will address that problem.
Dr Blackman-Woods
We will debate pay to stay and the many, many problems with it—
Dr Blackman-Woods
At a later stage of the Bill. Unfortunately, the hon. Lady’s sentiments are not shared, particularly by some of the larger housing associations. They have already said publicly that the combined measures of the Bill and the Welfare Reform and Work Bill mean that they are so unsure about their future income and their future ability to borrow to invest in that sector that they are pulling out of building social rented housing completely. We also know that many local authorities are already borrowing to the maximum against their housing revenue account. Because they are facing cuts and because of loss of income, they are simply saying that they do not have the resources to invest in new housing.
Is it the Minister’s expectation that all the 245,000 houses that we need each year will be built by the private sector? If that is not the assumption underpinning the Bill, how does he expect homes to be built for social rent? Who does he expect to build them? Those are the questions underpinning the amendment, and I would like to hear what he and other Members have to say.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Reference was made by the hon. Member for Peterborough to anecdote, but I do not see—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham can comment on this—how housing associations, such as Riverside in my area, which has 59,000 houses, are coming along with anecdotes, because they have to base things on facts. Riverside said to the Committee that the Bill will not do enough to stimulate new housing development and urged the Government to introduce a national housing supply strategy by 2016. It went on to talk about how that could be financed and so on. The reality is that the Bill does not do enough. Would you agree?
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes a simply excellent point. The housing associations that I have spoken to have been careful in the comments they have made. The point that again needs emphasising is that no one is saying that there should not be an initiative to support starter homes, because that would clearly be ridiculous. Of course we want measures to stimulate starter homes and increase the ability of people who can to enter the housing market. What seems really strange to us is why starter homes are being prioritised in this way, even when there is a significant danger—this was expressed by many who gave evidence to the Committee—that they could crowd out other ways of entering the housing market, such as rent-to-buy schemes, or other types of affordable housing.
A manifesto commitment was made by the Conservative party to deliver 200,000 starter homes. It might be that the whole policy we are discussing has been decided upon because of that manifesto commitment. If that is the rationale, let us be clear about that—
Dr Blackman-Woods
I want to finish my point first.
I am not suggesting for a minute that the Government should not be delivering on a manifesto commitment if they wish to do so. I am suggesting that if that is the only rationale it explains a lot, because it means that there is no rationale behind housing delivery across all sectors; the rationale is simply to address that one commitment, to the exclusion of meeting housing need, and doing so across all other sectors.
Seema Kennedy
Will the hon. Lady accept that 86% of Britons aspire to home ownership, so our manifesto commitment is important? Also, on what basis should a Government legislate other than what was in their manifesto?
Dr Blackman-Woods
Had the hon. Lady been listening to me earlier, I said that if the only rationale for the particular clauses that we are discussing was a manifesto commitment, that is perfectly understandable. My point was about whether that is the only rationale. What one would expect to hear from her, or what I hope I will hear from the Minister in a moment, is why a manifesto commitment was made to deliver 200,000 starter homes to the exclusion of meeting housing need across all other tenures and sectors. That is the question I was asking.
As we all know, we are the party of aspiration, we want people to be homeowners and we are not against measures that improve access to home ownership. The point I was making was that a lot of people have given evidence to the Committee suggesting that prioritising starter home development in quite the way that the Bill does could crowd out other forms of access to home ownership, most notably other models of low-cost home ownership, such as rent to buy or equity share, and that is not entirely sensible. That is our contention, and it is a reasonable one given the evidence received.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
The hon. Lady would be right were that the only contention. Had she read the Conservative party manifesto, or followed what the Prime Minister said when he introduced the relevant section of it, starter homes were only one part of our housing philosophy, which is about ensuring that houses are in place across all the different types of tenures—and we build more of them for all different types of tenures. That was his starting point. So it is not only starter homes that the Government are aiming to provide. That is important to the context of her remarks.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I accept that the hon. Gentleman is at least seeking to address the question that I was asking. The key issue is not whether it was a manifesto commitment, but what is underpinning it. However, I dispute his contention that the Government are delivering in the Bill and elsewhere the housing that we need across all tenures. Patently they are not, because only about half the number of homes that we need are being delivered. The numbers for social rent are also derisory.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
There are clearly two issues here; one is whether starter homes will cannibalise other forms of affordable housing, and the other issue is a narrow one that picks up on a comment just made by the hon. Member for Wimbledon, which is whether the Government can meet their own target of 200,000 starter homes during this Parliament. Nothing I have seen in the evidence that we have had from witnesses suggests that. I am sure that, away from the Committee, the Department is scrambling to figure out how, given the above-average costs of the sites that we are talking about and the obligations already in the national planning policy framework, we will get anywhere near 200,000 homes a year. It is a question of supply and the impact on affordable housing. Does she agree that there is little in the Bill to prove that the Government will get anywhere near that 200,000 target?
Dr Blackman-Woods
Indeed. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which was made by several witnesses who were very unsure about how the policy would work in operation and whether, at some point, the Government would have to revisit the definition of “starter home”. I would not be surprised to see that coming down the line in a few years, so that it will include equity share or rent to buy, should they survive the impact of the Bill, especially if the Government find themselves unable to continue to develop homes for low-cost home ownership in other ways, other than starter homes.
Peter Dowd
May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the Mayor of London’s submission that under the Bill,
“there is a risk that Starter Homes in London could displace much of the capital’s supply of shared ownership properties”
and that he would like starter homes to be an additional supply to increase
“the overall proportion and choice of low cost home ownership products in London”
to
“ensure that Starter Homes work alongside existing intermediate products”?
Do you agree that that seems to put paid to the argument—
Dr Blackman-Woods
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, not least because over the lunch break I will look out the comments from the Mayor’s office. My hon. Friend highlights clearly the point I was making. He used a good example. I could have given many examples from the evidence to the Committee about people’s concerns about starter homes crowding out other sorts of housing delivery, but I thought in my naivety that Conservative Members might listen to a Conservative Mayor and the comments made by his office, but apparently not. Those comments crystallised for the Committee people’s concern that starter homes could crowd out other forms of low-cost home ownership. We would not particularly welcome that and we would like to hear from the Minister how he will ensure that starter homes will be in addition to other forms of low-cost home ownership and help people to get on the housing ladder, which we all want to see.
Mr Jackson
I shall be brief because I am getting looks of admonition from my Whip and perhaps also from you, Mr Gray. For the record, was it not the case that, when pressed, every expert witness said cumulatively that the starter homes policy would deliver more homes for people in our country and our constituencies?
Dr Blackman-Woods
Well, on the basis of the point made by my hon. Friend, let us wait and see whether that proves to be the case.
In conclusion, I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister says about ensuring that starter homes are an addition to all other types of homes to encourage people into home ownership and across all other tenures, and his answers to our question about why the Bill does not include measures to ensure that that is the case.
Brandon Lewis
I shall keep my comments relatively brief, because I know the Committee is keen to ensure that we finish at least clause 1 before we break at 1 o’clock. We have just spent 45 minutes discussing the first of two amendments to clause 1, a one-line clause. I draw hon. Members’ attention to what clause 1 does: it simply explains what the chapter is about. It states:
“The purpose of this Chapter is to promote the supply of starter homes in England.”
I appreciate that the hon. Lady was having a wider discussion about the housing market more generally, but I will try to deal with the points about the one line of the clause.
As has been said, we should be proud of our record in both the previous Parliament, as a coalition, Conservative-led Government, and this Parliament. We delivered more council homes in five years than the previous Labour Government delivered in 13. In fact, under the Labour Government, the number of affordable homes dropped by 420,000, whereas in five years we increased the number of affordable homes. The hon. Lady outlined what we are doing across all tenures.
Let me focus on the questions that link to this one-line clause. Clause 1 outlines that the purpose of this chapter on starter homes,
“is to promote the supply of starter homes in England.”
Amendment 59 would change the purpose of the chapter to promote the supply of,
“new homes across all tenures”.
The Government are totally committed to increasing housing supply across all tenures. In fact—the hon. Lady and other hon. Members will appreciate this—we do not need legislation to do everything we want and need to do. We should not use legislation to increase housing supply where we do not need to do so. We have got our affordable housing guarantees; the guarantees scheme, with billions of pounds coming through for the private rented sector; the voluntary deal with housing associations, which the chief executive of the National Housing Federation confirmed will increase housing supply; the Help to Buy scheme; the builders finance fund; the planning changes we have made, some of which we will discuss later in this Committee; the fact that we increased local authorities’ headroom to enable them to borrow more—there is still £2 billion-worth of headroom, so local authorities can go further with building—and the work we are doing on custom build. I could go on, but I will stick to the one-line clause that we are discussing.
More than 608,000 new homes have been built since April 2010. That means there are now 795,000 more homes in England than there were in 2009, but we must go further—on that we agree. Housing starts in England are at their highest annual level since 2007. I am proud of that, but we need to go further. In the year to 31 March 2015, the reformed planning system gave planning permission for 261,000 new homes—up more than 64% on the year to March 2010. Starts on new homes in the year to June 2015 totalled 136,320 homes, compared with about 75,000 in the year to 2009. The hon. Lady’s boss, the shadow Housing Minister, is not sitting on the Committee, but when he was Minister he oversaw the lowest levels of house building since about 1923—75,000, 88,000 and 95,000. It is now back up to more than 136,000, but we need to go further.
There were more than 131,000 housing completions in the year to June 2015—15% up on the previous year. That is good; we are on the right trajectory, but we need to go further. We want to do more. The clauses are about something new, something additional—a new approach to addressing the pressing problem of young people and home ownership. We cannot rely on failed past models of housing delivery that, in and of themselves, have not delivered enough. Planning is part of that. If we are to address the current difficulties we need to innovate, and starter homes are innovative.
Teresa Pearce
The Bill says that the purpose is,
“to promote the supply of starter homes”,
and the Minister just said that this is an innovative new approach. One of the barriers for people who want to buy their first home is access to finance. Has the Minister had any conversations with mortgage lenders about the way they approach these homes, which will have a strange type of market value that they are not used to?
Brandon Lewis
Yes, we have. One point I think I made in the oral evidence session is that when starter homes are linked to Help to Buy, which requires just a 5% deposit—bear in mind that, as we have seen in evidence, there are new build homes in our constituencies for below and just above £100,000—home ownership is made available to people who have been cut out of the market since Labour’s recession. That is also why the Conservative party manifesto included the ambitious target of building 200,000 starter homes for first-time buyers under 40. The Bill sets the framework for delivering on that commitment.
The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich asked on Tuesday, as has been asked today, on what evidence the Government wish to legislate. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of people under 40 who own their home has been on a continuous downward trend: it has fallen by a third, from 62% to 39%. During that same period, there has been a 25 percentage point increase in the proportion of that age group who rent homes in the private sector: from 17% to 42%. By contrast, the proportion of people over 40 who are homeowners has remained above 70% throughout the past 20 years.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders recently looked into the challenges facing first-time buyers. It found that 71% of those born in 1970 were homeowners by the age of 40, but it projects that 51% of those born in 1980 and only 47% of those born in 1990 will be homeowners when they are 40. That is unacceptable and that is why we have included clauses in the Bill that build on our other work on housing supply.
Clause 1 will lay the foundations for 200,000 new starter homes to help young first-time buyers on to the property ladder by 2020. As I said on Tuesday, starter homes are just one part of our package of affordable housing options, which will increase the choices available to those who wish to own their own home.
Matthew Pennycook
I would like to get on the record whether the Minister is absolutely confident that the Bill will allow him to meet the 200,000 target for starter homes by the end of the Parliament.
Brandon Lewis
As I said on Tuesday, I am absolutely confident that we will be delivering 200,000 starter homes in this Parliament. It was a manifesto pledge and it is one purpose of the clause. The Bill goes way beyond that and we are doing other things on housing supply, not all of which need legislation, but we are certainly looking to deliver 200,000 starter homes in this Parliament.
The clause sets out our position clearly. Legislation is required to increase the number of starter homes available for young people to buy, and to prevent the percentage of homeowners under 40 slipping further. We need a radical shift in how the housing market supports young first-time buyers; otherwise, we will condemn a whole generation to uncertainty and insecurity. Starter homes are part of that radical shift and I am determined to ensure that, by the end of the Parliament, many more people will have a home of their own, delivered through our reforms. I hope that, with that assurance, the hon. Member for City of Durham will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Dr Blackman-Woods
What I would say to the Minister is, on total net supply of housing, even on the Department’s best figures and with some drastic measures to increase supply, such as office-to-residential, that are not likely to continue for too long, we are still delivering 60,000-plus units less than a decade ago. I would have thought it was important to put it in the Bill that the Government want to increase supply across all tenures, because that would be a clear signal to the people with concerns out there to show that starter homes will genuinely be in addition to all other forms of housing to be delivered and not instead of them. I am therefore not certain why the Minister, especially if he is doing all these amazing things across all types of tenure, does not want that recognised in the Bill. Perhaps we will ponder that issue. No doubt we will bring it back again.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The key issue that the Minister has not addressed, which is fundamental, is that when developers deliver new homes, they have a pot of money for homes under the affordable category that stretches only so far. That is why there is such considerable concern about starter homes squeezing out other forms of affordable housing. It is not because those other forms of affordable housing will not exist any more, but because the pot will only stretch so far. I do not think that the Minister has answered that point.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, to which I hope we can return in the later stages of the Bill. As I was saying, if all these amazing things are happening all over the place, I am unsure why the Minister does not want that reflected in the Bill, but that is a matter for him. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I beg to move amendment 60, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, at end insert
‘and the infrastructure needed to support such developments’.
The amendment would ensure that additional housing is supported with adequate infrastructure.
This is a really important amendment. I am unsure why the Minister has become so tetchy about our tabling amendments to clause 1, because we merely want to improve the legislation so that it reflects some of the concerns we heard in the evidence sessions and in some of the written submissions. Indeed, the Minister himself has acknowledged on a number of occasions that not only do we need homes as places for people to live in, but homes need to be built in communities where people want to live, with the right infrastructure, so that those who rent or purchase them have access to good-quality healthcare, schools, further and higher education, transport links and, of course, employment. That takes a significant amount of planning. Good communities can develop organically, but our experience is that a good-quality built environment needs to be planned for and delivered. The amendment seeks simply to insert into clause 1 the importance of not only the supply of starter homes, but supplying the necessary infrastructure to support such developments, which is important, given the evidence we received.
Although we support measures that seek to improve access to home ownership, as I have said and will continue to say, the need for homes to be built in sustainable communities seems to have fallen out of the Bill. The Bill would be enhanced and the Minister’s desire for good-quality housing in good communities would be strengthened if he takes amendment 60 on board. It reflects what I am sure is his genuine intention to build good-quality homes in good-quality communities. There is a long history in this country of not enough attention being paid to the infrastructure that supports housing, which can lead to communities failing in the long term. Housing cannot be considered on its own without taking into account the context in which houses are placed or will be placed.
When listening to the evidence we heard last week and earlier this week, I was struck by how many of the witnesses started by talking about the lack of support for infrastructure in the Bill and the fact that it seems to contain no measures whatsoever to ensure that adequate infrastructure is in place to support the delivery of what we hope will be many, many homes. That sentiment was expressed not only by people from Shelter or the Town and Country Planning Association, but by a number of council leaders, including Conservative council leaders. I was particularly struck by how the leader of Westminster City Council opened her comments by saying that she welcomed the measures on starter homes, provided that they do not crowd out anything else—we got all the caveats—but then went on to say that she was concerned that there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that Westminster City Council, as a local authority, will be able to deliver the infrastructure required to support the developments in its community.
As Members of Parliament, we have all attended meetings in our constituencies about a proposed new development to which people object. We go along and say, “Why are you objecting to this new development?”—that is what I do, anyway—and usually it is not the case that they actually do not want the new homes. Somewhere, they recognise the need for more housing, and they do have concerns about whether their children and grandchildren will be able to access good-quality homes. The questions they ask are usually about whether enough doctors will be available and about the pressure on hospitals. I get lots of questions about how we are going to deal with the additional traffic and what it will mean for transport links. In many areas of the country, real pressure could be put on schools, or there could be issues with access to employment. These are important issues that affect whether or not people welcome new housing.
One would hope that the starter homes developments that the Minister described would be welcomed, but a number of witnesses told us that they simply will not be successful in the longer term unless the infrastructure to support them is put in place. It is not entirely clear how that will happen when there is no mention of infrastructure in the Bill. Perhaps equally important is the fact that it is not at all clear to most people how the infrastructure will be paid for. I will come on to that in a moment.
I want briefly to highlight the example of Milton Keynes Council. One really interesting thing about Milton Keynes is that until perhaps five years ago if one talked to people about it, one found that their impressions were quite negative. In the past five years Milton Keynes has gone from being a place where people perhaps would not consider living to being the third most attractive place to live in the country. What is interesting about Milton Keynes is not only that it was planned as a new city, with all the infrastructure going in first—that is critical—but that its funding model, and that of many other new towns, allowed for long-term investment in those communities, which is very important.
Milton Keynes has been around for about 50 years now, and the council is not only building new roads to continue to support its development, but replacing roads that were built when the city was started. We forget that infrastructure has to be not only provided, but improved. So Milton Keynes Council has huge experience of how to successfully develop a community that works. We have heard that, by and large, Milton Keynes is an area that works for the people who want to live there; they have access to employment, good-quality schools and healthcare, and the transport links are very good indeed.
My point is that we should pay attention to what Milton Keynes Council told the Committee. Its evidence stated that,
“the provision of new homes needs to be planned with the provision of jobs, schools, shops and necessary infrastructure and facilities in order to create sustainable communities.”
We are concerned that the short-term demands of first-timebuyers may be met, but at the expense of considering the serious long-term consequences of failing to require such infrastructure.
Indeed, as I said earlier, Philippa Roe, the leader of Westminster City Council, said that she wishes to make the Government aware of the potential problems that may arise without the correct infrastructure. She said:
“One of the issues we face in this debate is that we talk about housing in a silo... you cannot do that if you are to create a proper community. You have to talk about proper regeneration of an area.”––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 10 November 2015; c. 14, Q27.]
We know that people need not only a home, but good schools, roads, shops and communities. If we are to implement starter homes, we need to ensure that they are places where people want to live. The Government have noted on several occasions the importance of creating great communities with local infrastructure. Yet the same Government are putting in peril the infrastructure that is needed for making such communities by not putting in the Bill a requirement to deliver necessary infrastructure. That is even more surprising when we know that the Minister has aspirations for creating places that people want to live in. The statement he gave in March 2015 said:
“Starter homes developments are expected to be well-designed and of a high quality, contributing to the creation of sustainable places where people want to live, work and put down roots to become part of the local community.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2015; Vol. 593, c. 44WS.]
That is an excellent sentiment, which I totally share.
The Minister also cited the Department for Communities and Local Government’s 2015 consultation on starter homes:
“Most local authorities and a number of representative bodies expressed views about the potential impact on employment land and local economies”
of this policy. We need to square that with the desire to see such homes built in places that are truly sustainable, with access to employment and other opportunities that people want to see.
In the evidence session, Martin Tett, vice-chair of the housing board at the Local Government Association, stated:
“The need to address the issue of adequate contributions towards local infrastructure is fundamental.”––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 10 November 2015; c. 26, Q58.]
The Bill fails to create the great places that we need for people to live in and call home. It completely misses the importance of creating vibrant and socially inclusive communities and ignores important environmental factors surrounding housing.
I am sure hon. Members were very interested to see the written evidence that we had from the Woodland Trust. When we think about housing, we do not necessarily think about making sure our trees are protected. The Woodland Trust wants to make sure that we do not lose valuable trees when we create new housing developments. Planting new trees is an important part of establishing a new community and making it a well-designed community that people want to live in. I could go on, but I will not—I am trying to finish speaking to the amendment before we break for lunch.
Brandon Lewis
I entirely disagree with the hon. Lady’s point about developers and what they are saying about the planning system. I am pleased that the changes that we have made over the last few years have been welcomed by the building industry, but there is a still a view that the planning system is too slow. Part of what we will debate over the next few weeks is how to go further in speeding up and simplifying that process and ensure that local people’s voices are more loudly heard. We will debate that later.
Equally, in many cases, local authorities sign planning performance agreements with developers in order to ensure that they get the level of support and work that they want. Given that local authorities, as we have seen today, now have reserves rising from £13 billion to £22 billion, they should consider carefully how to finance and resource their planning departments, which should absolutely be at the heart of local authorities.
Amendment 60 would amend clause 1 to refer explicitly to the infrastructure needed for starter homes. To respond to the hon. Lady’s opening remarks and to the last intervention during debate on the previous amendment, this chapter of the Bill is entitled “Starter Homes”. It is about starter homes, a new product that we are adding to the mix. Let me be clear: nothing that we are doing to promote starter homes will fundamentally change the importance of having good infrastructure in place to support new developments. We are one on that. We as a Government strongly believe that new housing developments must be supported by improvements in local infrastructure, from better roads to new schools and doctors’ surgeries to more parks and open spaces, and good design to create communities.
Our manifesto clearly stated:
“When new homes are granted planning permission, we will make sure local communities know up-front that necessary infrastructure such as schools and roads will be provided.”
We particularly want local authorities and infrastructure providers to plan positively for the broader infrastructure needs of their area as part of local plan making. Our starter homes reforms will not change that. Yes, we will exempt all starter homes from the community infrastructure levy. We will lay the draft regulations shortly, and I appreciate that the House will have an opportunity to debate them soon, but I say gently to the hon. Lady that there is a discount of at least 20% on starter homes, which is funded in part by the reduction of the community infrastructure levy. If she is saying that it should still be levied, where does she think the extra funding will come from?
Affordable housing is already exempt from the levy, so the impact of the reform on local infrastructure financing will be much less than many might imagine. Furthermore, planning decisions for all developments, including those that contain starter homes, will still need to be made in accordance with local planning policy, subject to the starter homes requirement and other material considerations.
Infrastructure considerations will be an important part of consideration for any substantive development. In particular, local planning authorities will still be able to secure section 106 contributions for site-specific infrastructure improvements required for the development, including new roads or financial contributions to local schools. Accordingly, this explanatory amendment to clause 1 is not necessary, as infrastructure considerations will continue to be an important factor for developments with starter homes. With those points in mind, I hope that hon. Members will withdraw the amendment.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I am very, very disappointed that the Minister did not take the opportunity that I provided for him to reassure the Committee and the many people who gave evidence that the Government had clearly thought through how infrastructure would be provided to support these new developments and, critically, how it would be paid for.
The specific point I put to him was not whether the community infrastructure levy should or should not apply to the element of starter homes in new developments; I did not comment at all on that. I simply pointed out that some of the councils that will have to operate the system were very unclear about how the gap in funding would be addressed. Milton Keynes is a good example, in that it pointed out that on an average-sized development the council could be £80,000 short of providing necessary school places to support that development.
If the Minister and the Government are promoting these new homes, it is important that they have thought through clearly how the infrastructure to support them will be provided. It is also important that they seek to reassure us and answer the questions we have directly raised. As I said, I am very disappointed. Bearing in mind the large number of witnesses who identified concerns about this issue in their evidence to the Committee, I hope that the Minister and his officials, even if they do not want to pay attention to the matters we are raising, might pay attention to the matters that developers and others are raising.
Brandon Lewis
Actually, developers have welcomed starter homes and explained that they are potentially a huge opportunity to increase housing supply. The National Housing Federation also backed that up. If the hon. Lady reads through Hansard, she will see that I explicitly outlined the infrastructure point, both in terms of CIL and more widely, and in site-specific section 106 agreements.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I was just coming to that. As the Minister has made an intervention, perhaps he could make another helpful one, to show that section 106 agreements will apply to the whole site, including counting the number of homes provided for starter homes.
Brandon Lewis
I again ask the hon. Lady to read Hansard, because it will tell her exactly what I said. I repeat that local planning authorities will still be able to secure section 106 contributions for site-specific infrastructure improvements required for the development, including new roads or financial contributions to local schools.
Dr Blackman-Woods
As the Minister suggests, I will indeed check Hansard in the next few days. I thank him for his clarification. My point was that I do not think we had an answer to the specific question raised by Milton Keynes Council and others about how the funding shortfall resulting from not applying CIL to a proportion of the development, because of starter homes, will be met.
Brandon Lewis
I again draw the hon. Lady’s attention to my words. I made the situation regarding the community infrastructure levy very clear, including the fact that at the moment affordable homes do not get the community infrastructure levy, and therefore there is a negligible difference.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Nevertheless, CIL will not be applied to the homes that are being built as starter homes. It is important to identify how that shortfall will be met.
Brandon Lewis
It is not a question of a shortfall. Affordable homes do not attract the community infrastructure levy now, so that is not a change.
Dr Blackman-Woods
As the Minister will recognise, these homes have not actually been built and they will, after five years, go on the open market. Therefore, I am not sure he is making a direct like-for-like comparison. In any case, the issue about how the shortfall will be addressed remains. I would like him to reflect on that further and think about how better to reassure the Committee on how infrastructure will be delivered. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
We now come to the question of whether the clause stand part of the Bill. My inclination is that, because of the time and the substantive debate we have had, we should move forthwith.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Housing and Planning Bill (Fifth sitting)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 61, in clause 2, page 1, line 12, leave out
“at a discount of at least 20% of the market value”
and insert
“at a price no higher than is affordable to a household receiving the median local household income, with affordability to be determined by the local authority”.
The amendment would ensure that starter homes are affordable to the average buyer in a local area.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 67, in clause 2, page 2, line 21, at end insert—
“(8A) The restrictions on resales and letting at open market value relating to first time buyer starter homes must be in perpetuity”.
The amendment would require the reduction of 20% below market value for Starter Homes to remain in perpetuity.
Dr Blackman-Woods
May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Alan? The amendment seeks to probe the Minister on why a discount of 20% below market value is to be set to encourage people to buy starter homes, instead of a sensible multiplier of median household income in the area concerned, which would allow affordability to be determined on a regional or local basis, set by the local authority. As well as being localist, surely that would be a more effective way to get people on to the housing ladder. The national threshold in the Bill will mean that starter homes, unless they are priced significantly below that, will in many areas be out of reach for too many families.
I know that Government Members got a bit hot and bothered about the research presented to us by Shelter in oral evidence, but it is important to go through its argument in detail, because its position was backed up by others who gave evidence. It stressed that for many first-time buyers the current thresholds set by the Government are too high and that many people would not be able to afford a property priced at £250,000 outside London or £450,000 in London.
Shelter made the powerful point that the reforms will oblige local authorities to ensure that starter homes are built, with funding diverted from existing affordable housing within the planning system. That harks back to our discussion this morning: as starter homes are not currently affordable to most families on low and middle incomes, they should be built in addition to, not in place of, existing affordable housing. Local authorities should not be compelled to accept such homes if they are not affordable to their local community.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Just to correct the hon. Lady, the figures before us show that it is wrong to assert that starter homes are not affordable to the majority of low and middle-income families. They may not be affordable for a minority in specific geographical areas, but the figures do not show that they are unaffordable for the majority.
Dr Blackman-Woods
The picture is quite complicated, but Shelter has been helpful in the evidence it provided. I am not sure whether I have its document in front of me to show the hon. Gentleman, but in its detailed analysis in “Starter Homes: will they be affordable?” it gives a detailed breakdown for each local authority area. I found that helpful, so he might like to look at it. In that we can see that, across the country, there are a number of areas in which the pricing regime will make the homes unaffordable for many people.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady accept that the analysis to which she is referring is based on the £450,000 and £250,000 figures, which are ceilings? Many starter homes will be delivered at far lower prices than those caps.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Yes, but those are the figures that the Government put on the face of the Bill, so those are the amounts that we want to refer to. I expect that in many areas developers will seek to build starter homes up to the level of the cap, but the hon. Gentleman is of course right that in some areas they might not. We will look at the evidence in a couple of years’ time to see how many homes are being built below the level of the cap.
Shelter is throwing out a serious challenge to the Government. Its analysis shows that the starter home programme will not help the majority of people on the new minimum wage, and in many areas in England it will not help people on average earnings either. Shelter considered how the policy will affect different household types in each local authority area in England, and on a range of different salaries, to assess whether they would be able to afford a starter home. It concluded that starter homes for families earning average wages will be unaffordable in more than half—58%—of local authorities across the country in 2020. Perhaps that addresses the point made by the hon. Member for Peterborough. Families on the new minimum wage, which the Government call the national living wage, will be able to afford a starter home in only 2% of authorities. Single people on low or average wages can more or less forget it, as they will be unable to afford a starter home in the majority of local authority areas.
London, the south-east and the east contain the largest number of areas in which affordable starter homes could be built under the scheme because of the high demand, yet they are the least affordable. Shelter concludes that starter homes will primarily help those on higher than average incomes and couples without children. That might be the Government’s intention. However, if they intend to help those earning more than the average income and couples without children, they should make that clear. That begs the question, which we were considering earlier: how are all the other categories of people supposed to get on to the housing ladder?
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Surely the aim of the Bill is to increase the pool of home ownership to enable people who are otherwise unable to buy on the open market to afford a home. I have asked the Minister repeatedly—I hope he can touch on this point—what assessment or analysis has been done to suggest that the Bill will enable people, in the numbers he hopes to see, to afford homes that they would otherwise be unable to buy on the open market. My fear is that the Bill will hand equity to people in other areas who are already able to buy.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which we will probably return to a number of times in Committee if the Chair permits us: to what degree do the measures add additionality to the whole system of housing supply? In particular, will they enable people who currently cannot buy their own home to do so? That is far from clear, on the basis of the evidence before us—particularly from Shelter. Of course, if the Minister has alternative evidence, we would all be happy to consider it during our deliberations.
I know that the Minister took exception to the fact that Shelter’s research used the median house price as the likely value of a starter home. Interestingly, Shelter explains in its report why it did that. The first reason is that starter homes are new houses, so they are usually more expensive than existing houses. Also, as we heard from the Minister, starter homes are expected to be of good quality and well proportioned, which might make them a little more expensive.
As Shelter pointed out to the Committee, however, the Land Registry index of house prices that it used in its research actually produces lower values than other similar indexes. The Land Registry’s median house price was £198,000 in England and £375,000 in London. Those figures are lower than the average house prices for first-time buyers that I think the Government used, because the latest stats from the Office for National Statistics indicate that the median house price is £211,000 in England and £385,000 in London. As a result, criticism of the Shelter research does not seem legitimate to us, because its figures were lower in any case.
If the Minister wants to bring forward alternative evidence, we will look at it. If he is determined to use the official prices for first-time buyers as a starting point for assessing the policy, that, too, is fine by us. However, that poses the question of why the starter homes will be even less affordable than the Shelter research has identified. The amendment seeks to restore some reality to the discussions about the affordability of starter homes and the actual consequences of the policy for real people in their local areas. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), said in August that,
“all too often young people find themselves exiled from the place they grew up as they are forced to move away to find a home of their own.”
One has to presume from that statement that he would like young people to be able to buy a home in their local area, with a starter home set at an amount that can be afforded locally. That is also exactly what the amendment seeks.
Specific issues arise for young people trying to access housing in rural areas. The Campaign to Protect Rural England told us that average house prices in rural areas are 22%, or £43,000—a huge amount of money—higher than in urban areas, excluding London, although median incomes are lower, at £19,900 a year, compared with £24,000 in urban areas. Such specific affordability issues should be left to rural local authorities to address in the setting of the level of threshold prices for starter homes. Even in areas with an acute shortage, local authorities want to do their best to help local people, and local young people in particular, to get on to the housing ladder.
I will be interested to hear from the Minister why the amendment is not acceptable. It is a sensible amendment that seeks to ensure that affordability is set at a level that will mean people can purchase a house in the locality in which they already live and in which they want to continue living. We also think that, given the disparities in income throughout the country and the possible disparities in house prices to be faced by local people trying to get on to the housing ladder, some measure of local accountability should be built in.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
Were the hon. Lady’s amendment to be made, it could mean that in an area such as her constituency, where the median income is about £20,855, the cost of constructing a dwelling would be higher than the price at which it could be sold—set in law. Does she think that people who construct houses would do so at a loss, or would she expect her local authority to make up the difference?
Dr Blackman-Woods
If the hon. Gentleman had read the whole amendment, he would have seen that it says that affordability, and therefore the threshold level, is to be determined by the local authority. Either one believes in devolution and giving responsibility to local authorities—I thought that the Government did—or one does not.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I will give way in a moment, once I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s previous intervention. We must expect local authorities to act responsibly and set a level that would cover construction costs for the new home but nevertheless be affordable for local people. That is the purpose of the amendment. It would give local authorities a responsible role in the setting of thresholds, rather than requiring them simply to apply a national one that might not be suitable to their locality.
Mr Bacon
I did read to the end of the amendment, and it refers to the “median local household income”, so that is the criterion that would determine the matter, not the good wishes of the local authority. The local authority would have to have regard to the median local household income. My question—and the hon. Lady did not answer it—was this: if it is not possible to construct a dwelling at a price that reflects a multiple of the median local household income that a lender would lend, would she expect someone to construct a house at a loss, or would she expect someone else, such as a local authority, to make up the difference, or would she expect them to build nothing?
Dr Blackman-Woods
I think that I have already addressed those points. It is clear that the amendment would allow local authorities to set the threshold at a level affordable to people on average incomes. If starter homes are not to be available to people with incomes that are the average for the locality, what is the point of them? I would have thought that they were intended to help exactly the people with such incomes.
The point of the amendment is that the threshold will need a degree of local input. We are trying to improve the Bill and make starter homes accessible to as many people as possible, taking on board the difficulties of people across the country, given that house prices vary from area to area. Giving local authorities input into what is affordable is a sensible measure.
Amendment 67 relates to
“restrictions on resales and letting at open market value relating to first time buyer starter homes”.
Why has the Minister rejected the outcome of his own consultation exercise? Why should the discounts not be applied in perpetuity? As we know, the Government plan for a starter home is that it could be resold or let at open market value five years after the initial sale. The purpose of the amendment is to probe the Government as to why they rejected the view that restrictions should continue.
Several of those who gave evidence highlighted problems with the issue of perpetuity as a key element that will affect the potential success or failure of the policy. The question of the length of time for which the discount will be applied needs to be asked. As I mentioned, the Government’s own consultation reflected the view that there should be an ongoing basis for starter homes and their discount. The majority of respondents elected for an in-perpetuity discount: 75% of local authorities; 100% of lenders; and 50% of developers. The Government’s consultation states:
“Respondents on this issue highlighted a number of areas where the implementation of the policy needs careful consideration.”
Matthew Pennycook
This is an important point, because it is bound up with how the product is financed, about which I am still concerned. The reversion of starter homes to full market rate after five years will interact with how the product is financed potentially in a way that is detrimental to the Government’s aims. There are problems with determining the underlying market price and how the reversion after five years might distort the market. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a risk that lenders will not support the scheme in its current form? The Government could allow a degree of leeway and set the five-year reversion as a minimum, rather than a hard and fast rule.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Again, my hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which I will come to in a few moments. Developers and lenders have submitted a substantial amount of written evidence suggesting that the five-year rule may be a problem. I do not know to what extent the Minister has met mortgage providers to see whether their concerns can be overcome, but perhaps he will tell us in his response. I also do not know whether the Department has done any modelling. It would be quite interesting to find out what will happen to such homes in five years’ time, or whether there is an intention to find out what happened, such as whether people stayed in them for a long time or sold them, and if so who bought them. We can discuss that in a moment.
As the Government acknowledged in their response to the consultation, many respondents were in favour of the restrictions attached to starter homes lasting in perpetuity. We did not hear in the evidence session, and have not heard since, any reason from the Government as to why they chose to ignore the outcome of their own consultation. A huge amount of people want the discount to last beyond the five-year period. The amendment seeks to ensure that the discount is retained, so that it is not just the lucky few who already have their deposits saved who are able to benefit from the scheme.
After five years, the house will be sellable at the full market rate. The full value of—I will not call it a subsidy —the planning gain forgone then goes to the initial buyer. That is a direct transfer of assets from the state in terms of money forgone to those individuals. It is possible to make an argument in favour of such transfers, but it begs a question about whether such transfers should relate only to those individuals or whether they should be there on an ongoing basis for anyone who buys that property.
Returning to the Government’s expressed aim for the policy, namely the equality of opportunity for people to get on the property ladder, why should the discount on such homes be limited? On Tuesday, the Minister spoke of the tens of thousands of people who have registered an interest in the scheme. What about those for whom saving a sufficient deposit might take more than a few years? Will enough homes with the 20% discount exist?
The Minister expressed concern that keeping the restrictions in perpetuity would lead to a slowdown in building. Will he say more about that, because I was not exactly clear about what he meant? He said:
“First, this is not about building any number of starter homes—they stay in perpetuity and therefore you can slow down building, which is what happened with social housing…We will need to build starter homes and to keep building them. We want to build 200,000 in this Parliament, but not stop there.”––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 17 November 2015; c. 125, Q277.]
We understand that, but he would be helped in his objective to get that large number of houses delivered if those sold stayed as starter homes, because we would then have new ones as well as those already in existence. Surely that would be better, because that would widen the net of home ownership even further. By keeping a discount attached to such a home into the future, other first-time buyers could benefit from access to that property in addition to other new homes coming on to the market. That would create a larger pool of starter homes available at discount rather than what could be a small flow, despite the Minister’s aspirations, under the current policy.
A number of housing organisations have identified possible problems with the specific delivery of the policy, with restrictions that apply for only five years. They argue that developers might want to create differentiation between their market product and starter homes. Without a longer restriction, there is little motivation for buyers to purchase the market homes, which could lead to starter homes being sharply downgraded in design and specification to create greater differentiation. Similarly, lenders do not know how to value a product that changes in value so quickly, so they could struggle to provide mortgages to potential buyers.
Those problems have been brought to the Committee by both developers and lenders, and there does not appear to be anything in the Bill to ensure that starter homes are of a similar quality to other homes in the same development. It would be helpful and give developers reassurance if the Bill made clear to developers that starter homes must be of the same quality and similar design to other homes in such developments and that they would not be subject to downgrade in terms of quality of supply or building. Has any negotiation taken place with lenders so that they know how to value the mortgage product?
Some have also suggested that if the Minister thinks perpetuity is too long—he might think that—is he willing to consider putting in place a discount for some time beyond five years but less than perpetuity, such as 10 or 25 years? That would give more flexibility in the system. Again, perhaps local authorities or the local community could have a role in saying what timeframe they think is necessary for restrictions on starter homes to remain, bearing in mind the local market conditions. If there is a ready supply of starter homes, they might think that five years is enough, but if there is no such supply or if the homes are not coming though quickly enough, perhaps they would decide that restrictions need to be kept for, let us say, a 25-year period. To allow room for negotiation would encourage competition and greater innovation and the section 106 process could be used to ensure that building standards in developments remain high.
As I said, we must remember that the 20% discount offered represents a loss to areas in alternative expenditure, and not an insignificant one. A 20% discount on the average price of a first-time buyer home in England in 2014 would be worth about £42,000. As Shelter has told us, if the planned 200,000 starter homes are sold over time at the average price of a first-time buyer home, the discount would be £8.4 billion. That is a lot of money lost to infrastructure or other types of affordable housing.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I want to make two brief remarks. I was not going to comment on amendment 61 but, after the unanswerable and pertinent question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk—a reason in itself for rejecting the amendment—I am concerned by the possibility of myriad different definitions of affordability by every council in the country. If amendment 67 is a probing amendment, amendment 61 is certainly a wrecking amendment. I hope the Minister will reject it out of hand.
The Minister knows I want to make a few brief remarks about amendment 67. He would be right to reject it on the basis that, if five years is too restrictive, so is “in perpetuity”. More importantly, the thrust of the amendment should refer to subsection (1)(e), which is effectively about the regulations.
As a London MP, I have had a number of developers and mortgage suppliers come to me. They support the idea of starter homes but question whether defining five years is too restrictive. The insertion of the two words “minimum of” five years in regulations would keep the thrust and purpose of what the Minister wants. It would allow some of the financing and the value. The hon. Member for City of Durham made the point about the difficulty in determining value if there is a cliff at five years.
Inserting those two words into regulations would make it easier, without contradicting what the Minister wants to do. Will he look at that on Report? Indeed, he might be able to reassure me he can do that via regulations.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan, and I look forward to working with you in the course of these Bill Committee sittings.
The hon. Member for City of Durham spoke about a few things that go beyond amendments 61 and 67. I will try to cover the general piece, as well as the specific amendments. She touched on the issue of quality, which we covered to an extent in our evidence sessions last week, and I can only reiterate what I said last Tuesday: the homes have to be high quality. I agree with her on that. We want people to have high-quality homes in terms of both build and design, as well as building high-quality environments and communities that we, the developers and the residents who live in them can be proud of.
That is why I was pleased to bring together on the design panel we convened earlier this year some of the country’s best and most renowned architects, such as Quinlan Terry and Sir Terry Farrell, to produce some design templates. We published those earlier this year and made it clear that starter homes will, at the very least, follow those design templates. It is obviously then for developers and local authorities to go with either those templates or something they think is more appropriate or better for their local community. Quality is absolutely at the forefront of our minds when designing and delivering starter homes.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Putting in place the design panels was a step in the right direction. However, what guarantee is there that the starter homes will be built using those templates or even better ones outlined by the local authority?
Brandon Lewis
Again, this is one of the differences between the Government and the Opposition: we trust local people and local authorities to do the right thing for their local communities. That is what decentralisation is truly about.
Starter homes are a new product, designed to serve a pressing need. We have set out the key parameters: a starter home is available to first-time buyers under 40, at a minimum discount of 20% of market value, and subject to a price cap. A starter home is a new build property or a new conversion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon is absolutely right; amendment 61 would replace the minimum 20% discount on the open market value with affordability criteria based on average local household income. Affordability would be determined by the local authority. Much was said on Second Reading about the affordability of starter homes. Research on affordability by Shelter was based on median house prices in each region, but I challenge whether first-time buyers actually access the market at the average house price.
The hon. Member for City of Durham made a point about the timelines and how the mortgage companies work. We work with and talk to developers and hear what they say. We will do the same with mortgage companies, which I have met, including the Council of Mortgage Lenders. If we apply the discount in perpetuity, we are in effect asking the lender to give a 100% mortgage, because the market value is not realisable. That simply does not fit with what we are looking to do. There are niche products out there that offer that, and there is a place for them, but I will touch on that in a moment.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I do not accept that no value at all could be realised by maintaining a 20% discount in perpetuity. The purchaser of the home would still be able to realise the uplift in value; the uplift in value would just be at 20% less than the market value, so as market values rise, there is still a value to be realised. Does the Minister accept that point?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Lady is absolutely right, but that again highlights the difference between the Government and the Opposition, because she misses the reality that neither the mortgage company nor the property owner can ever realise 100% of the property’s value, which means that, at the point of taking out the mortgage, someone is effectively taking out a 100% mortgage. Banking and gambling on a future increase in a property’s value is partly what got this country into the mess with house prices we suffered under the previous Labour Government, so I am not prepared to put first-time buyers at risk in the way she outlines.
The average market price for homes bought by first-time buyers in 2014 was £173,000 in England, excluding London. That compares with an average house price for England last year of £243,000. In London, first-time buyers paid £364,000 on average compared with an average house price for London of £470,000.
We expect starter homes to be an entry-level property, valued at below the average first-time buyer price for the local area. We have examined affordability of homes for those who are currently in the private rented sector. If they were to buy in the lower quartile of the first-time buyer market, outside of London, up to 64% of households currently renting privately would be able to secure a mortgage on a typical starter home, compared with just 50% who could buy a similar property now at full market value.
Within London, up to 55% of households currently renting privately would be able to secure a mortgage on a starter home in the lower quartile of the first-time buyer market, compared with 43% who could buy a similar property now priced at full market value.
Chris Philp
Given how widely accessible the starter homes will be to first-time buyers on median and low incomes, does the Minister agree that it would be appropriate to define starter homes formally as affordable homes for planning purposes? Would the Minister consider introducing amendments to that effect?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. There are things we will do in primary legislation and others we will do through regulations and guidelines, but I will consider his comments.
Those figures demonstrate that starter homes at a 20% discount will provide a genuine opportunity for home ownership for many more households. The Opposition wish to remove the 20% discount on local market values. Our model for starter homes, with the discount, gives people a real opportunity to secure themselves a lasting foothold on the property ladder. They will be given the opportunity to sell their property after five years, as currently planned, to realise its full value, enabling them to move onwards to new housing, should they wish, giving them the same rights in their property as any other homeowner, mirroring what happens with someone who acquires their home through right to buy.
We will deal with the five years provision through regulations, but amendment 67 would introduce another significant change, to restrict starter homes to an in-perpetuity model in which the discount is retained permanently with the property. I am very aware that there are discounted market sale products with in-perpetuity restrictions delivered across the country now. They offer an important opportunity and play an important part in the home ownership market.
However, it is not clear how far the majority of first-time buyers would want to be subject to restrictions in that way. In London and some rural areas where prices are high, people have accepted that trade-off between restrictions and owning a home in those locations, but that does not have to be the case everywhere.
In addition, such long-term restrictions can make it more difficult to sell and move on. If the property is sold at a discount, can the owner move upwards to a larger home or to a new area? Our intent is very clear: starter homes will continue to be provided through 2020 and well beyond. New supply of starter homes will become available for future first-time buyers who will benefit from the same opportunities as the early buyers.
Those homes will provide first-time buyers with the opportunity to move up to a larger home as their family needs grow or circumstances change. That is central to our vision for first-time buyers: a genuine discount that provides a genuine opportunity for a long-term future, and a determination to continue to grow and build that supply.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I am listening very carefully to what the Minister is saying about helping first-time buyers on to the property ladder through starter homes. In the regulations, will there be a restriction to stop cash buyers buying that product?
Brandon Lewis
We will look at the regulations when we come to them, and I am willing to look at any recommendations people make, but I would be cautious about restricting people from buying their first home in whatever manner is right for them.
A starter home is a new product to give young people a permanent place on the property ladder. I want to ensure that we support all first-time buyers and supply enough homes for them all as we go. I might be some years from my economics degree but the basics of supply and demand still sit large in my mind. If we can drive up supply, we will make prices more affordable and more achievable for all. The 20% discount plays an important part in that. Both of the amendments would make starter homes something very different from what we promised in our manifesto, for which we have a mandate from the people of this country. The amendments would remove the benefits of starter homes for the young people whom we are trying to help. I hope the hon. Member for City of Durham supports our proposals to help young, first-time buyers, and withdraws the amendment.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Once again, I am somewhat disappointed by the Minister’s comments. Amendment 61 seeks to place affordability at a level that is genuinely affordable in all areas of the country, and to give local authorities a key role in setting that affordability. How we can be seen as anti-localist is a bit beyond me. The Government are the anti-localist ones. Given how strongly we feel about starter homes being affordable right throughout the country, we will press amendment 61 to a vote.
On amendment 67, the Minister knows that lots of people are raising issues about the degree of the restrictions and how long they will be. I accept that some of the detail will be in the regulations. We are probably all slightly alarmed to hear that people who already have substantial amounts of cash and therefore, presumably, could put down quite a large deposit on a property will be able to benefit from the scheme. I am not sure why that would be the case.
Brandon Lewis
The reason I would be cautious on the point made by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead is that that could encourage gaming. It could encourage people to go and get a mortgage who do not necessarily otherwise need to, and therefore it would not deal with the problem. The only way to deal with the outlier that I think the hon. Member for City of Durham is trying to identify is means-testing, which, in and of itself, is not something that I would support. We want to supply homes for new first-time buyers.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Yes, but the counter-problem that we have identified is that people might access starter homes when they do not actually need to do so because they are perfectly capable of buying homes on the open market. The Minister will have to return to that. Perhaps we can deal with it when we debate the regulations. I should say in passing that one of the difficulties that we will experience with the Bill from time to time is that so much of the detail is in regulations rather than on the face of the Bill. We are not exactly sure what we are dealing with when we have those discussions in Committee. I hope it will be accepted that that is not the fault of the Opposition. We can only deal with what we have before us, but I accept that we will need to return to the issue of how long the restrictions last for and what they fully encompass. At this point, I would like to press amendment 61 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I beg to move amendment 62, in clause 2, page 1, line 13, at end insert—
“( ) is not to be sold to buy-to-let investors”.
The amendment would exclude “Buy to let property” from the definition of “starter home”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 63, in clause 2, page 1, line 13, at end insert—
“( ) is built on under-used or unviable brownfield sites not currently identified for housing on public and private land, as determined by the local authority”.
The amendment would limit starter homes to ‘exceptions sites’, as previously announced by the Government.
Amendment 64, in clause 2, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) any other type of property considered appropriate by the local authority to provide housing on a first time basis”.
The amendment would expand the definition of starter home to encompass housing a local authority considered appropriate for housing on a first time basis.
Amendment 68, in clause 3, page 2, line 24, at end insert—
“except where the local authority considers that providing starter homes would prevent other types of affordable housing being built”.
The amendment would enable local authorities to be able to ask for planning gain measures that provide for a range of affordable homes other than starter homes.
Amendment 69, in clause 4, page 3, line 4, at end of line insert—
“or other types of affordable housing considered necessary by the local authority”.
The amendment would enable local authorities to ask for planning gain measures that provide for a range of affordable homes other than starter homes.
Amendment 70, in clause 4, page 3, line 10, at end insert—
“and which has been subject to a full assessment of the need for starter homes in the relevant local authority area”.
The amendment would ensure that priorities are not given to the provision of starter homes in a given area before a full assessment of the number of such homes needed has taken place.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I accept that this is a large group of amendments. I will do my best to rattle through them, but they raise some important issues on the operation of the starter homes policy.
We touched on the subject slightly at the end of our previous discussion, but we have some concerns and want to probe the Minister on the responsibility of the local authority and others to ensure that these starter homes, given that they are being supported through money forgone to other products, will go to people who need them and who cannot get on the housing ladder for purchase in any other way. We welcome aspiration, and we want people to be able to buy their first home. We therefore do not want to see this product fail because it is being accessed by people who are not finding it difficult to get on the housing ladder.
Could these homes be sold to buy-to-let investors? These starter homes might be the first property that a person buys, but they might not be buying it to live in; they might be buying it to let. If that happens, this policy would not be about starting a home but about starting to be a landlord. There may be a restriction somewhere that would prevent such properties going to buy-to-let investors, but we are not clear where that restriction comes from.
This is important, because in many areas of the country it is difficult, particularly for young people, to get on the housing ladder. We therefore do not want anything to impede them from doing so by taking properties that they could purchase through this scheme away from them. We are not entirely clear why there is not more detail about who these properties should go to, because the list of requirements in clause 2 does not state that certain groups of people are excluded—at least there is not enough detail on that.
This is important because, under the coalition Government, there was a 50% drop in the number of young people owning their own home, which is a shocking figure that I am sure keeps the Government awake at night. They still claim to be all about home ownership yet, under their watch, home ownership by young people has dropped by 50%. Just 800,000 people under the age of 34 now own their home. The average deposit needed to buy a house is now £57,000, compared with £43,000 in 2010. At the same time, private rents have reached an all-time high. An average property now costs £803 a month to rent, an increase of 20% since 2010. On average, annual rent is now £1,600 more than in 2010. I am bringing in those figures to show that the buy-to-let market is good for investors, and one could see how they might be drawn to this product if there are no restrictions to prevent them from accessing it.
It is not only young people who are finding it more difficult to get into the housing market. Across the piece, there are fewer homeowners now than there were a decade ago. According to the HomeOwners Alliance, owner-occupation in the UK has fallen to its lowest level since 1988, so it is the lowest it has been for very many years. I repeat that legislation to enable young people to step on to the housing ladder is, therefore, welcome; I think I will probably need to keep saying that throughout our deliberations. That is why we are so concerned that there are no safeguards in place to prevent so-called starter homes from being bought by people who are not genuine first-time buyers, but buy-to-let investors. That is a particular concern because the buy-to-let market is booming. According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, figures from banks and building societies confirm that the number of buy-to-let mortgages taken out by landlords to purchase properties rose in the summer to its highest level in seven years. Between July and September, 33,600 new mortgages were taken out for property purchases, making it the busiest quarter since the end of 2007.
If we are not careful and no restriction is placed on starter homes being available for buy to rent, the many young people in Generation Rent whom we desperately want to support into home ownership may be unable to take that step because there will not be enough starter homes available. They are already in a difficult situation; they find it hard to get a deposit together because of high rents. We do not want anything else to impact negatively on their ability to access the scheme.
I will leave amendment 62 there. It is a straightforward amendment to help the Government ensure that the new product that they are developing goes directly to the people—particularly young people—who need it. The amendment would prevent the homes from being snapped up by investors who might crowd out of the market other people who really need housing. It could help the Government in their intention to ensure that young people have the opportunity to get on the housing ladder rather than being pushed into the private rented sector, as many of them are.
If we have missed a restriction that would prevent starter homes from being put into the buy-to-let market or used for private renting, it is because we simply have not seen it. We look forward to the regulations in due course. I have written to the Minister asking to have as many of the regulations as possible put in front of us to help our deliberations on the Bill. It is extremely difficult, as I have said, to discuss some aspects of the Bill without them.
If the Minister intends, through regulations, to put further restrictions on who can access starter homes, we would welcome that and would be pleased to see it. Without such restrictions, however, there is a real risk, as we and many people who gave evidence to the Committee have identified, that the homes could simply end up in the private sector. I am not talking about that happening after five years, because we all know that they could be sold on after five years to someone who will let them out. In fact, I think we all know, from our own areas, how many homes bought under the right to buy eventually end up in the private rented sector. I suspect we will see more of that through houses sold as a result of extending the right to buy to housing associations. Given that this is a new product, it is important that the Government try to prevent that from happening, particularly in the early days of the policy, so that these homes are available for people who are genuinely trying to get into the housing market for their first home. We do not want that group to be taken advantage of by other sorts of investor.
Mr Jackson
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. Is not the practical consequence of amendment 63 a prescriptive restriction of starter homes, via the local planning authority, to more unviable sites with larger remediation costs? That would effectively restrict the supply to a much smaller number of sites, rather than the more permissive regime the Bill allows for.
Dr Blackman-Woods
The point I am making is that it was the hon. Gentleman’s party’s Government who consulted on a starter homes policy for exception sites only. By the way, I should point out in passing that the policy of putting starter homes on brownfield sites that would, in all other respects, be unviable was largely welcomed, because it was seen as a fairly sensible approach and a way of bringing forward land for development that might, in all other circumstances, not be used. My point is that that is what the Government consulted on. People said in response to the consultation document, “In general, we think this is a good policy. There are some issues with it”—I will talk about those in a moment— “but broadly speaking, it is to be welcomed.” This is my question to the Minister: given that we now have a starter home policy that not only applies to almost any site, but prioritises the development of starter homes on those sites, what brought about that massive change in policy?
Mr Jackson
The hon. Lady is unusually perplexed, but maybe I can help her. It is very evident that this was a reaction to, effectively, a fait accompli, where starter homes were being zoned on suburban exception sites. It was a stopgap. Ministers could not ignore what was happening. They had to respond and very many people wanted them so to do. This is primary legislation to deliver a manifesto commitment to deliver more homes for our constituents. There is a difference and I am sure that the hon. Lady can see that.
Dr Blackman-Woods
The hon. Gentleman has brought great clarity to the debate. We do understand—in fact, that is where we were some hours ago—that this was a manifesto commitment. What I am trying to tease out, if at all possible, is what factually led to the change in the policy between March and May this year. If the Government, presumably with the same information available to them in March as they had in May, thought that it was a good policy to have starter homes on exception sites in March, why did they not think that in May? We need to understand better the basis on which that policy change was brought about.
It is true that although most people—78% of respondents during the consultation process—answered yes to the question,
“Do you agree in principle with the idea of a new national Starter Homes exception site planning policy to deliver more new low cost homes for first time buyers?”
they were agreeing to an exception site planning policy to deliver the homes, not a priority on all sites. A number of people gave their reason for agreeing: it was because they considered that it would be bringing back into use land that might not be used.
Some other issues were raised about the exception site policy. Some people were concerned that if only starter homes were placed on brownfield sites, that could lead to a lack of a mix of housing in the community. There was also concern about where these particular plots of land could be available. In other words, if they were not really desirable plots of land generally to be developed, is that somewhere that we would want to place people who are getting on the housing ladder for the first time? It could be that the sites were not adequately serviced and therefore it might be difficult, again, to have first-time homeowners placed in the area. There is a whole range of reasons that might have led the Government to change their policy, and one can understand that. However, no mention was made of that policy or taking on board any of those issues that people raised in response to the consultation paper. There was a note that the issues had been raised and that a greater mix might be needed, and that was a good thing, but there was no indication in March that there would be a wholescale dropping of the exception site policy and that instead of having that policy, we would go to the other end of the scale—to the opposite extreme—which is where we have ended up, with a complete prioritisation for starter homes on almost all other developments. I am not sure that we have yet got an answer on that and I am not sure that we will get an answer, but it is an issue that the Minister needs to address.
Amendments 64, 68 and 69 raise questions about the Government’s approach to the general issue of providing enough affordable housing. Hon. Members know already that it is a major contention of the Opposition that there is too narrow a focus on starter homes as the way to increase affordability in housing. There should be consideration of a range of housing products.
Amendment 64 says that a reference to,
“any other type of property considered appropriate by the local authority to provide housing on a first time basis”
is needed. There should be a duty not only to provide starter homes. There should also be a duty on local authorities to support any other type of property considered appropriate to provide housing on a first-time basis. That could involve a number of ways of increasing home ownership: equity sharing, rent to buy and so on.
With amendment 68, we again think it is important that local authorities consider providing starter homes in addition to other types of affordable housing, and that they should be required to do that. In doing so, they should carry out an assessment of need, which I will come to in a moment.
As I mentioned previously, the Prime Minister specifically stated that he wanted to move away from affordable homes meaning only homes that are for rent, but of course “affordable homes” has never meant only homes for rent. Affordable homes can also be affordable homes to buy. We just need to be clear about what affordability means. We might table an amendment in due course to try to find out what the Government mean by affordability. It would be extremely helpful to all of us, in terms of knowing what we are talking about, to have affordability defined in the Bill, because over the years affordability has come to mean many different things. Indeed, a number of people in the housing sector are now telling us that it is hardly worth talking about affordable housing because nobody really knows what it means and, because it means different things in different contexts, it is pretty useless as a concept. I am not sure that I totally agree, but it is very important that at some stage the Minister clarifies what he means by affordable in terms of starter homes, low-cost home ownership and rented accommodation. We try to distinguish what is genuinely affordable to people by talking about social rents, because at least people understand what that means.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady accept that in the past there has been too great an emphasis on providing affordable homes to rent and not enough emphasis on providing affordable homes to buy?
Dr Blackman-Woods
That is a very revealing comment. It is hard to find any evidence to back up that point. As I said—
Dr Blackman-Woods
I will take the intervention by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton first.
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Lady has presented much evidence of the need for affordable homes to buy in her evidence on owner-occupation. Is that not the evidence on what the clauses are meant to address—the fall in owner-occupation?
Dr Blackman-Woods
I thought that the hon. Gentleman’s previous intervention was about us concentrating too much on affordable homes to rent, whereas the evidence—[Interruption.] Perhaps I misheard, but what I heard him saying was that there had been too much concentration on affordable homes to rent.
Dr Blackman-Woods
In a minute, but first I will deal with this intervention. I pointed out earlier and this morning that although the number of social homes to rent increased from a very low number under the last Labour Government—in 2010-11, we delivered about 40,000 affordable, genuinely affordable, homes—in fact, last year only 10,000 homes for social rent were delivered. I would not have thought that to be too many homes by anybody’s estimation. I do not have the figures before me for the constituency of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, but I am happy to find them. I think he will find that there are a great many people desperate for social housing on council waiting lists around the country, amounting to way more than 10,000 more properties.
In my own area, we have an excess of 8,000 people on the council waiting list, so 10,000 homes across the country does not even begin to scratch the surface. To answer his point directly, do I think that we have concentrated too much on affordable homes for rent? No, I do not. We need affordable homes across all tenures. Should we do more to provide affordable homes to buy? Absolutely. If that is the point that he was making, I agree totally.
Chris Philp
That is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton was making: we need to focus on homes to buy as well as to rent. The evidence for which the hon. Lady asked is this: 86% of people aspire to own their own home, yet owner-occupation is declining. That is the evidence, and that is why the starter home measures are so important. That is why they were in the manifesto, and that is why that commitment is now being delivered.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I think that we understand that this is a manifesto commitment to increase the number of people who can access home ownership. We totally agree with that. We all want those who can to buy their own property, and we want to help people access home ownership. However, in doing so, we must ensure that those who cannot buy their own home, for whatever reason, are not crowded out of the market, and that those who would provide homes for people in such circumstances can still provide those homes. The evidence before us suggests that we are failing to deliver affordable —genuinely affordable—social rented homes for the people who need them, as well as failing to deliver homes in other tenures. It is as well as, not instead of.
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend has got to the nub of the issue. Because of how starter homes will operate —the Bill leaves the negotiations to the local planning authority and the developer—what will happen in many cases, particularly in London and in my constituency, is that where the target level of starter homes, for example 20%, is the total amount of affordable housing on the site, the infrastructure might still be built but it will just drive down the level of other affordable housing in the negotiation. That is the real concern. It should not be an either/or.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend has put our case precisely and succinctly in an excellent intervention. That is exactly the point we are making; it is about not crowding out other types of development. Again, I come back to the responsibility we should be giving the local authority to provide for all people in housing need. There is a really big question that the Minister has to answer: do the provisions in these clauses override the national planning policy framework, under which local authorities clearly have to carry out a detailed assessment of housing need in their area and plan to meet that need? With this proposal they will presumably have to meet a target for starter homes, even where they might not be needed. Perhaps the Minister will address that when he comments on the amendments.
Amendment 64 is clear that other types of property that are considered appropriate by the local authority to provide on a first-time basis should also fall within the remit of starter homes. That seems reasonable, and the London Mayor has argued for that. Perhaps other rent-to-buy options could come under the definition of starter homes. What is critical is trying to meet the needs of young people and others who are trying to get on to the housing ladder for the first time, to ensure that they have the widest opportunities to do that.
I will move swiftly on to amendment 68. Our argument is that it is vital that the building of starter homes does not prevent other kinds of affordable housing being built. This is a probing amendment to ask the Minister what would happen if a local authority considered providing starter homes that would prevent other types of affordable housing being built. Some areas might have homes at a level that is already readily available for first-time buyers, but do not have enough affordable housing to rent or buy-to-rent products. What role is there for the local authority to say, “Actually, we do not need starter homes up to a value of £250,000 on this development. What we need are more equity share schemes, or hostels, or something like that”?
Is there any room for flexibility, or is this a diktat from central Government that says, “Thou shalt have starter homes on every single development, whether or not they are needed in that locality or on that site”?
Mr Bacon
The hon. Lady asked what was the role of the local authority. I would like to make a suggestion. We heard evidence that there is nothing in law to prevent a local authority that wants to from acquiring land and building homes of its choice. There is nothing in law to prevent a local authority from acquiring land and then using it to establish, promote and expand mutual housing co-operatives. I hope that the hon. Lady, as a member of the Labour party, would support that. Those are outwith the bounds of the Bill and would provide the in-perpetuity protection for affordable rents of the kind she seeks. It is open to local authorities to do that now if they wish. Indeed, it was the Conservative leader of Westminster City Council, Philippa Roe, who gave evidence that they were looking into that very seriously.
Dr Blackman-Woods
We are all in favour of more co-op housing—I am sure that we will debate amendments on that later. The hon. Gentleman has in a way made my point for me. What we will see through the operation of the starter home policy is a lack of resources going to the local authority because CIL will not apply to them. Many local authorities across the country will not struggle to purchase land in the current climate, but even if land is available there might not be co-ops locally with the sort of money to invest in those sites that would ensure that they can cover both the infrastructure and the new build costs.
The hon. Gentleman described a situation that might exist in some areas, but it does not exist in all areas across the country. Nevertheless, it is exactly the type of example that could be given in support of the amendment, because if a local authority thinks that it would be much better to have co-op housing rather than starter homes on a particular site, why should the Government prevent them from providing that housing? As currently drafted, this legislation would require local authorities to provide co-op housing in addition to starter homes, even though there may be no money available for that co-op housing.
It is the practicality that matters. One of the responsibilities that we have, as the Members scrutinising this legislation, is to see whether it could work in practice. My concern is that without an amendment such as amendment 68, which would allow local authorities to consider providing other sorts of affordable housing, we might get to a situation in which starter homes simply crowd out every other form of development. I look forward, in five years’ time, to seeing figures that might demonstrate that we have been overly concerned. That would be a good thing, showing that we were too concerned and that starter homes do not crowd out other forms of affordable housing. Nevertheless, I am expressing the concern, which was put to the Committee by many organisations, that starter homes will do precisely that.
Indeed, that is the specific point addressed by amendment 69. As with previous amendments, it would enable councils to ask for planning gain measures that would provide a range of affordable homes other than starter homes. If we accept the evidence, which was put forward by Shelter, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and other organisations, that starter homes are not an option for many people on average incomes, surely local authorities must be able to provide other forms of affordable housing if starter homes are not going to be available to most people in their area, and particularly if they are going to be put on the market at too high a price.
We know that a lack of social and affordable housing will have huge consequences for homelessness, which we will no doubt discuss later, because it is a serious point. Under this Government we have seen a 33% increase —that is huge—in homelessness and a 58% increase in rough sleeping. We can all see that with our own eyes. That points to a need to have lots of different forms of genuinely affordable housing, and not just starter homes.
Mr Jackson
Judging from her amendments, I think the hon. Lady is inviting us to conclude that she believes that it is inappropriate for the Government to be prescriptive in legislation by suggesting a minimum number of starter homes on a site, but she wants to put in the Bill a centralised diktat to local authorities to develop other types of affordable housing. Does she not see that there is some discrepancy in her logic and thinking?
Dr Blackman-Woods
No, I do not, but that is an interesting twist on what I was actually saying, which was about the need to enable a local authority to meet housing need across all tenures in its locality. I am sure that in some areas that would include support for starter homes to be sold at a discount—below the market level. It could also include many other types of affordable housing that are needed in the area. I am rehearsing the very real concern, expressed by many people who gave evidence, that the starter homes policy will crowd out other types of development that might be needed locally, or indeed types of development that a local authority might think should take precedence over starter homes in certain areas because of the make-up of the local housing market. We are arguing for more flexibility in the affordable products that are delivered and a greater say for local authorities in determining need. The intention behind amendment 69 is pretty much to say, “Shouldn’t we be delivering what we think is considered necessary by the local authority?”
Amendment 70 points to the need for the affordable housing provided to relate directly to a robust assessment of the affordable housing needed by a local area. It would ensure that developments are then brought forward to match that need. It is fairly clear to me that the Bill should reflect that analysis of local need should be properly determined and based on a consideration of average and low incomes in a particular area. Instead—I am coming back to the same situation—precedence might be given to starter homes even if there is a pressing need for some other type of accommodation locally, which is then crowded out. That does not seem to be a very sensible approach to producing housing stock.
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Lady seems to be implying that starter homes are the only form of development that will be carried out in our local communities, but we have heard evidence from a number of witnesses from housing associations who have said that they will increase the rate of house building. David Orr said,
“our offer to the government will see an increase in the number of…homes built, which has the potential to ease pressure in all parts of the market, including the rental market.”
Dr Blackman-Woods
But he also said—I think he made those comments in relation to the right to buy—that if homes are lost through the right to buy, although he might be able to guarantee a replacement, it would not necessarily be in the same area. A number of us thought that was probably not a satisfactory response. The last thing we want is the loss of genuinely affordable homes in a particular area, which are then replaced by starter homes or some other type of properties that are not affordable. That is a very real risk, but I will not go down that road any further as we will deal with those points in more detail when we get to the clauses that relate to the right to buy.
Surely the reason that the NPPF asks local authorities to carry out an assessment of housing need is so that it is able to reflect that housing need in its planning policies and in the determinations made in Committee. It seems somewhat contrary to the demands of the NPPF to simply say, “Thou shalt have starter homes. There shall be this many on that site. It doesn’t matter whether there is need for those homes or not. We are going to ignore the assessment of housing need that has been carried out by that local authority on type, tenure and size, in the interest of starter homes, because we think starter homes are more important and have to be delivered at the expense of everything else.” What is the point of local authorities carrying out a detailed assessment of housing need in their area if they cannot then reflect that need in the decisions they make or in the land set aside for development?
It is hard to see how a centrally defined target for starter homes fits with the NPPF. It is also hard to see what role evidence plays in bringing forward these starter homes. That is not to say that we should not have starter homes, but they should be based on a proper assessment of housing need—what is required locally and, indeed, what form starter homes should take—rather than a simple numbers game of trying to meet what could be fairly arbitrary targets. Of course, if those targets are not hit, there are all the compliance measures and threats to local authorities in clause 6, as well as further down the line.
This is not a zero-sum game for local authorities. This is the dead weight of central Government pressing them down and saying, “Thou shalt deliver starter homes in these quantities, or all sorts of really horrible things will happen to you as a local authority.” That seems completely contrary to not only localism but the whole underpinning basis of the NPPF.
We heard evidence from PlaceShapers, which said that local authorities need,
“the flexibility to have local solutions…to determine what is needed in that area, including a range of social rented housing, home ownership options, market rent and sale.”––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 10 November 2015; c. 29, Q64.]
That puts the case forward very clearly. We cannot assume the housing needs of one area are the same as another area. We heard from a wide range of councillors and local authorities in the evidence sessions that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the housing crisis. For example, we heard from Councillor Glanville of Hackney Council that his council has a waiting list of 11,000 households and more than 2,000 homeless households living in temporary accommodation within Hackney, elsewhere in London, and in some instances, regrettably, outside London.
It seems that for those types of council, the priority might not be starter homes for every single development. Their priority is, as it is for many councils around the country, to get people out of totally inappropriate temporary accommodation and get families out of bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which is totally unsuitable, into socially rented homes where they have some security of tenure and are able to put down links and roots, get their children into school and be active members of the local community. I thought Councillor Glanville made a powerful point to the Committee about that being the council’s priority.
Councils are deeply concerned about not only the loss of housing stock in their area, which we will come to later, but the fact that they could be forced to give valuable land over to a type of tenure that is not needed as much as socially rented homes. In the interests of brevity, I will not go through all the different authorities that wrote to us making similar arguments, but there is a strong argument, in totality, that we need sufficient and appropriate devolution of affordable housing priorities to local authorities, rather than ministerial direction. A growing number of authorities—the number is growing daily—have now accepted a devolution settlement from the Government, a number of which contain responsibility for housing, so it would be interesting, perhaps not this afternoon but later in the Committee’s deliberations, to hear how the Minister thinks those devolution settlements will affect the measures in the Bill. When combined authorities and mayors are given responsibility for housing, will they continue to be subject to central diktat on prioritising starter homes above all other sorts of housing?
I hope I have made the case that, in combination, this group of amendments seeks to tease out why the Government have not accepted a greater role for local authorities not only in determining local housing need but in meeting that need. The Government should give local authorities a greater role in choosing to accept or ask for starter homes on a particular site or asking for another housing product that better meets the range of housing needs in their area. I am especially interested to hear what the Minister would say to local authorities that have very high numbers of families on council waiting lists or in totally unsuitable temporary or bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
The Chair
Before I call you, Minister, I will try to be helpful by reminding the Committee that the Bill has 145 clauses. A lot of amendments have been tabled, and there are many other questions to ask. When I came to the Committee today, both sides indicated that they wanted to get to the end of clause 6. We are already deep into the afternoon, and we are halfway through clause 2. The word “brevity” was used a little earlier, and maybe we need to adopt it because it is our duty—my duty as a member of the Panel of Chairs, and your duty as Members of Parliament—to fully examine the proposals so that the House may consider them at a later date.
Brandon Lewis
Thank you, Sir Alan. I fully take on board your comments—I made similar comments just before lunch, when we had considered only one clause. I am also keen to get to clause 7 today.
I ask the hon. Lady to look back and consider what she is saying, because she started to become contradictory. I am sorry that the shadow Minister for Housing and Planning was unable to put himself on the Committee to make some of those points himself, but it is important to remember that he thinks the fall in home ownership, which, as he outlined, started in 2005, is a good thing.
Dr Blackman-Woods
This is the second time that the Minister has said that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) is not here. He is a member of the shadow Cabinet, and it is not normal practice for members of the Cabinet or the shadow Cabinet to lead a Bill in Committee.
Brandon Lewis
I appreciate that qualification, but the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne obviously differs with the previous shadow Minister for Housing and Planning, who was also a member of the shadow Cabinet but, as I recall, attended Public Bill Committees, and certainly attended Delegated Legislation and Statutory Instrument Committees.
I note that the hon. Member for City of Durham did not move away from the right hon. Gentleman’s comment that it is not a bad thing that home ownership has been falling since 2005. The Government are determined to change that. We want to ensure that the 86% of our population who aspire to own their own home, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble mentioned this morning, have a chance to do just that, which is also why we should not be placing restrictions—either geographic restrictions or arbitrary income restrictions—on home ownership solutions for people under the age of 40. This is a problem that faces an entire generation, and it would be wrong to say that some people cannot benefit simply because they are either hard-working or happen to live in a particular geographic area.
Amendment 62 would introduce a buy-to-let restriction into the legislation. We do not want starter homes to be investment opportunities for buy-to-let landlords. We agree on that. We want them to be homes for people to live in, and that is why we have included in the Bill the ability for the Secretary of State to set out letting restrictions in secondary legislation.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Some of the Minister’s comments were helpful. I look forward to getting more information about the proportion of starter homes that might be needed or are acceptable on the sites, and about how affordable housing will be defined and what will be included. That would help our deliberations as we progress through the Bill. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I beg to move amendment 65, in clause 2, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
“(d) lives or works locally, with the definition of local to be defined by the Secretary of State or, in London, by the Greater London Authority”.
This amendment would ensure that a proportion of starter homes are given to local people.
I will try to be brief as I think the amendment is fairly self-explanatory. [Interruption.] Oh, one would think that Conservative Members did not want any scrutiny of the Bill, but we will do our best to speed up. I think it is fairly clear.
A number of developers and local authorities have given evidence to the Committee suggesting that they are worried about how they will prioritise the people who should be given access to starter homes if, as we expect, demand in some areas will outstrip supply, especially in the short term. Therefore, they are looking to the Government to provide a set of criteria.
Under the amendment, the criteria would ensure that, in the first instance, starter homes would be made available to first-time buyers who are under the age of 40 and who are, crucially, living or working in the local area. As I have said, several organisations, and in particular Pocket Living, have raised that concern in evidence. I am sure Members will know that Pocket Living is a pioneer of the starter home, offering private one-bedroom apartments at 20% below market value. In written evidence, it echoed our key concerns about provision for local people, arguing:
“Local authorities will also be very resistant to local people on moderate incomes being squeezed out of housing by those with no local connection who could potentially afford to buy on the open market.”
A set of priority considerations in the starter homes regulations would help everyone to avoid those issues. The regulations should be simple and fair enough not to be a burden in the efficient administration of the sales process. The Minister will know that a number of organisations have raised questions about how the system will be managed locally, and about the need for an adequately-resourced body to see that the policy works efficiently and to provide oversight to ensure that it is the people who need help to get on the housing ladder who are helped by the starter home system. As the amendment is so clear and straightforward, I will leave my remarks there.
Brandon Lewis
There is a generation of young people in their 20s and 30s who face increasing challenges, as we have heard in past weeks and have no doubt seen in our constituencies. We need to ensure that more people can enjoy the benefits of home ownership, in the same way as their parents and our parents did.
I understand that housing markets differ across the country, but the aspiration to own a new home does not. Every first-time buyer under the age of 40 should have the same opportunity to buy a starter home. The problem affects an entire generation and it would be wrong to say that some people may not benefit from starter homes, or buy a home in a location that works for them, simply because they currently live or work elsewhere. They might, for example, currently be priced out of the neighbourhood of their choice, or they might be relocating for work or other personal reasons.
It is important for first-time buyers moving around the country—people’s mobility is extending further and faster—that there should be a clear and consistent starter homes model. That will aid mobility and choice as jobs continue to change and grow and people move around the country for reasons linked to business and work.
Consistency is also important, so that our reforms and commitment to deliver 200,000 starter homes will be widely understood. That is particularly important for lenders—we touched on the subject of lenders earlier—and for developers. Setting differential requirements such as a local connection test as a matter of course would introduce complexity to the starter homes model, which could pose a risk for delivery. We do not want to introduce complicated local checks when we are facing a housing challenge and the need for a national crusade to build more houses.
Although I recognise that councils are already required to consider local housing needs when planning for housing, we are clear that every first-time buyer under the age of 40 should have the same opportunity to buy a starter home. That is a national priority to help a generation of people into home ownership.
Dr Blackman-Woods
The Minister’s response was extremely helpful and reassuring. It is good for us to know that where the product might need to be rationed, especially in the first instance, there will be sensible measures in operation. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I beg to move amendment 66, in clause 2, page 2, line 18, after “State” insert—
“after consultation with the relevant local authority or local authorities and the Mayor of London”.
The amendment would provide that the price cap can only be amended after consultation with the relevant local authorities and the Mayor of London.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 72, in clause 4, page 3, line 16, at end insert—
“after consultation and agreement with the relevant local authorities”.
The amendment would require that regional policy should only come into operation with the agreement of the local authorities affected.
Dr Blackman-Woods
The two amendments are grouped together because, in both of them, we raise an issue that I suspect we will return to in one way or another at various points in the Bill. Amendment 66 would alter subsection (8) to prevent the Secretary of State from changing a price cap without consultation with the relevant local authority or local authorities and the Mayor of London. We have tabled the amendment because it is dangerous for the Bill to give the Secretary of State the power to amend the price cap in regulations, without any parliamentary discussion if it is done in a negative instrument. The amendment would ensure that the change could take place only if it was sensible and in line with local market conditions as determined by the local authority, or range of local authorities if the matter crosses any boundaries, or the Mayor of London.
The amendment highlights two problems that we have with the Bill. First, much of the detail is subject to regulation, so we often do not know the detail of what we are talking about. Secondly, we have a huge problem with the number of centralising measures it contains. The amendments would do the same thing to clauses 2 and 4. They would simply alter slightly the transfer of power to the Secretary of State so that he could not make decisions to change things without referring to local circumstances.
A number of commentators have remarked on the extraordinary level of centralisation in the Bill, which refers huge powers to the Secretary of State to determine things such as what starter homes are, who first-time buyers are and what the price cap will be. It is perhaps all the more extraordinary because the Conservative party, at least in the past—one does not hear so much about this now—claimed to be in support of localism. Given that local authorities already have a responsibility to meet or plan for housing need in their area, we find it extraordinary that the Bill confers powers on the Secretary of State that would override all local considerations and local determinations of what housing need is and what a suitable cap is for a starter home. Given the way in which the Bill bypasses local authorities in the decision-making process, it also places huge burdens on them. I accept that this is not absolutely clear, but presumably local authorities will have to oversee starter homes. They will certainly have to ensure that starter homes do come forward, yet negotiation about the pricing of starter homes and the thresholds will be undertaken without any reference to them and local needs at all.
The measure is absolutely extraordinary. There is no rationale in the Bill, and on Second Reading neither the Minister nor the Secretary of State provided any rationale, as to why it is so centralising and gives so many powers to the Secretary of State over key aspects of the legislation.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend be at all surprised to learn that the Mayor of London fully agrees with her in his submission to this Committee?
Dr Blackman-Woods
I know the Mayor of London has made that submission. Indeed, it was partly as a result of his intervention in the discussion that I thought he might find it extremely helpful for me to include him in the amendments. Consultation about price caps and so on would have to take place not only with local authorities, but with the Mayor of London. Of course, it again begs the question of what will happen when we get greater devolution, because we will have a mayor for Manchester and a mayor for Liverpool. Is the Minister saying that, even though they will be directly elected mayors who have responsibility for housing in their area, their views about what the price cap should be or who should be defined as in need of a starter home will not be heard, and that the decisions will be whipped away from them and given to the Secretary of State without any opportunity whatever for the mayors to have a say in the process?
Given the advance of time, I will not go through the many examples of people who made representations to the Committee that we need to amend the power given to the Secretary of State to limit that to a smaller range of circumstances. If he is carrying out those responsibilities, we need amendments in the Bill or in regulations to say that that can happen only in consultation with local authorities or mayors and—this is a critical point—with the agreement of local councils or mayors, because they are the people who know best what is needed in their areas.
Brandon Lewis
Let me respond to both amendments by saying up front that I do not think that a statutory requirement to consult local government on the regulations that underpin the starter homes statutory framework is necessary. As Opposition Members know, statutory consultation requirements, even with the best of intentions, can create unnecessary delays and undue bureaucracy and undermine delivery. We need to get on with building the 200,000 starter homes that this country needs. I do not want house building to be paused because every time we need to make changes to the regulations, we have to consult and wait first. That would be unfair to developers, landowners and, most importantly, this generation of first-time buyers.
When having such debates, I find it ironic, as I did in the last Parliament, to hear Opposition Members talk about centralisation. As somebody who was a councillor, like the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in a council under a Labour Government, I know absolutely what centralisation feels like. The Bill moves more power, again, to local people and we will come to much of that later in the Bill.
Amendment 66 will require the Secretary of State to consult the Mayor and local authorities on changes to the maximum price cap for starter homes in clause 2. We are introducing a price cap for starter homes of £250,000—£450,000 in London—to ensure that our reforms are not abused. It is important that starter homes remain within the reach of the average first-time buyer. Earlier today, we outlined what the realistic price of those lower-level affordable homes can be. However, the cap is not an expectation of the going price for a starter home. We have aligned it with the maximum threshold for the Help to Buy ISA to ensure consistency for first-time buyers. It is meant to withstand the passage of time so that developers, lenders and other interested parties all have certainty over the medium term.
In many areas of the country, I expect that the price will be significantly below the cap because developers know that starter homes are being exclusively built for young first-time buyers who are looking to get their first step on to the property ladder, and will price their homes accordingly. We noted that in the evidence session last week, where I was able to outline some ideas for prices in my constituency, as did other Members. We touched on that earlier today.
We will want the cap to be set at a level that will allow for flexibility in the type and size of housing delivered, whether in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton, where a two-bedroom home is below £100,000 in a new build, or elsewhere. We are looking to ensure that the majority of starter homes are not created to be small units, perhaps not suitable for a young family, which is what a lower cap may mean. It could also result in the potential for some individuals to gain an unreasonable uplift in value when they sell on the open market.
I believe that it is right for the cap to be set nationally rather than locally. We need to ensure consistency with other Government products and provide a very clear product for developers and lenders. I accept, however, that there will be regional differences, which is why we have taken powers to amend the cap through regulations. I can assure hon. Members that we understand the need to have a cap that works fairly and clearly and we will want to engage with developers, lenders and local planning authorities if we decide to change the price caps in future. I am sympathetic to the points raised by the hon. Lady on working with local government to ensure that the proposals are responsive and reflective. I will look at that in the weeks ahead, before Report. In response to a direct question from the hon. Lady, the regulations for the price cap will be affirmative regulations.
Amendment 72 would require the Secretary of State to consult on the regulations that underpin the starter homes requirement on reasonably sized sites in clause 4, where different provisions are made for different areas. My Department will publish a technical consultation shortly on the details of the requirement to inform the preparation of the regulations. A key part of that consultation will be to seek views on the percentage of starter homes that would be expected on reasonably sized developments. I do not want to prejudge that technical consultation now, but I am clear that a one-size-fits-all approach to setting a regulation with a blanket requirement that blindly applies to all housing sites from Brighton to Berwick-upon-Tweed and all points in between, irrespective of local circumstances, will not work. The needs of Great Yarmouth are not the same as those of the south-west and Cornwall. That is why clause 4 gives the Secretary of State the power to set different requirements in different areas.
Equally, I do not expect the requirements to be set by an official sitting at a desk in Whitehall without any regard to local circumstances. I see the provision of starter homes as a joint endeavour, with central Government working closely with local government to deliver the starter homes our young people need and want, and which we should provide.
Peter Dowd
I welcome the Minister’s tone, but I ask him to go further. Only yesterday, in Prime Minister’s Question Time, the Prime Minister said:
“The great cities of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool—and soon to be Leeds, I hope—will benefit from these massive devolution deals, but if we devolve the power and we devolve the money, we have to devolve the trust and the accountability too.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 671.]
That goes to the heart of what we are trying to say today, and I seriously hope he will take that into account.
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the importance of the devolution deals and the fact that they are about moving more and more power in decision making to the local level. However, devolution is not just about moving power from central Government to local government; it is about moving power into the hands of local people. Again, we will touch on some of those issues later in the Bill when we discuss driving neighbourhood planning further. The technical consultation that we will launch will give all local authorities, and indeed other partners, a chance to feed in their views. I will certainly seek to engage further with key partners on the details. With those points in mind, I hope hon. Members withdraw their amendment.
Dr Blackman-Woods
We are making some progress this afternoon; that was another largely helpful response. It is such an important matter of principle for us that devolution should be meaningful, and that local authorities should be given a real say. I was tempted to divide the Committee on this set of amendments, but having heard the Minister’s response and bearing in mind that we await the technical consultation, which might have some of the details and further information about what will be in the regulations, which will be affirmative regulations, we will simply make the point to the Minister, for the time being, that we want a degree of local engagement. If that is reflected in what he introduces, it will be a good thing and will extend the devolution agenda. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
General duty to promote supply of starter homes
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Hammond
I will make a short contribution on clause 3, in the attempt to find friendship with my colleagues. In his earlier remarks, the Minister clearly recognised the aspiration in 86% of people to own their own home. I rise to put on record a point that I have made to him in private. London is a city of 8.6 million. Most recent growth has been in the 25 to 35-year-old age group, and most of the predicted growth over the next 10 years will be in that same age group. As a London MP, I put on record my unreserved support for the Government’s desire for more people to own their own homes, and my complete support for starter homes. It is also important to put on record the fact that in numerous discussions, the Mayor, the deputy Mayor and the Mayor’s office have unreservedly supported the addition of starter homes to the Bill.
The Mayor occasionally uses jovial remarks to make his point. If he were standing here today, he might make the jovial remark of the great Peter Cook and Dudley Moore about “not only, but also”. His point would be that not only should there be a duty to promote starter homes, but the Government should also consider a slightly wider point. The Minister will recognise the number of intermediate products there are in London, mainly coming through the Mayor’s First Steps scheme. The Mayor is justifiably proud at seeing 52,000 Londoners helped into homes since 2008, which is a record and an achievement to be proud of.
For many people, the shared ownership route has been a route to home ownership and there have been a wide range of providers and indeed funders of that route. Therefore, the key is not only to boost starter homes and home ownership but to recognise that there should not have to be a choice between starter homes and other forms of low-cost home ownership, because both London and the rest of the UK need both. I hope that the Minister will accept that point.
Brandon Lewis
I will touch briefly on that point. This clause will require all planning authorities in England, which for these purposes includes the Secretary of State, to promote the supply of starter homes when carrying out relevant planning functions. These functions include, for instance, preparing local plans, co-operating with neighbouring areas on strategic planning matters, and determining planning applications. The clause will apply to the Secretary of State, for example, when he determines called-in planning applications or recovered appeals.
This duty will mean that English planning authorities have a legal requirement to promote the supply of starter homes in their area to assist with their delivery and will ensure that starter homes are embedded within the statutory planning framework. However, as we outlined earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon makes a powerful point, not just in reconfirming the full support of the Mayor and his office for starter homes but in pointing out that these homes are an additional product. Yes, we are focused on wanting to see home ownership go up, but we are also focused on seeing housing supply continue to increase, and shared ownership is an important part of the toolkit that local authorities, developers and we in Government have to ensure that we drive that agenda of housing supply increases and home ownership increases over the next few years. I know that the Mayor’s office will be key, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) has already outlined his determination to continue to see shared ownership grow, while also ensuring that we deliver this priority of seeing starter homes for first-time buyers.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Planning permission: provision of starter homes
Dr Blackman-Woods
I beg to move amendment 71, in clause 4, page 3, line 15, at end of line insert—
“(5A) The regulations may provide that sites can be exempted from the requirement to promote starter homes where a site has a scheme that—
(a) is a “build to rent” scheme;
(b) contains supported housing for younger people, older people, people with special needs and people with disabilities;
(c) contains a homeless hostel;
(d) contains refuge accommodation; or
(e) contains specialist housing.”
The amendment would remove sites from the starter homes requirement where other types of affordable housing have already been planned for.
The amendment would alter clause 4, so that sites could be exempted from the requirement to promote starter homes where they are delivering a scheme that is either a build-to-rent scheme or one that contains supported housing—for younger people, older people, people with special needs or people with disabilities—or where it contains a homeless hostel, refuge accommodation or other forms of specialist housing. In a sense, this amendment is returning, albeit in a much more specific way, to the theme that we have already rehearsed a few times today, which is whether the starter homes requirement will crowd out other forms of housing that might be needed in a local area.
Clearly, anybody who is providing supported housing for older people or younger people, or specialist housing for people with particular needs or disabilities, is already discharging a very important function for society and for the local community in building and funding that type of accommodation. We just wonder whether there would be huge viability issues for sites if they are trying to build specialist accommodation, for example bungalows that are accessible for people with disabilities or for older people, or if the local authority wants specialist or supported accommodation for younger people or for people fleeing domestic or other forms of violence as part of a planning gain.
This is a genuine concern. The Minister will know that a number of different organisations are terribly worried about the fact that, for example, women’s refuges are suffering dreadfully from cuts to local government funding. They have urged the Government,
“to take a step towards securing the long-term future of the network of specialist accommodative domestic violence services. It is essential this money is spent properly”,
so that refuges and the provision of refuges do not suffer because of the requirement.
Since 2009-10, there has been a huge rise—I gave the figures earlier—of 26% in the number of people who are homeless. This is a truly shocking picture, as is the rise in the number of people who are sleeping rough. My question to the Minister is, is it not just as important that a new development contains, or funds, a homeless hostel or specialist and supported accommodation for people with specific difficulties and issues? That set of needs should not be overridden by the desire for starter homes. The issue is probably one of viability, which is why we need to hear from the Minister in some detail about how section 106 agreements for this type of accommodation will be forthcoming when there will also be discounts for the starter homes initiative, and there may be CIL contributions for infrastructure and section 106 agreements to meet other needs.
We are hearing from a lot of developers—the Minister must be hearing this too—that the finances are simply not going to stack up. There will simply not be enough uplift in the land values across the country to be able to ensure that the sorts of schemes mentioned in the amendment come forward through section 106 agreements. Is it the Minister’s intention that hostels and supported housing for young people, and specialist accommodation for people with disabilities will be funded in another way? Will he guarantee that funding is available, so that there is no shortage of refuge places for women fleeing domestic violence or of supported housing places for young people? If so, that would be extraordinary because there is a huge shortage of those places at the moment. Indeed, local authorities are already finding it difficult to secure the accommodation needed to support young people.
The Minister seems to be incredibly interested in Durham. I will go and do a bit of work on Durham’s budget and bring a bit of reality to the Committee about what Durham local authority is experiencing. It simply does not have the means to provide supported accommodation to young people in my constituency. It is a really desperate and growing need.
Peter Dowd
Actually, as the former leader of a council, I recognise the figures but I do not recognise the suggestion that those reserves are available. In fact, in my authority, we have up to £20 million set aside that we were required to set aside, which is included in those reserves, for land remediation to do the very things that we want to do in terms of building houses. So that is £20 million, my hon. Friend might like to know, that is set aside, that we cannot use, whether the Minister likes it or not.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes a pertinent intervention. As I said, the figures require further examination. I will do that in due course. The point I was making was that many local authorities are strapped for cash and look to their partners in housing associations and other specialist organisations to help them meet their housing need, particularly for vulnerable groups with special needs. It is not clear how those partnership agreements with developers and others will operate when they are working in a system that gives such priority to discounts for starter homes.
Brandon Lewis
I found the intervention from the hon. Member for Bootle interesting. I hope his authority will get on with using the £20 million to get those houses built, because that is the point I am making. The hon. Lady talked about her own council, and it is a valid point; it is important that local authorities look at how they use their reserves that are not ring-fenced. Councils say they are struggling for income but have increased their reserves from £13 billion to £22 billion, so it is reasonable for people to want to ensure that money is being used for good things. What councils do with their reserves is a matter for them to decide locally.
Peter Dowd
I appreciate the point that the Minister is making, but I think it is a blunt instrument, and I do not think it is helpful to make a political point out of it because, in my authority’s situation, that is a figure that, following an agreement made when decent home standards were transferred, we have to set aside in the event of legacy remediation or contamination. So it is a big figure that, in reality, we have very little freedom to use. We would love to, but we cannot.
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman’s authority might want to have a look at how much money it has got to set aside, that he says it wants to use but it cannot. Setting money aside for something you can never spend it on does not seem a very sensible thing to do. What the authority should be doing is looking at the reserves it has. Councils should have reserves that are appropriate, but the reserves that are ring-fenced to be spent on something, particularly if it is about providing ability and viability for new homes, I would encourage them to get on with that process.
As we all know, young people today are struggling to do something their parents and many of us took for granted: buy a home of their own. Since the early 1990s, the proportion of under-40s who are homeowners in England has declined by over a third. That is why the Government made a manifesto commitment to provide 200,000 starter homes by 2020. Meeting that commitment will require starter homes to be delivered on most conventional housing sites. We will set out the proportion of starter homes that we expect to be delivered on each site in regulations, and my Department will bring forward proposals in a technical consultation to be launched soon. A key part of that consultation will be seeking views on what sorts of exemption to the requirement should be allowed, and I do not want to prejudge the outcome of it.
I have sympathy with some of the points the hon. Lady made. I recognise that there will be some specialist housing where it would be inappropriate to require starter homes to be an integral part of the development, given design, property management and investment needs, so there will need to be exemptions to the requirement. Her amendment gives some examples that I sympathise with, such as purpose-built build to rent developments, which I have strongly encouraged—I will continue to encourage such institutional investment in our property market—where the financing model requires 100% rental, to provide certainty to investors. For those developments, we will have an issue not with the financial viability but the appropriateness on the particular site, so commuted off-site contributions may be more appropriate.
There are other forms of specialist housing—for example, accommodation for workers; the list goes on—that are not mentioned. That is why I want to consult on the detail and not rush into making a decision today. I do not think it is appropriate to take that decision before we have finished the consultation. With that in mind, I hope the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment.
Dr Blackman-Woods
We seem to be on a roll here, so I shall continue. I shall take the Minister at his word and assume that further down the line we will see more detail about the sites that will be exempted and the circumstances under which they will be exempt. His response was helpful, so on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Monitoring
Dr Blackman-Woods
I beg to move amendment 73, in clause 5, page 3, line 28, at end insert
“which must be displayed on the authority‘s website and updated annually”.
The amendment would require local planning authorities to report on their functions in respect of starter homes annually and to publish the report.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 74, in clause 5, page 3, line 28, at end insert
“and other types of affordable housing”.
The amendment would require local planning authorities to report on their functions in respect of affordable housing as well as starter homes.
Amendment 75, in clause 5, page 3, line 31, at end insert
“and to include information that starter homes remain to be sold at 20% below market value”.
The amendment would empower the Secretary of State to require local planning authorities to report information on starter homes that remain to be sold at 20% below market value.
Amendment 76, in clause 5, page 3, line 37, at end insert
“and to demonstrate that the land in question is not needed for employment, retail, leisure, industrial or distribution use”.
This amendment would empower the Secretary of State to require data on the extent to which land used for starter homes was not needed for employment, retail, leisure, industrial or distribution use.
Dr Blackman-Woods
This group of amendments highlights our concerns about the degree of control the Secretary of State will take over the monitoring that local authorities will have to carry out on the effectiveness of the starter homes policy. All the amendments make suggestions on how the arrangements could be improved, and we hope that they will be helpful to the Minister. We are concerned that so much power over monitoring will be put in the hands of the Secretary of State. We have seen elsewhere from this Government how vital bits of information that we need to assess policy have suddenly disappeared from public view. We want to ensure that information about the effectiveness of the starter homes policy will be available in a particular form for public scrutiny.
Amendment 73 would ensure that information about the number of starter homes provided in a local authority area will be published on the authority’s website and updated annually. The figures could be fairly meaningless to the local people who search for them if they are not put into some sort of context, so we would also like information to be displayed about the general housing need in the area. We would particularly like information on the delivery of all other sorts of public and affordable housing to be published online.
I shall give an example to demonstrate the point. In a given year, a local authority might produce 640 houses under the starter homes initiative, but no houses at all for social rent. We think that local people should know that, because they can then question why no houses are available for affordable rent. Indeed, they might want to think about whether the starter homes initiative is the only one that is applying locally.
There are positive elements to the scheme, as well as disbenefits. It is important that the local authority uses its website to promote starter homes. As many people as possible should know about the initiative and as many people as possible who can take up the opportunity should be able to, but they must also be able to understand what is happening in their local housing market. That is the purpose of amendments 73 and 74.
Amendment 75 would ensure that the local authority collects and puts into the public domain information about whether starter homes are actually being sold at 20% below market value. There would have to be information to demonstrate that clearly to the local population, so, again, the local authority would need to publish starter homes information and the amounts of money the homes were being sold for within the context of local housing market conditions. Again, that is a useful check on the policy to ensure that it is doing what it is supposed to do, that it is providing homes for people who are seeking to get on the housing ladder at below market value, and that we do not get a gradual creep up above market value as the policy progresses.
Brandon Lewis
Clause 5 requires English local planning authorities to prepare reports about the actions that they have taken under the starter homes duties in chapter 1 of the Bill. The Government’s current proposals strike the right balance—they give communities the information that they need and, essentially, avoid creating an overly bureaucratic process. I am absolutely clear that local communities, particularly first-time buyers, must be aware of the action that their local planning authority is taking to promote the supply of starter homes and the clause will deliver that as it stands.
Amendment 73 would require local planning authorities to report annually and to publish those reports on their websites. Clause 5(4) already provides that an authority must make its reports under this section available to the public. The clause also provides that the Secretary of State may make regulations about the timing of the reports and whether they should be combined with the local authority’s authority monitoring report, which must already be published at least on an annual basis. We do not want to introduce unnecessary burdens, and it would be sensible to combine reporting with the existing requirement.
Amendment 74 would require local planning authorities to report on their functions in respect of affordable housing as well as starter homes. Local planning authorities are already required to do that. They must report on the extent to which their planning policies are being achieved through their authority monitoring reports. That is a statutory requirement in regulation 34 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012, which includes a specific requirement for a local planning authority to report on its affordable housing delivery performance against adopted planning policies. Both amendments 73 and 74 are therefore unnecessary and are already covered by the current legal framework.
Amendment 75 would require local planning authorities to report on the number of starter homes that remain to be sold at 20% below market value. Clause 2 provides that the Secretary of State can place restrictions through regulations on the sale and letting of starter homes, as we discussed earlier. Such restrictions on the sale or letting of a starter home at open-market value are likely to be for a period of five years. Starter homes will not be restricted in perpetuity as long-term restrictions make it more difficult for the first-time buyer to sell and move up to a larger home as their family needs change and grow. We want people to have a permanent place in the property market that evolves to suit their needs.
Therefore, amendment 75 does not reflect our central proposal for a starter home and reporting on the requirement would cause confusion. It is essential that we have a consistent set of scheme rules so that builders, lenders and, importantly, first-time buyers all have the same expectations of a starter home wherever and whoever they are. That will help to deliver on our manifesto commitment of building 200,000 starter homes over the course of this Parliament.
Amendment 76 would require all local planning authorities to report in detail about the appropriateness of all sites where starter homes are proposed. In particular, it asks local authorities to demonstrate that the sites were not otherwise needed for employment, retail, leisure, industrial or distribution use. The burden would fall on starter homes proposed on exception sites, as they use land that has not been previously allocated for housing. We see exception sites as playing a crucial part in delivering starter homes by providing communities with a stock of new and cheaper land that can be used to build the housing they desperately need. Because the land tends to have a lower value, it helps to improve the viability of starter home developments.
Let me be clear: this is not about building houses at the expense of all other types of use; it is about releasing land where there is no reasonable prospect of its being used for its original purpose. If there is a disused former garage site in a town, surely we all want it to be used to build new housing rather than sit there disused. We expect local authorities to be proactive in identifying and publicising exception sites. Where applications for starter homes are made, local authorities must be prepared to give planning permission. The intention behind the new duty to promote starter homes in clause 3 is to encourage local authorities to do just that.
Before local authorities grant permission, they will need to assure themselves that the brownfield land is an exception site and, in particular, that it is underused and unviable in its current land use. I believe that local authorities are capable of taking that decision without the Government’s looking over their shoulder. For that reason, I think that amendment 76, which would require all local planning authorities to report in detail about the appropriateness of sites, is unnecessary and overly bureaucratic.
I return to what I said at the start. What matters in terms of reporting is that people have the information they need about the number of applications for starter homes that have been made and how many have got permission, and we should not create a burdensome reporting system to check every decision a local authority takes. I believe that the clause as drafted provides that information. With that assurance, I hope the hon. Lady will withdraw the amendments.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I think our roll has come to a shuddering standstill.
We tabled the amendments largely as probing amendments because there is so little information in the Bill about how the monitoring will be carried out. Although it says that reports will be available to the public, it does not say how they will be made available, how often they will be available, in what form they will be published and whether they will be on authorities’ websites. The Bill gives the Secretary of State powers to outline the reports’ form, content, timing and so on.
Presumably, at some point we are going to see a set of regulations. Perhaps we will have to postpone some of the detail of this discussion until we see that. Our plea to the Minister is that he makes the information readily available to people. It should probably be made available on an authority’s website because that is how most people access information these days—not everyone, but most people. It needs to be available in other ways too, and it needs to be put in context. With that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Compliance directions
Helen Hayes
I beg to move amendment 78, in clause 6, page 4, line 10, at end insert—
‘(6) Before issuing a compliance direction, the Secretary of State must take account of any local housing and planning documents based on an assessment of local housing needs.”
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. There is a long-established principle that both planning policy and planning application decisions should be taken within a national framework in the context of considering local need. The coalition Government prioritised localism through neighbourhood planning and objectively assessing housing need. The Bill imposes a new obligation on councils in relation to starter homes, with absolutely no regard to objectively assessed local need. The new obligations do not cover other forms of affordable housing.
The Minister said a number of times that he sees starter homes as part of the mix. The Opposition support that, but it does not make sense, in that context, that such strong duties are being imposed on local authorities, in relation to starter homes, with no comparable measures to protect any other form of housing. Local need varies dramatically across the country. In each of my two boroughs, 20,000 people are on the waiting list for a council home. We have heard witness after witness query the lack of local discretion in the Bill for individual local authorities, and that is what the amendment would address.
Turning to some of the evidence we have received, the respected voluntary sector organisations Shelter and Crisis said that in most parts of the country, lower-income households would not be able to afford starter homes. They said that starter homes will primarily help couples without children and those on average or above-average salaries. They will be inaccessible to families on or below the Government’s national living wage in all but 2% of council areas. For single people on average wages or lower, only six local authority areas will have affordable starter homes.
The Home Builders Federation states:
“There is potential for market distortion if the numbers of Starter Homes that ministers are targeting to be built actually come onto the market. The effect is likely to be highly localised and could impact upon the saleability of units on new sites”.
The Royal Town Planning Institute states:
“Now not only is social rent and shared ownership potentially driven out and replaced by starter homes up to £250,000 in price, but this appears to be obligatory and not open to local negotiation. This lack of discretion may affect delivery.”
PlaceShapers states that it supports measures to increase home ownership
“but do not believe that this should be at the expense of those who also aspire to get on in life but are unable to afford to buy a home of their own.”
It believes that it should be left to the relevant planning authority to make decisions as to the mix of new homes.
All those comments are from respected organisations across a range of sectors saying that there is a need for more local discretion. The amendment would give local authorities a necessary safeguard by requiring the Secretary of State to take account of local need before issuing a compliance direction. That would help to ensure that the Government and the local authority are considering the same housing needs assessment and would give a safeguard that all types of tenure—the Minister says that he believes in all types of tenure—can be supported.
If local needs are overridden by the Government, the consequences will be serious. A reduction in the supply of homes for those on lower incomes risks exacerbating unaffordability and increasing the housing benefit bill. Combined with the housing benefit cap and the lack of regulation in the private rented sector, it will lead to an increase in homelessness. London already houses 49,000 households in temporary accommodation at considerable cost to the public purse. Without the amendment, which would create a safeguard that local needs would be considered, there is a considerable risk that the Bill will deliver new homes while ignoring the needs of those with the greatest housing need. That will make the housing crisis worse and cost the public sector more.
Without the amendment, there is also a significant democratic deficit. In London, borough planners have to take account not only of their local plans, but the London plan. All of that can be trumped by the new national-level requirement that is not subject to examination through a local plan process. How can the Minister be sure that Whitehall will know what is best in each locality and housing development? I do not think that he can. The amendment simply seeks to ensure that the new homes that are delivered, whether they are to rent or to buy, meet local needs.
The Minister has stated that the mix of tenures, among other things, will continue to be a negotiation between the developer and the local authority. If he is not willing to support the amendment, will he please explain how that will be the case? How is the Bill compatible with localism? How will the Bill not result in a reduction in the social housing provided for those in the greatest housing need?
Brandon Lewis
Clause 6 provides for a compliance direction if a local authority is failing to comply with its starter homes duties. Where the council has a policy in a local development document that is incompatible with the starter home duties, the direction would say that that policy must not be taken into account when certain planning decisions are taken. The hon. Lady gave some figures and details that we heard in evidence from Shelter last week. We outlined after that session, and earlier today, that the figures for new build homes in constituencies around the country simply do not stack up to back that argument.
The compliance direction must set out the Secretary of State’s reasons for making the direction and must be published.
It is important that we deliver the starter homes so that people have an opportunity to buy a home of their own with the 20% discount. That will open up home ownership to a new range of people who aspire to own their home but have been locked out of the market probably for the best part of a decade now.
We have considered carefully how best to frame the compliance direction. The new statutory duty on councils to support starter homes should have teeth, otherwise it will not deliver the housing opportunities for first-time buyers that are so badly needed. We want to ensure the compliance direction presents a strong incentive to councils to support the delivery of starter homes, but we also want to ensure that local plans continue to shape planning decisions for an area. We want local plans by, for and with local people.
As drafted, the direction would act on a policy or part of a policy that is being used to prevent delivery of starter homes. The remaining planning framework for the local plan would remain in force. Communities will continue to shape development in the area, and this is a reasonable and balanced approach. The direction would not act on a neighbourhood plan policy or a London plan policy. I want to reassure hon. Members that it is our firm intention that the compliance direction is a backstop provision. It would rarely be used, but it can act as a strong incentive to deliver. There are other examples of planning law where a sanction exists to act as an agent of change, but it is used sparingly.
The planning performance regime, introduced in the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, has already driven quicker decisions on applications for major development, from 57% to 76% in 2015. Only three councils have had to be designated, two of which have already been lifted out of that category as performance has improved. I want to reassure hon. Members that a compliance direction would be issued only after very careful consideration of the evidence by the Secretary of State. Councils must report on their actions to support starter home delivery under the requirements in clause 5. This will be core evidence, but there will be the opportunity for councils to submit further evidence to the Secretary of State. Any exceptional circumstances could be considered at this point.
The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood spoke to her amendment to require the Secretary of State to take into account planning documents based on an assessment of housing needs. The local plan will contain valuable evidence on housing need. As plans are updated, we would expect the evidence to consider the needs of first-time buyers. Up to date, the Secretary of State could choose to take such evidence into account. However, this sanction is about the statutory duty to promote the supply of starter homes. We will set out clear guidance as to how councils should work to fulfil this duty, but this is not a negotiable ask; it is a clear legal requirement to support starter homes for first-time buyers. If we are to achieve a real difference for first-time buyers—the step change we need and want to see—we must ensure all locations do everything they can to deliver those homes for first-time buyers at a rate they can afford.
The Secretary of State should have discretion as to what evidence is considered. If there is overriding evidence that the council has done everything it can to comply with the starter homes duty, but has not been able to deliver, that could be taken into account. The element of discretion is necessary to ensure we have an effective and operable sanction. I hope that with that assurance the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment.
Helen Hayes
I thank the Minister for his response. However, I find it astonishing that he appears not to be listening at all to evidence from a range of very respectable organisations that are all involved in the delivery of housing and deeply concerned about it. Councils across the country, including London Councils, which has given its support to the amendment, are deeply worried about the compliance direction. They are particularly worried about its use in order to trade off the needs of one type of housing need against another type of housing need.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Drastic action could be taken by the Government, which is likely to ensure that local authorities, in seeking not to be subject to a compliance direction, will indeed prioritise the delivery of starter homes above everything else. That is our concern.
Helen Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She makes a very powerful point. I would like to return to the amendment as we progress through the Bill, because it seeks a simple assurance that local democracy will be the overriding consideration in the delivery of housing across all layers of decision making on housing. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment, but I will not hesitate to come back to the matter at a later stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Julian Smith.)
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Backbench Business
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Male Suicide and International Men’s Day
(9 years ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of male suicide and International Men’s Day.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I thank colleagues throughout the House for supporting the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for finding the time to hold it. I also thank the many people who have been in touch with me to tell their stories or put forward their organisations’ point of view. I am grateful to all of them for taking the time to do that.
I said in my maiden speech that I would campaign hard against the blight of political correctness that is doing so much damage to our country. Ten years have passed, and I am still here fighting that battle. The number of ludicrous cases of political correctness has reduced, but the more entrenched ones are still well and truly thriving. One of the main areas where we see the pernicious effects of political correctness is the treatment of men and women. I heard about International Men’s Day and decided it was only right, given that we have a debate each year on International Women’s Day, to appeal for time to be given for a debate to commemorate the day, in the interests of gender parity.
The aims of International Men’s Day are admirable. They are:
“To promote positive male role models; not just movie stars and sports men but everyday, working class men who are living decent, honest lives…To celebrate men’s positive contributions to society, community, family, marriage, child care, and to the environment…To focus on men’s health and wellbeing; social, emotional, physical and spiritual…To highlight discrimination against men; in areas of social services, social attitudes and expectations, and law…To improve gender relations and promote gender equality…To create a safer, better world; where people can be safe and grow to reach their full potential.”
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. He has outlined the importance of International Men’s Day. Does he share my disappointment that this debate is being held in the second Chamber, Westminster Hall, rather than on the Floor of the House of Commons?
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for coming to the debate and making that point. I would have preferred the debate to be in the main Chamber, especially given that the International Women’s Day debate is held there, but I am grateful that we have the opportunity to raise these issues, which we have never done before, so it would be churlish of me to be too critical.
I want today to be the day when we in this House start to deal with some of the forgotten men’s issues and realise why the political correctness that underpins issues relating to the differing treatment of the sexes can be damaging to men. It might sound odd for someone leading the debate on International Men’s Day to say this, but in many respects, I would rather we did not have to be here having this debate, because when we think about it, in so many ways, considering men and women separately as if they live their lives in complete isolation from one another is ridiculous. Neither group is isolated. Both sexes have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. Every woman has related male parties and therefore a vested interest in men’s issues.
The problem is that virtually everything we do and debate in the House seems to start from the premise that everything is biased against women and that something must be done about it. There is never an appreciation that men’s issues can be just as important and that men can be just as badly treated as women in certain areas.
The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) supported my request for a debate, and I know he is sorry that he unfortunately cannot be here today. Had he been here, he no doubt would have shared the fact that last year, Belfast City Council hosted its first event to mark International Men’s Day. I understand that the event was held in Belfast castle and opened by the First Minister and the Lord Mayor of Belfast at the time, Nichola Mallon, following a proposal by Alderman Ruth Patterson. It seems our Ulster friends appreciate that there are some specifically male issues that should be addressed, with both sexes involved.
I want to be very clear: I do not believe there is actually an issue between men and women. Often, problems are stirred up by those who might be described as militant feminists and the politically correct males who sometimes pander to them. Members do not just need to take my word for it. Before the Equal Opportunities Commission was merged into the Equality and Human Rights Commission, it conducted research that found women had very clear views on these matters. Its findings included the following conclusion:
“There was little support for the idea that women, as a group, are unequal in society today.”
Presumably, that went down like a lead balloon in an organisation dedicated to fighting for women’s interests and rights, so it was pretty much swept under the carpet.
One of the most depressing things to happen recently was the introduction of the Select Committee on Women and Equalities. After everything else, in 2015 we have a separate Committee to deal with women’s issues, on top of the Women’s Minister, Women’s Question Time and the many strategies in this country that only deal with women.
For the record, I could not care less if every MP in this House were female or if every member of my staff were female, as long as they were there on merit. To assume that men cannot adequately represent women is a nonsense, just as it is to say that only women can represent other women. As a man, I can say quite clearly that Margaret Thatcher represented my views very nicely indeed, but I am not sure she would be a pin-up for many of the politically correct, left-leaning women who are obsessed with having more women in Parliament today.
It seems to me that we have an “equality, but only when it suits” agenda in Parliament that often applies just to women. The drive for women to have so-called equality on all things that suit the politically correct agenda but not on the things that do not is a great concern. For example, we hear plenty about increasing the number of women on company boards and increasing female representation in Parliament, but there is a deafening silence when it comes to increasing the number of men who have custody of their children or who have careers as midwives. In fact, there generally seems to be a deafening silence on all the benefits women have compared with men.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Would my hon. Friend add to that list the deafening silence about the shortage of male teachers in primary schools, who are important male role models?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; we hear very little about that. If there were a shortage of female primary school teachers, I suspect we would hear a great deal more about it.
The fight for equality on all things that suit women has ended up in a situation where we are quick to point out that women need special protections and treatment in certain areas but need greater equality in others. Let me give the example of prison uniforms. Men in prison have to wear a prison uniform; women in prison do not. How, I have asked on many occasions, can that possibly be fair? Where is the equality in that? I will come on to the treatment of men and women in our justice system later, but that is clearly an issue. What is the explanation? I am told that it is because women are different. As I have said, it is a question of equality, but only when it suits.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I may not agree with everything he has said until now, but one thing I very much agree with him on is the constant obsession with gender equality. Does he agree that some of the people who have the worst life outcomes, particularly in our areas, are working-class men, who suffer some of the worst health issues and have some of the poorest life chances? Simply replacing a middle-class, privately educated man with a middle-class, privately educated woman does very little to increase diversity and opportunity for working-class lads.
Philip Davies
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Increasingly, working-class boys are some of those who are doing the worst at school and need the most help. I certainly agree with him about political representation. I have often said that replacing Rupert from Kensington and Chelsea with Jemima from Kensington and Chelsea does not do much for diversity in the House of Commons, but that is perhaps a debate for another day.
Of course, some people believe that only men can be sexist. Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform, for example, tweeted the following a few years ago:
“Sexism is not about choosing between two genders, it’s about historic & current oppression by men. Only men can be sexist.”
That view is not uncommon, but it is, I believe, misguided. If it is not okay for a man to be sexist, it cannot be okay for a woman to be sexist. A good example of that is positive discrimination, which is portrayed as a great thing that can rebalance things for oppressed females, yet it is just discrimination. Whether we put the word “positive” in front of it or not, it is still discrimination. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing positive about positive discrimination, and it certainly has nothing to do with equality.
Just a few months ago, a publishing house declared that it would not accept any male authors for a year to redress some perceived discrimination against female authors. I never quite understood that, because as far as I can see, there are plenty of published female authors, but leaving that aside, people commended the publishers for their stance. Imagine if another publisher had said that it was not going to publish female authors—there would have been an outcry. Thankfully, when I put a complaint to the Equality and Human Rights Commission about that, it agreed with me that it would be unlawful. However, it is interesting to note the number of people whose minds that clearly did not cross; because it was in favour of women, they thought it was fine.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I was very grateful to see the motion on the Order Paper to do with male suicide and male mental health, which is why I and some of my colleagues came along today. I disagree with some of the points that my hon. Friend has been making about the broader equality agenda, but could we perhaps move on to the conversation about male mental health, on which there are important things to be said?
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. If she had been a little more patient, I was just coming on to male suicide. I was setting the context for the debate, which, as she will see if she looks at the Order Paper, is also about International Men’s Day and is not just limited to male suicide. I am now coming on to the issue of male suicide, but I am glad to have been able to set the scene, and I am sorry that pointing out that men are sometimes badly treated in the world is so discomforting for her to have to listen to. However, that is part of the problem we have in this House.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that gender politics needs to be more collaborative in style and that we should not antagonise either sex in order to achieve equality? Real equality is not achieved by causing upset or offence to either men or women.
Philip Davies
I very much agree. I hope that this will be part of a move towards a day when men’s issues are treated in this House as being as important as female issues. If that is what my hon. Friend is saying, I am all for it, and I hope that this debate helps us move towards that.
The motion that we are debating today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) pointed out, specifically mentions male suicide. I want to deal with that subject in particular, as suicide is desperately sad and it is clear that more men than women take their own life each year. In fact, the figures show that around three quarters of all people who commit suicide are men. I would like to place on record the fact that although men are more likely than women to commit suicide, those left behind grieving will be of both sexes and often children.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
Can I point out to everyone in the room, please, that no one in this country has committed suicide since 1961, when suicide was no longer a crime? People “commit” murder, burglary or arson, but they do not “commit” suicide. They take their own life, but they do not “commit” suicide—“commit” is a word that relates to a crime, and suicide is not a crime.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for picking me up again. The terminology may be important to some people, but if I am going to be chastised for using the word that, as far as I can see, is used by every member of the public whenever they discuss this issue, I do apologise. But let us not get bogged down in politically correct terminology. I would much prefer that we dealt with the issue that I am trying to raise.
Lucy Allan
As somebody who has had a family member commit suicide, I am perfectly happy with the use of that term, and I do think it is political correctness to use some other terminology to make it more acceptable to others.
Philip Davies
As long as we are going to get on to a serious debate about the issue, I will give way to the hon. Lady. I know that she knows a lot about this issue, and if she wants to make a sensible point, I am very happy to give way to her.
Mrs Moon
I only ever make sensible points on the issue of suicide, on which I spend a considerable amount of my time.
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that for many families who have been blighted by suicide, the word “commit” is deeply offensive and causes great distress, because it is part of a feeling of alienation and criminality that enters their family. It is an issue of great sensitivity for them. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is rolling his eyes, but that is the reality.
Philip Davies
The hon. Lady has made her point. I would prefer that we actually dealt with trying to prevent people from taking their own life, or committing suicide, or whatever term anybody wants to use. The end result is the same and that is perhaps the thing we ought to concentrate on the most, rather than focus on what we call it, which does not necessarily help anybody who is a victim of it.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of female suicide victims declined from 10.9 per thousand in 1982 to 5.1 per thousand in 2013, whereas male suicide rates in the UK were much higher and were virtually the same in 2013 as they were in 1982—19 per thousand in 2013 and 20.6 per thousand in 1982. Those statistics sound bad enough, but it is nothing compared to the reality of suicide: according to the House of Commons Library, what that means is that in 2012, more than 4,500 men felt they had no choice but to take their own life. Given that there was an increase in suicides in 2013, the figure for that year is nearly 5,000 men.
In fact, over the last 30 years, according to ONS figures supplied by the House of Commons Library, more than 130,000 men have taken their own life. That is a staggering number: it is a staggering number of people who have needlessly died, and a staggering number of families left behind—parents, spouses, children, friends and colleagues —all of whom have been left grieving and suffering.
Andrew Percy
In our county of Yorkshire, 81% of the deaths from suicide in 2013 were men. To take my hon. Friend back to my earlier point, does he not agree that we have to do more to intervene early, particularly for young men from the poorest social backgrounds, who are the most at risk because of unemployment, low self-esteem caused by low educational outcomes, or the social conditions in which they live? Again, that is a particular group of our society to whom the services are not necessarily best placed to respond, but for whom we need to do better as a nation by intervening earlier.
Philip Davies
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right and that most people would agree with him. In fact, in the time allocated to this debate, statistically at least one man will have taken his own life, which means that yet another life will have been ended prematurely and another family will have been left devastated.
According to the Campaign Against Living Miserably, which is supported by many individual charities and which I would like to thank for its help with today’s debate, a YouGov poll this month that surveyed 2,000 men found that
“42 per cent…had considered suicide, with…41 per cent…never talking to anyone about their problems.”
In addition:
“49 per cent…of those who didn’t seek help ‘didn’t want people to worry about me’. A third…felt ashamed, nearly four in 10…did not want to make a fuss and…43 per cent…didn’t want to talk about their feelings.”
According to various sources, including the Government’s suicide prevention strategy for England, the suicide rate is highest among males aged 30 to 59. It has fluctuated in recent years between 30 and 44, but it is currently those who are aged 45 to 59 who have the highest suicide rate.
We might ask why these men feel that they have to end their lives in such numbers. There is the obvious issue of mental health problems; not wanting to ask for help could mean that those go untreated in some men. I was sent a briefing by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which said:
“Three quarters of all people who end their own life are not in contact with mental health services and men who are suffering from depression are much less likely than women to look for formal help from mental health professionals.”
There are also clearly other things that are likely to affect men more than women—for example, being in debt or being a war veteran. The Samaritans point to evidence that suicidal behaviour comes about as a result of a complex interaction of a number of factors. In the case of men, financial worries play a big part—so unemployment and redundancy can be a trigger—and also the influence of a historical culture of masculinity.
In some cases, men might feel—usually mistakenly—that they are a burden on others or that people would be better off if they were dead. The fact that men still see themselves as the providers in many cases means that financial hardship is very significant, and in their mind reduces their contribution to the family unit. Someone in debt might think that their family would be better off if they were not there. Even putting aside the enormous emotional loss to those left behind, the financial gain may not be as the person intended, as taking their life could invalidate their life insurance.
Helen Whately
A minute ago, my hon. Friend mentioned the importance of mental health care for men and of men accessing it. It is well known that men may well go to an accident and emergency department to seek care when they have mental health needs and often A & E is the only place that is available in the middle of the night, but although some hospitals have good care in the form of psychiatric liaison teams, many hospitals do not have good psychiatric liaison services. Those services are known to be very helpful. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister supports such services and that some funding is going towards them, but can we make certain that that funding ensures that there are good psychiatric liaison services in all hospitals and transparency about the level of those services, so that we can ensure that they are effective?
Philip Davies
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that we all hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will deal with that point when he makes his contribution to the debate.
Shockingly, 56.1% of men who commit suicide do so by hanging themselves. I cannot imagine the horror of finding someone who has hanged themselves. Add to that the fact that that person is a loved one and it is even more tragic. Then, there are all the questions that inevitably arise following a suicide from the person’s loved ones. Why? Why did I not know there was something wrong? Why did they not talk to me? Why did they leave me? What could I have done to prevent this from happening? The guilt and sense of loss that those left behind must feel after someone has killed themselves should be reason enough to want to do something, never mind the absolute waste of life of the individual concerned. Suicides account for more deaths than road traffic accidents, so one would expect the Government to be trying to tackle this issue.
Sometimes this place is also about sending out signals or messages, and the message that I want to go out loud and clear today to anyone contemplating suicide is: you are not alone. There is nothing whatever weak or wrong in seeking help, and there are plenty of people out there who can help you, so please talk to someone—confidentially and anonymously if you prefer, but please talk to someone. Suicide is never the right option.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists says:
“We also need to work towards building a society where people should not be afraid to seek help for fear of being stigmatised and where the media agree to responsible reporting of suicide.”
I could not agree more. It says that it is also important that information on depression and how men can get support is available in what might be traditionally considered male settings, such as football stadiums, barbers or pubs. Again, that seems like a very good idea.
Suicide, especially in the numbers that we see for men, is a huge, tragic problem, and we need to work together to achieve change. One thing that leads men to contemplate suicide is the breakdown of a relationship, especially if children are involved. It is clear that the courts are more likely to place children with the mother than with the father. This is a massive area where men face very different treatment from women. We underestimate the effect on fathers of having to battle to see their children and facing the inevitable likelihood that they will come off worse simply because of their gender.
I am certainly not saying that all cases are like that. Many, many reasonable mothers allow the father as much access to the children as possible, and we should always recognise that, but life is not always that simple in every relationship. Some women do use their children as a stick to beat the father with—perhaps because they are bitter about the failed relationship, because of financial reasons, or because they have moved on and it is easier for them if their new partner takes on the role of father to their children. Women can fail to put the father on the birth certificate, limiting his rights, or lie to him about whether he is even the father. Short of a child-swapping disaster in hospital, women know for sure that their babies are their own, but fathers can never know 100% that that is the case without a formal DNA test. Many are sure because of their trust in their partner, but plenty will be unsure because of their partner’s behaviour, or because they have been deliberately tricked.
I have received numerous messages on the subject of fathers and their children. Unfortunately, we do not have time to go through them all, but I will read out one or two that contain the points that many people have made and that link the serious issues of fathers not having access to their children to the issue of suicide. One person said:
“Dear Mr Davies,
A number of local fathers have been in touch with…our MP, as I have over the years, about the way fathers are routinely excluded from their children’s lives or treated very differently from mothers.”
This was from a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), and the person said that they were delighted that my hon. Friend had helped us to secure this debate. They continued:
“It’s been proved time and again that children benefit from parenting by both their parents after separation but it is all too easy for false allegations to be made in an attempt to exclude fathers. There are rarely any repercussions and it can be many months before broken relationships with children can be mended—if ever.
Sadly, I know a number of men who have been driven to suicide as a result of their experience. Many fathers I meet at the local meeting I chair have mental health problems associated with separation and the difficulties they have experienced. And that’s aside from other members of their families including of course grandfathers, of whom my husband is one.
I do hope something positive comes from the debate on Thursday”.
That is from Jenny Cuttriss, chair of the Families Need Fathers branch in Kettering.
Messages from other people on the subject include one saying:
“I have spent the last 4 years going through the Family Courts trying to maintain a decent relationship with my children. Over and over again my ex has been emotionally abusing my daughter and alienating me from her life… She has also maliciously claimed DV”—
domestic violence—
“and taken out a Non-Molestation order against me to try and stop me…having contact or being involved in my daughter’s life in retaliation to me getting my ex’s mother arrested for assault as she attacked me inside a court building.”
I had been aware of the stories about men’s chances when it comes to custody of their children for some time, so last February I asked the Ministry of Justice
“in what proportion of all cases heard in family courts where both the mother and father sought custody of their children the residence order was awarded to (a) the mother, (b) the father and (c) jointly”.
The answer from the then Minister was:
“The information…does not record details of the orders…such as which…parties were awarded the order. The information requested can only be obtained…at disproportionate cost.”—[Official Report, 24 February 2014; Vol. 576, c. 261W.]
However, from everything that I have heard, including from those who actually do the adjudicating in family courts, it seems that it takes something out of the ordinary for men to be awarded custody of their children, and it seems that the Ministry of Justice cannot say otherwise. The Equality Act 2010 does not seem to apply in this area.
If people think men have life easy, they need to think again when it comes to families. Women have an awful lot of control, and there is an inbuilt bias towards them when it comes to the very important job of raising children. It does not look as though that is going to change anytime soon, yet as someone wrote in a message to me,
“I really believe that if this system worked against women the way it works against men there would be hell on about it! Whenever there is any discussion of gender inequality the focus is solely on women being disadvantaged…and never about these inequities or those that you yourself raise or the many other areas where men are disadvantaged.
The fact that women usually take responsibility for childcare is often cited as an obstacle to women’s progression in their careers and…under representation in senior roles and I believe society’s perceptions and family law appear to be perpetuating this issue. Perhaps more equality in family law and wider society could prove a win-win for both sexes?”
That seemed to me a very good point.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate, but I feel that the evidence that he has just presented is anecdotal; there is no concrete evidence. He has given us just individual cases, and I am concerned that this discussion is straying down a slightly misogynistic route.
Philip Davies
I am sorry that the hon. Lady feels like that. Again, it is part of the politically correct culture that we have in this place that the moment anybody raises anything that affects men, people are accused of being misogynists. That is part of the problem; the hon. Lady is part of the reason why these issues never get debated. It is raised to try to deter anybody from ever raising their head above the parapet. Many people in her constituency are affected by these issues. Perhaps she ought to go and consult some of her constituents about the problems they face in these areas. She might learn that it is right to raise these issues in Parliament. It is not misogynistic to raise the issues faced by some fathers in her constituency who are having trouble getting custody of or access to their children. If she does not think that that is a problem, she needs to get out more, frankly.
Mike Gapes (in the Chair)
Order. I say to hon. Members: please can we conduct this debate in a civil manner, without it degenerating into an argument of that kind? I ask all Members, please, can we get back to the subject of the debate?
Mr Walker wanted to intervene.
Mr Robin Walker
I did; thank you, Mr Gapes. My hon. Friend has never been afraid to put his head above the parapet. We may not all agree with every point that he makes, but he is raising important issues about family breakdown and suicide. Does he agree that reforms to create equal parental leave are important in fostering men’s role in the family? It is vital that the Government continue to pursue such initiatives as the family test to ensure that we take every opportunity to avoid the causes of family breakdown, which is a great problem for men as well as women.
Philip Davies
I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to do more to make sure that we have genuine equality, and not the “equality when it suits” agenda. We need to do as much as we can to help families stay together, wherever possible.
I will move on to talk about violence. In this House, we always seem to be hearing about strategies for combating violence against women and girls—in fact, there have been debates in the House on that very subject—so people might be forgiven for thinking that there is a special problem of violence against women and girls, and that it does not apply to men and boys. Some might think that far more women and girls than men and boys must be victims of violence, but the reality does not always match people’s concerns. It is a fact that in this country, men are much more likely than women to be victims of violent crime. The most recent biennial statistics from the Ministry of Justice on the representation of females and males in the criminal justice system confirmed that 1.4% of women interviewed in the crime survey reported being a victim of a violent crime, compared with 2.3% of men.
It is not just when it comes to violence generally that men do worse than women. Women accounted for around 30% of recorded homicide victims between 2006-07 and 2012-13, while men were the victims in the remaining 70% of cases. The picture emerging is that men and boys are far more likely than women and girls to be victims of violence and murder, but there is little or no mention of men and boys in our debates and strategies relating to females. I asked the Secretary of State for Education in Parliament last November
“what her policy is on educating children about violence against men and boys.”
I also asked
“what her policy is on educating boys about domestic violence against men and boys.”
The reply from the Minister for Schools was:
“Education has an important role to play in encouraging young people to build healthy relationships, and to identify those relationships which are unhealthy. Pupils may be taught about violence against men and boys in personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education.”
I will just leave that there for people to reflect on.
There has been a lot of talk about the female victims of domestic violence. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 8.5% of women were victims of domestic violence in 2013-14, but so were 4.5% of men. That is equivalent to 1.4 million female victims and about 700,000 male victims of domestic violence. That figure refers not to partner abuse, but to all abuse in a domestic setting, including among families. When we look at the figures for partner abuse, we see that 5.9% of women and 2.9% of men report being victims. It is quite clear that around one in three victims is a man.
Andrew Percy
I wanted to make a speech, but I cannot because I have constituents visiting. My hon. Friend makes an important point about domestic violence towards men, but the fact remains that most domestic violence is towards women. Does he agree that although we should tackle domestic violence against men, International Men’s Day is the perfect opportunity for men to stand up as part of the white ribbon campaign, for which I am pleased to be an ambassador, and say that we will never remain silent when other men commit violence against women? Although both issues are important, International Men’s Day offers a particular opportunity for men to take a stand against other men who commit violence against women.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All such violence is unacceptable, whether the perpetrator is male or female, and whether their victim is male or female. That is my point 100%. We should criticise them all equally.
There is evidence of under-reporting among male victims of domestic violence. In the crime survey for England and Wales, victims of partner abuse in the previous 12 months were asked who they had spoken to about the abuse that they experienced. A third of victims told someone in an official position about the abuse, but nearly twice as many women as men did. Perhaps more significantly, women were nearly three times more likely than men to tell the police. Despite what we might think from the focus on male perpetrators of domestic violence, there are also many female perpetrators. When anyone says “domestic violence”, the first thing that springs to most people’s minds—including mine—is a poor woman being attacked by a bullying man. The figures show that it is much more complex than that, however, and that stereotypical image needs to be smashed if we are to tackle the problem as a whole.
Something else that needs to change is the reaction to violence against males, certainly when it comes to female-on-male violence. Some see it as almost a laughing matter, but nobody would laugh or turn a blind eye if a female was the victim. Anecdotal evidence suggests that male victims are treated differently from female victims by the police and other agencies. Considering the sheer numbers involved, male victims are given hardly any resources in comparison with female victims. Resources should be available to both male and female victims of domestic violence.
Issues such as the lack of places of refuge and the lack of support for men need to be addressed. The ManKind initiative, which works with men suffering from domestic violence or domestic abuse, says that it will run out of funding in January. It needs people to back it now so that it can provide the emotional support and practical information that male victims need. There are moving stories on its website from men who have suffered domestic violence. Although there seem to be more female victims of domestic abuse, each male victim is also a person, not a statistic, and it is only right and fair that help should be there for victims of both sexes.
I have gone on longer than I thought I would because I have taken so many interventions. The final issue I want to raise is sentencing, and how men are treated differently from women in our criminal justice system. I had a debate here in Westminster Hall three years ago, at which I had plenty of statistical evidence to show that women were treated more leniently than men, but that did not seem to be accepted at the time. Since then, progress has been made, because that fact is now broadly accepted. For far too long, those who peddled myths were able to get away with it because people simply repeated their mantra without question. Perhaps someone would like to try to explain why women should be treated favourably in the criminal justice system, but at least it is accepted that that is the case.
Since that debate, I have amassed much more evidence on the subject. I will not go through it all now, otherwise we would be here all day, but I want to put some of the key facts on the record. About 5% of the prison population at any time in recent history has been female, and the other 95% has been male, yet so much consternation, time and effort have been expended on the very small number of women in prison. For every category of offence, men are more likely than women to be sent to prison. That is a fact. I will give an example to illustrate that: 45% of men sentenced for an offence of violence against the person will be given a custodial sentence, compared with just 23% of women. Of those with 15 or more previous convictions, 39% of men but only 29% of women are sent to immediate custody. In Crown courts, which deal with the most serious offences, probation recommends immediate custody in 24% of cases for male offenders, and just 11% of cases for female offenders.
The average sentence length for an indictable offence is 17.7 months for men and 11.6 months for women. Men serve, on average, 52% of their prison sentence; women serve 46%. The average length of time that men spend in a prison cell each day is 14.1 hours, but that figure is 11.5 hours for women. The list is endless. I have spoken about domestic violence and have an additional fact on that subject: 3,750 male sentenced prisoners were victims of domestic violence, compared with 1,323 female prisoners.
There has been a rise in publicity surrounding female paedophiles. In a few high-profile cases recently, the sentences given to women were much more lenient than those that would be given to men. Just the other week, a babysitter who had sex with an 11-year-old boy escaped jail. There is no way on this planet that a male who had sex with an 11-year-old girl would have avoided prison—a point that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children made about the case. There is no chance of that happening at all, and yet that was the sentence handed down.
The facts and figures that I have set out show that there are certainly questions to be answered about how men are treated in the justice system, compared with women. It seems that there is clear discrimination against men. If outcomes are all-important, what do people have to say about that? What will be done to deal with that balance? Well, the Under-Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Family Justice has made an announcement. She has said that she wants fewer women in prison—not fewer people or fewer men. Yes, hon. Members heard me right: just fewer women. The Conservative manifesto read:
“We will improve the treatment of women offenders, exploring how new technology may enable more women…to serve their sentence in the community.”
Now, I am not somebody who supports prisoners, but where on earth is the equality in that? How does that fit in with the Equality Act 2010?
Lucy Allan
Does my hon. Friend therefore consider it desirable to have more women in the prison population, to achieve equality?
Philip Davies
Yes, I would like to see more people in prison, but that is a debate for another day. I would certainly like women who commit serious offences sent to prison in the way that men who commit serious offences are. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to make that point very clear.
Where is the equality in the current sentencing regime? It is just like the example I gave of female prisoners not having to wear a uniform. Somehow, the fact that hardly any women are in prison in the first place seems to be a problem, because it just is—because they are women. If there is to be true equality, this cannot be allowed to continue. We should be gender-blind when it comes to sentencing, if that is what the equality agenda is all about. If women commit serious crimes that are enough to warrant prison sentences, they should serve them in prison. We need to stop pussyfooting around when it comes to female offenders. A judge in my local Crown court recently said to a female offender:
“I have every sympathy for your children but the biggest burden they labour under is that their mother is a drunken thug”,
before rightly sending her to prison. I could not have put it better myself.
There are so many other areas where men are being discriminated against, or are suffering more than women. Unfortunately, I cannot go through them all now. If they are not raised by other Members today, I hope we will have similar debates in the future, so that I can highlight the further problems faced by men. Some of the issues that I do not have time to get to include: male circumcision and its effects on some men; the fact that men suffer from anorexia and bulimia, too; the health effects of men not seeking help early enough to prevent their conditions from getting worse; the fact that men tend to live shorter lives than women; and the fact that boys underachieve in school.
To conclude, this debate is a fantastic opportunity to deal with the issues that affect men. This Parliament should not be hijacked by those who constantly want to perpetuate myths about men and women that are simply not accurate. Some people cannot see common sense for the blur of their rose-tinted, politically correct glasses.
I hope the message goes out around the country that politicians are not all blind. I also hope that many of the men who contacted me today to say that they have never felt that anybody has reflected the problems that they face feel reassured that they have a voice in Parliament on all issues that affect them, just as much as everybody else has. For a parliamentary democracy to work, everybody in the country has to feel that somebody is speaking up for them. Today, lots of people feel that their voice, at last, is being heard.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
I am here to speak as the chair of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention. I have spent a considerable amount of time examining the subject and raising its profile within Parliament.
Language does matter—being accurate about suicide and its legal status is incredibly important. If we continue to use the word “commit”, we continue to isolate families who have been bereaved by suicide and make those who take their own lives appear in a different class among those who have died. We continue to criminalise their actions, rather than examine what we can do and what responsibilities we can take to prevent further suicides.
I have talked to and worked with many families and individuals who have been bereaved by suicide, and all of them describe the same response—the isolation that they feel. Usually when a family suffers a bereavement, friends and neighbours are around them offering emotional and practical support. Someone with a family member who takes their own life is often isolated. People do not know what to say or do. Often the family are under police investigation because when there is such a death, the police’s first step is to look at whether that death is, in fact, a murder.
Many families have described to me the absolute shock of being investigated as though they were responsible for the death and may have murdered someone. People do not tend to cross police tape lines where the death has taken place, so they do not go to see the family. Often the police then leave because they have satisfied themselves that it is suicide, but they do not come back and explain to the family, “You are no longer under investigation, and by the way, this is where you might actually get some help and support.” One of the most important things that families need in those first few hours is to know, “What do I do? How do I deal with this?” They need to know how to respond to something that has left them shocked and asking, “Why? Why didn’t I notice? What could I have done to stop this? What did I miss?”
Lucy Allan
I thank the hon. Lady for her very important remarks. She is now three minutes into her speech and she has not mentioned International Men’s Day. Is she going to mention male suicide and International Men’s Day?
Mrs Moon
As I explained at the beginning of my speech, I am speaking on behalf of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention. I will continue to do so.
We have to look at how we support families, including families of men who die by suicide—I concede that men are three times more likely to die by suicide than women. How do we support families and communities? For those who wish to understand how we can support those families, I recommend the excellent work of Sharon Macdonald at the University of Manchester.
We also have to look at what we are doing on suicide prevention planning in the UK. The all-party group looked at the Government’s suicide prevention plan prior to its implementation and then again following the reorganisation of health in the UK. The result was quite shocking, because the new prevention plan, which was very good in many respects and set out good guidelines, did not require local authorities and health authorities to report back to the Department of Health. We had no overall picture of what was happening across the country, so the all-party group went out and surveyed to find out what was going on.
We found that 30% of local authorities did no suicide audit work at all, so they did not know what was happening. They did not know how many men or women were taking their own life locally. Also, 30% of local authorities did not have a suicide prevention action plan; they were doing nothing to prevent the suicide of men or women across their local authority area. More worryingly, 40% of local authorities did not have a multi-agency suicide prevention group.
It is very important that we recognise that suicide is not the responsibility of one Department. It is not simply the responsibility of the Department of Health. In fact, the most active department in dealing with suicide is often the police. They are involved when people make unsuccessful early attempts. It is more likely that the police will know of someone who is about to take their life or who has been at risk in the past than any other agency.
Most suicides have never been anywhere near our mental health services, and it is important that we know what is happening locally. We need to ensure that local authorities’ multi-agency suicide prevention groups are made up of all agencies, including the local authority, the health agencies, the police and the third sector organisations that are often doing critical work on the ground—I cannot say enough about the fantastic support that we all receive every day from the Samaritans in our constituencies who spend their time tirelessly working with people who are very fragile and at high risk of suicide. Groups such as CALM, which the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said has given him so much help ahead of today’s debate, are doing similar work. Those third sector organisations are made up of volunteers, many of whom have been affected by suicide and wish to move services forward so that further deaths can be averted.
It is vital that coroners engage with all their partners to prevent future deaths and to ensure that we are aware of where clusters may be beginning to develop, whether they are clusters within an age group, within an occupational group or within a school or factory. Social contagion is a big risk, and it is another example of why words matter. I have seen newspaper stories saying things such as, “Well, it’s just what we do around here.” If we give permission for suicide to be an acceptable way of dealing with the problems and difficulties of life, there is a risk of social contagion, with other people thinking, “That person was like me. If they can take their own life, I can, too.” That is a huge risk that we need to address. Social contagion is a great risk in closed institutions such as prisons, schools or factories, so we need to be aware of the importance of emotional education and language when people are faced with suicide.
I dread to say it, but the one point on which I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that the emotional education that we give to young men in this country is very poor. No matter how modern and how diverse a society we become, we still seem to educate our children to feel that they have to man up and be strong, and that they cannot talk about emotions. Some organisations, particularly sports organisations, have done fantastic work on suicide prevention.
I also stress the importance of longitudinal research on suicide and self-harm prevention. In the past I was fortunate to work with excellent Health Ministers, the former right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, Paul Burstow, and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who were both very supportive of suicide prevention work. If we are to have longitudinal studies of suicide and self-harm, the researchers dedicated to those subjects need to know that they will have the money to continue and pursue their work so that we have a clear idea of the numbers of deaths and whether those numbers are increasing or decreasing.
Other Members want to speak, so I will make a final comment. The all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention, in association with the all-party group on mental health, will be having a meeting in February, which I hope the Minister will attend. A psychiatrist from my constituency will be coming up to talk about mental health triaging so that people at risk of mental health crisis can go to any agency, including their social worker or general practitioner, and receive help, advice and support through the triaging system, so that no one leaves being told that there is an appointment in six months’ time. We need to be on top of this. People are dying unnecessarily.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing this important debate. He never fails to challenge the status quo, and he never fails to speak without fear or favour, for which I commend him, but International Men’s Day is also about promoting gender equality—that is one of its stated objectives. Striving for equality is not a competition between men and women. Women face discrimination on a daily basis—that is not a myth. He does not do his case much good by attempting to belittle that discrimination.
The number of men who are currently sitting as MPs is greater than the number of women who have ever been elected as Members of Parliament—that is a shocking fact. It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who has done more than anyone else to press for change on suicide, which affects more men than women. I thank the Samaritans and CALM for their excellent briefings, which they sent to us all. If we had had more women like her, and others, in this place over the past 100 years, perhaps more of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley would have been better debated and more fully addressed, because such issues are often picked up by women Members of Parliament.
International Men’s Day is not about pitching men against women; it is about the health of men and boys, the promotion of gender equality, positive male role models and men’s contribution to family life and their children’s lives. I have the privilege of living in a three-generation family, and women are in the minority, but we have fantastic support from the male members of our family to achieve the most that we can as women. Gender stereotypes are good for no one, and International Men’s Day should be an opportunity to address those stereotypes.
Suicides are a tragic waste of life, and it is important that we have strong policies to address suicide. Ahead of today’s debate I considered the driving force behind those suicides. The hon. Member for Bridgend touched on some of the issues that she has dealt with, and I am particularly interested in her comments about the expectations that we put on male members of our families and communities. I am also concerned about the impact of relationship breakdown and loneliness, which can be felt strongly by men, particularly as they get older. I will focus on that and on how we might start to address some of the problems that men have in trying to play a full role in all aspects of their community and in all aspects of life, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley mentioned.
Too many fathers lose contact with their children after an adult relationship breaks down, and too many fathers still find it difficult to play a full role in their children’s lives even if their adult relationship is still intact. When there is domestic violence or there are concerns about a child’s welfare, it is clearly right that a parent’s role in their children’s lives might be curtailed. However, there is clear evidence that, in day-to-day life, we could be doing far more to support the role of fathers in their children’s lives and to challenge the continuing gender stereotyping that it is in some way unacceptable for men to take up a more active role in their children’s lives. That stereotype exists despite the considerable improvements that this Government, and the coalition Government before them, have made in introducing support so that we can all have a more balanced approach to life, particularly through parental leave and flexible working. The fact is that men still find it difficult to access such policies.
Parental leave is a particular case in point. In the UK, it is felt there is an attitude of frowning on men taking up parental leave, and 41% of men have said that that is one of the biggest barriers to their taking up their legitimate and legal entitlement to it. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that, because it is not just a problem faced by the UK. In the Czech Republic, where parental leave legislation is the same for men and women, men still take up a fraction of their entitlement. The Scandinavian countries are often held up as paragons of virtues when it comes to family policy, but Finland has less than 9% uptake of parental leave by fathers. This is probably a Europe-wide problem—indeed, perhaps a global phenomenon.
How can we ensure that men have access to parental leave, which can give them an important role in their children’s lives in the early days? There is undeniable evidence from countries that encourage parental leave, such as Germany, that if a father has an active role in a child’s life before the age of five, it can encourage, support and nurture a stronger lifelong relationship between them. That is important, and we need to understand it. We have the policy in place; how do we make it work for men?
I applaud the Government for the work that they have done to ensure that the opportunity to request flexible working is now open to everybody, yet dads are twice as likely to have their requests for flexible working rejected by employers. Just under one fifth of fathers applying for flexible working are turned down. However, men are also less likely to apply for flexible working in the first place, with just 17% of fathers requesting flexible working compared with 28% of mothers.
Yes, women still face all sorts of impediments to their progress in the workplace, but men face barriers too, perhaps due to inflexibility within Government structures or expectations that men should be the main breadwinner. We must address such issues to ensure not only that men can play a full role in their sons’ and daughters’ lives but that women too can make the progress they need to.
One main protected characteristic under the Equalities Act 2010 is gender, regardless of sex. I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley that the first report by my Committee, the Women and Equalities Committee, was on transgender, an issue that affects men and women, and on the inadequacies of policies and processes in that area. We must ensure that gender is never used as the basis for discrimination. International Men’s Day does not dilute the issues that women face, including discrimination and gender-based violence. It is an opportunity to challenge all gender stereotypes, which are not good for any of us, and to support men to speak out, as women often speak out, on behalf not only of women but of men.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I was not going to speak in this debate, but I felt moved to do so by events that have occurred in York over the last few days. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who raised many issues, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who has expertise in the subject. I thank the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for securing this debate, which is important, although I do not concur with many of the comments that he made. I like to think that we debate based on evidence; anecdotal comments often do not add to debate. However, it is an important debate, so I thank him for securing it.
It is important that we recognise the needs of men and the challenges they face in our communities. Just last week, I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of men and Age UK to highlight the problem of isolation for men in later life and to consider establishing a men’s shed—a safe place where men can gather to discuss issues—in York. A countrywide project has been successful, giving men a space to talk about the challenges they face, particularly health challenges, of which mental health is obviously one.
I rose to speak in this debate because there has been a big debate in York about International Men’s Day and whether we should recognise it. In fact, as has unfortunately reached national headlines, the university was going ahead with a programme for today but has withdrawn from engagement with the process. I say that with regret; the decision comes on the back of a petition from 200 students saying that they did not think the day should be recognised. The university is committed to equality and to progressing the equality agenda, and two male students lost their lives just before I took office, so I think it is important that the university speaks out on the issues and the services available.
What has not been reflected in this debate is the necessity of recognising separately the importance of raising women’s issues. I am not saying that men’s issues and women’s issues are mutually exclusive, just that it is important to recognise ongoing women’s issues, because there is huge inequality across our society. However, I recognise that there are some areas of inequality for men, which is why this debate is important.
Suicide rates across our country are far too high. One person taking their own life is too many, and the fact that in 2013 6,233 people felt that they could not carry on living—a 4% rise on the previous year—means that we have much work to do. As I was researching for this debate, I found, shockingly, that the male suicide rate in my own city, York, is the fourth highest in England, behind Darlington, County Durham and Calderdale. That is worrying. Those places are in the north-east and Yorkshire, so there is a geographical issue to address as well, and behind that we might want to consider some of the causes of suicide, because unless we face up to the challenges as other people are and use this place to address the causes of suicide, we will never change those shocking statistics.
Suicide in York has risen to its highest level: 22 people lost their life in 2013. Even since I have taken office, people have taken their life. Looking at the causes, we know that the last few years have been particularly challenging for many in terms of personal debt, austerity and unemployment, which can have an impact on why people feel that they can no longer go on. We know that people are struggling with mental health challenges and facing changes, whether a loss of or reduction in benefits or other factors, that result in serious life changes or financial challenges to their family.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I am interested by that suggestion. All sorts of things have been examined relatively recently, but can the hon. Lady explain why the suicide rate is less likely to decrease for men than for women?
Rachael Maskell
That is why the research to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend referred is so important. There are so many causes of suicide that we need to understand. If we look at Greece and the impact of the recession there, we see that male suicide rates have increased tenfold. It is a serious issue. Some serious research has been done, but more needs to be done about the shape of our economy and the impact it has on personal life and the challenges that people face as a result.
In addition to those very difficult statistics, with which we all wrestle, one thing that I want to highlight is the services available to support people with mental health challenges. We know that those services are currently overwhelmed by demand. I look at York Mind —a fantastic organisation with great leadership. In just the last three years, demand for its services has doubled, from 650 people three years ago to 1,300 this year. We are seeing increasing demands on not-for-profit organisations, which always find it a challenge to know where their next pennies or their next resources are coming from. If we are going to take a strategic approach, we need to ensure that the infrastructure bodies are well resourced to deal with the issues, but of course it is always important to get upstream and address the causes.
In York, we have been faced with another challenge, which is the closure of Bootham Park hospital. It was our mental health hospital in York, but it was closed because of the suicide risk the old building, which was constructed in the 18th century, presented, which had not been addressed. To reduce the risk to individuals the hospital was closed, but that created a new risk because people are scattered perhaps more than 50 miles away from the services they need. Some of them have to go as far away as Harrogate to reach a place of safety; having a crisis in the back of an ambulance is not appropriate at all. It is really important that facilities are in the right place, so that people can access them at their time of need.
One of the consequences of the closure of Bootham Park hospital is that there has been an investment in the street triage team. That is why I very much concur with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend. The street triage team is there at the scene, at the earliest possible point of intervention. None the less, overall risk has increased because there are no facilities locally for somebody then to go to. The insecurity that that causes individuals is a real concern.
Lead clinicians who were working at Bootham Park hospital have highlighted the risk factors of closure, and that is why my continual plea is that we look at the infrastructure and the interrelationship between the not-for-profit organisations, the health service and the other agencies when we are addressing the issues associated with suicide, because we have a responsibility—I would say an obligation—to ensure that those organisations are working seamlessly together. If we have not got those things right, it is also our responsibility if someone is pushed to the point of taking their life.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I start this afternoon by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing this historic debate. This is the first time ever that International Men’s Day has been marked by a debate in this Parliament. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), as well as the hon. Members for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for bringing their individual perspectives to this debate.
Under the International Men’s Day heading, the debate gives us an opportunity to consider a range of issues that particularly affect men, but in my opinion none is more worrying than male suicide, so I will restrict my remarks today to that issue. The subject is all too often swept under the carpet. It was said at the outset of this debate that one of the problems facing us today is underachievement by white working-class boys from the north of England. Well, as a white working-class lad from the north of England, I am very proud to take part in this debate. Indeed, as a member of the Backbench Business Committee, I was pleased to play a very small part in granting this debate.
I listened with interest to the comments about why the debate is being held here in Westminster Hall rather than on the Floor of the House. However, as right hon. and hon. Members will be aware from the Order Paper, two debates have been scheduled for the Floor of the House this afternoon, one on the forthcoming Paris conference on climate change and the other on the new cancer strategy. It was felt that those debates needed to take place on the Floor of the House. Personally, I would have liked to see this debate take place on the Floor of the House as well, but we are where we are. It was also felt that we should try to hold this debate on International Men’s Day itself if at all possible, which is what we have achieved today.
As I say, I will try to restrict my remarks to the subject of male suicide. It is a subject that no one really wants to talk about.
Mrs Moon
To illustrate how important this debate is, let me tell the House that the first piece of evidence from professionals that the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention took was from a suicide prevention worker in London, who was also a mental health worker, and he said, “If I call a meeting to discuss mental health problems, I can fill a room. If I call a meeting to discuss suicide, I am there on my own.” That says everything. I thank everyone who is here today to take part in this debate for generating the conversation that is so vital.
Mr Nuttall
I am very grateful for that intervention, because that vignette highlights a lot of the problems. The mere fact that we are holding this debate—it may not be in the main Chamber, but it is here in Westminster Hall—and are able to discuss the subject will hopefully generate some wider debate outside Parliament. It might make it just that little bit easier for the debate to take place in wider society.
As I was saying, I approached the debate today with some trepidation, because, as has just been amply demonstrated by the hon. Lady, who is chair of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention, many organisations and people seem to be looking at this problem—governmental bodies, other public sector bodies, charities in the independent sector and academics—and all have greater experience than I have, but I have looked at it with fresh eyes. Part of the reason why I am here today is that I am staggered by the intransigence of the problem. Clearly, there are many people looking at it, but the reality is that the number of male suicides has remained pretty stubborn over decades. This is not a party political point. It does not matter whether there was a Conservative Government under Mrs Thatcher or a Labour Government under Mr Blair; the numbers for male suicide have stayed pretty much the same. That made me think that there is something serious going on here that is wider than just the typical argument about party politics.
I pay tribute to the charity CALM—the Campaign Against Living Miserably—because it has provided some helpful briefing and figures for this afternoon’s debate. CALM says that in 2014 more than three quarters —76%—of suicides were men. That is 4,623 deaths. It is worth repeating that suicide is the biggest single killer of men under the age of 45. For deaths registered in 2013, the last year for which the Office for National Statistics has figures, my own region—the north-west of England, in which my constituency is situated—had a male suicide rate of 21.2. That is the second highest rate in the country, second only to the north-east. The experts will be aware that the rates are invariably quoted in the statistics as a rate per 100,000 of population, so that is 21 people out of every 100,000. As always with these statistics, there is a host of caveats and technical details that could be explored, but I do not think we should let the minutiae obscure the big picture, which is that while the suicide rate in the north-west among men was 21.2, the rate among females was 6.3. A rate of 21 against a rate of 6 is a big difference indeed.
Liz McInnes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for talking so sensitively about this issue. I, too, am greatly concerned about male suicide, and that is why I came to this debate. He speaks very knowledgably about the rates of male suicide, but is he aware that young gay men are six times more likely to take their own life than their straight male counterparts?
Mr Nuttall
I have heard that statistic twice today, the first time in the Chamber, when the shadow Leader of the House made that point. I do not know whether the statistic is correct, but I am prepared to accept what the hon. Lady and the shadow Leader of the House say. I am sure that of those more than 4,000 deaths, some were gay men and some were young gay men. That may well be one of the contributing factors.
The charity CALM has set out four areas where it thinks action should be taken. First, and quite understandably, it states that there is a need for timely and accurate information. That could be applied to many things across Government. It always amazes me how long it takes for what, on the face of it, are fairly simply statistics to be collated and reach the public domain. Secondly, and again understandably, CALM says that we need to understand the reasons why people take their own life, because there is a strong element of contagion, which the hon. Member for Bridgend mentioned. Thirdly, CALM wants all local authorities to develop and implement a suicide prevention plan, and says that those that do not should be named. Fourthly, it states that if national and local suicide prevention plans are to be effective, there must be some accountability—there is no point having a plan unless something is done if that plan is not adhered to.
It is worth noting that in its own way, CALM has tried to give the issue some publicity through social media and the #BiggerIssues campaign, which is an advertising campaign to draw attention to the fact that as a society we tend to pay an inordinate amount of attention to perhaps relatively trivial topics, such as the weather and the sort of coffee we are drinking, rather than to male suicide, which is a real problem in society. The campaign has created digital posters featuring the hashtag #BiggerIssues, which were posted across the UK. Those posters changed every two hours to reflect the fact that every two hours, a man takes his own life. The campaign was run in association with the men’s grooming brand Lynx, and I think we should pay tribute to whoever it was who took that brave decision to link a men’s grooming product with the campaign. Others perhaps looked at it and thought, “The issue is a bit too touchy for us. We’ll leave that one alone.” Whoever was involved at Lynx, we should publicly thank them for being able to associate their brand with that particular campaign.
I was surprised to find that this phenomenon is not unique to this country. Right across the world and in almost every country, there is the same stark difference in the suicide rates. Lithuania, Russia, Japan, Hungary, Finland—almost everywhere we look, the picture is the same: male suicides considerably outnumber female suicides. Apparently that is not the case in China. I am not an academic; I have not spent time looking into this, but it seems to me there may be something in the fact that in one country, China, it is the other way around that may in years to come offer a solution to the problem.
We are a Parliament with different political parties, and for our own reasons we try to make party political points. When I have previously raised this issue, people immediately say, “Of course, it’s all the Government’s fault. The fact that there are lots of men committing suicide is all your Government’s fault, because you are making cuts to public services and you are cutting the NHS”—which is not true; more money is being spent on the NHS than ever before, so that argument immediately falls. Those arguments are easy to make. It is simple to throw out that it is all the Conservatives’ fault, but as I will demonstrate, the statistics—the facts—from the Office for National Statistics simply do not bear out that argument.
In the 1980s, under the Conservatives, the number of male suicides each year was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. It did vary a little bit—it got down as low as 4,066 in 1982 and it went up to 4,370 in 1987—but every year it was between 4,000 and 5,000. Between 1997 and 2010, under the Labour Government, the number of male suicides was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. Again, it varied—some years it was down, and some years it was up—but every year it was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. What is noticeable is that the gap between male and female suicide rates has been increasing steadily in almost every single year since 1981. At the start of this range of statistics, the male rate was a bit less than double the female rate—about 1.78 male suicides for every female suicide, I think.
Mr Nuttall
I certainly will, but I will come back to my point, because I have not quite finished it.
Mrs Moon
This gets terribly technical. If I can explain, suicide is recorded under an international definition. To get the statistics, researchers are often required to go into coroners’ records and read individual narrative verdicts. The records therefore are slightly skewed; they are indicative, rather than totally accurate, because there is a difference between a clear suicide verdict that says that a death was a suicide and a narrative verdict that would need to mention intent. We have a problem with the accuracy of our recording. I thought it was important to clarify that.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful for that. I think I mentioned that there is a host of caveats and technical details. I spent some time looking at the statistics and working out how they had been arrived at. As the hon. Lady rightly says, there are a number of difficult issues for researchers that could skew the figures, but whatever difficulties there might be, they apply equally to males and females and would not affect the overall point that I am making here which is that at the beginning of the 1980s, the difference was about double, and today it is about treble. It has gone from a ratio of about 2:1 to about 3:1 today. I do not think this change can simply be put down to Government policy. It was happening under a Conservative Government and continued to happen for 13 years under Labour Governments.
[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]
Public Health England, which produces a raft of figures on this subject, states:
“Suicide often comes at the end point of a complex history of risk factors and distressing events.”
With other right hon. and hon. Members this afternoon, I pay tribute to the Samaritans, which is perhaps the best known charity in this field for its work in trying to help and to prevent men and women who are feeling depressed from taking their own life. In its review of 2012, the Samaritans found that men from working-class backgrounds were at a higher risk of suicide. The Samaritans stated that suicidal behaviour results from a complex interaction of numerous factors, including bereavement, divorce, unemployment and the historical culture of masculinity. It is a huge and complex subject. Many people will be grateful that we have highlighted some of the issues involved.
I hope that people who are feeling depressed—there are often many reasons and not just one—feel that they can tell someone about their worries. One thing we can all agree on, from whichever political viewpoint we approach the subject, is that suicide—taking one’s own life—is never the right answer. I hope the debate today will help break down the stigma that prevents many men from seeking the help they need.
Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for securing this important debate, especially as it is on International Men’s Day. We should have a proper discussion about the issues and how they affect so many people in the UK. It is right to talk about male suicide rates and domestic abuse among boys and men. They are key issues that have a massive effect on our society. We simply cannot afford to ignore them.
I want to focus on male suicide. I have spoken many times about my personal experience of male suicide. The loss of my cousin, who tragically took his life at the age of 36, has had a profound effect on my family, giving us first-hand experience of the heartbreak that such an event can bring. The signs were there. He was trying to get help, but it just did not happen quickly enough. Sadly, his case is not unique.
In the UK, 13 men take their life each day. The male suicide rate across the world is at a 14-year high, and the use of antidepressants has increased five times since 1991. Having spoken to my right hon. Friend the Minister about these issues several times, I know how committed he is to the cause. We have made inroads towards helping people get the support they need, but I am sure all Members will agree that we need to do more.
Ending the stigma surrounding mental health issues has to be a priority for each gender, but society tells men that it is okay not to show their emotions, and we really need to change that to enable the male population at all ages to talk about their issues. We need to show that that is a strength and not a weakness. From the age of about nine or 10, boys are told to “man up”, be strong, and keep their feelings to themselves. They are told they can bottle things up, which they do, because they are scared of the banter. That is why suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50, and why 40% of men between the age of 18 and 45 have thought about suicide.
Organisations such as the Samaritans do great work to help people suffering from depression, but men need to feel they can contact them in the first place by first admitting that they have a problem. Of course, warning signs can and should be seen long before the thought of suicide arises. By the time young men consider suicide, the damage has often already been done. We need to tackle the issue in schools and colleges, at work and at home, and in sports clubs and pubs up and down the country. We need to speak directly to schools, children and parents. We need to be honest and say that it is okay for boys of any age to talk about their feelings, and we need to do it now. That is why this debate is so important today.
When society tells men not to talk about their issues, we should lead the way and tell them that it is all right to talk about them. I say this to colleagues: when you are down the pub tonight, ask a mate how he is doing—how he is really doing. When your son comes home from school and says he is fine, consider what that really means. If a friend is acting out of character, that could be an early warning sign of depression. This is serious. They might not tell you, but it will matter that you have asked. Tiny steps will make a difference. We know that we need to talk about this issue more, so I welcome this debate. The more we can talk about this and make sure that mental health is treated with the same importance as physical health, the better.
Issues such as male suicide rates and male domestic abuse are so important. I wanted to focus on male suicides, but we all have a responsibility to keep these issues high on the agenda, and we must work together to look out for our male population.
Dr Paul Monaghan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Rosindell, for the opportunity to consider the important issue of suicide, particularly male suicide. I represent the Scottish National party in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on winning this debate, although I must admit that I found many of his remarks unrelated to its title.
I am certain that the lives of all of us here—men and women—will have been touched by a suicide in our family, circle of friends or wider social network; mine certainly has. The reasons why people are driven to take their lives are, of course, both complex and intensely personal. However, depression, alcohol and drug misuse, unemployment, family and relationship problems including divorce, social isolation, wealth inequality, social disadvantage and low self-esteem are identified as key triggers for male suicide. Sadly, those with severe mental illness remain at the highest risk of suicide, and, among them, those who refuse or are declined medical treatment are at a higher risk still and are particularly vulnerable.
In addition to health issues, social and economic factors influence people to take their life. I have alluded to wealth inequality; we know that men in mid-life from low-income backgrounds are consistently identified as the highest-risk group. In England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, the male suicide rate is approximately 3.5 times higher than the female rate; in Wales, it is approximately 4.5 times higher.
In September 2012, the UK Government published a report entitled “Suicide prevention strategy for England”, which identified the factors influencing increases in suicide rates in England. The report made it clear that periods of unemployment and severe economic problems adversely affect the mental health of the population and can be associated with higher rates of suicide. The report was followed up in 2014, when a study again found an association between those areas of England worst affected by unemployment and those with an increased prevalence of suicide. Between 2008 and 2010, there were approximately 800 more suicides among men, and 155 more among women, than might have been expected based on an analysis of historical trends.
Like me, my colleagues in the Scottish Government are deeply concerned about suicide rates, and they have put in place a suicide prevention strategy clearly setting out the actions they are taking further to reduce suicide in Scotland. The statistics on suicide in Scotland indicate a downward trend, even in male suicide rates, so the strategy is achieving outcomes that run counter to the general trend in the UK as a whole.
The Scottish Government strategy has five key themes: responding to people in distress; talking about suicide; improving NHS Scotland’s response to suicide; further developing the evidence base; and supporting a broad programme of change and improvement. In developing those themes, the Scottish Government have acknowledged that activities with a broader focus can effectively contribute to reducing overall suicide rates. That broader focus includes building personal resilience, and promoting mental and emotional wellbeing in schools and among the general population; working to reduce inequality, discrimination and stigma; promoting high-quality early years services; and working to eradicate poverty. All of that work is undertaken in the context of enhanced vigilance in respect of improving mental health, supporting people who experience mental illness and, of course, preventing suicide.
The Scottish Government’s original suicide prevention target was to reduce the suicide rate by 20% by 2013. Since 2002, when the target was originally set as part of the “Choose Life” strategy and action plan, we have seen an 18% reduction in the suicide rate. Between 2009 and 2012, Scotland saw the lowest number of suicides since the early 1990s. That reduction came at a time when many other jurisdictions were mapping increases.
Nevertheless, some trends are comparable with those in the UK as a whole. Taking probable suicide figures for 2011 and 2012 together, we find that almost three quarters of those who died in Scotland were male. That gender imbalance has been broadly consistent for much of the last 10 years. However, the major element in the 18% reduction in the suicide rate since 2000 has been the reduction in male suicides.
The Scottish Government’s suicide prevention strategy has now established a revised target, with the aim of reducing the suicide rate by a further 10% by 2020. That mirrors the global target established by the World Health Organisation. The strategy focuses on suicide prevention activities in communities and public services to enable people to live longer, healthier lives, which is one of the Scottish Government’s national outcomes. The strategy makes manifest the determined commitment of the Government of my country to continue the downward trend in the suicide rate, and to make progress towards meeting the WHO target.
International Men’s Day focuses on life issues, including the suicide rate, violence against men and boys, education and parenting. Those involved in International Men’s Day have stated:
“When 13 a men a day in the UK are dying from suicide, it is essential that everyone in positions of power, trust and influence does everything they can to help men talk about the issues that affect them.”
International Men’s Day supports the campaign for improved outcomes led by the Campaign Against Living Miserably, which also seeks to raise awareness of male suicide. CALM aims to encourage people to talk about male suicide in the hope that that will decrease the number of male deaths attributable to suicide across the UK. To the campaign’s great credit, its helpline receives more than 5,000 calls per month from individuals seeking advice and support. Some 80% of those calls are from men. The campaign has stated:
“It’s our belief that all of us at one time or another, regardless of gender, will hit a crisis and we could all do with specialist help when things go wrong.”
Those are wise words.
CALM has released a parliamentary briefing highlighting the adverse impact of the UK Government’s work capability assessments on suicide rates. It notes that each suicide costs an estimated £1.7 million, in addition, of course, to the much more obvious catastrophic emotional and social impact of a life being lost.
The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health recently found that suicide was associated with the UK Government’s work capability assessment programme. The research found that for every additional 10,000 people subjected to work capability assessments, there was an association with an additional six suicides, 2,700 cases of reported mental health problems and an additional 7,020 prescriptions for antidepressants. That adds up to an additional 590 suicides, 279,000 cases of mental health problems and 725,000 additional prescriptions for antidepressants, based on current claim levels. Those figures are for England alone. The researchers noted:
“Our study provides evidence that the policy in England of reassessing the eligibility of benefit recipients using the WCA may have unintended…consequences for population mental health”.
Some 590 suicides at £1.7 million comes to more than £1 billion. We must, of course, add to that figure the cost of treating and supporting almost 300,000 people struggling with mental health problems, and of providing almost 750,000 prescriptions for antidepressants. Again, those figures are for England alone. Significant as the financial costs are, however, they fade into insignificance when compared with the human cost of lives lost, opportunities wasted and families destroyed by suicide.
It seems clear, therefore, that alongside health and economic and social status, UK Government policy directly contributes to the prevalence of suicide and imposes enormous financial pressures on public services already struggling to cope with significant budget cuts. Work capability assessments and the Work programme are having a significant negative effect on mental health. Reports repeatedly highlight the “heart-sink” felt when people receive a request from authorities to apply for jobs they are unlikely to win or hear anything back about. They also highlight the fact that the stressful targets enforced by jobcentres contribute to a lack of self-worth. Work capability assessments exacerbate feelings of failure and are increasingly cited as significant factors in individuals’ decisions to attempt suicide. When individuals are already vulnerable, likely to be suffering from low self-esteem, and experiencing chronic stress relating to the need to provide for their family, work capability assessments contribute nothing positive.
It is clear that more men than women take their life. Nevertheless, austerity and its mental health impacts are felt just as strongly by women and by those left behind in society. I suggest that the Minister take up the challenge of tackling the socioeconomic inequalities in society, and recognise that social exclusion is a significant risk indicator of suicide. I would like the UK Government to pay attention to the needs of boys, teenagers and young men to prevent vulnerability in later years. Perhaps more straightforwardly, I would like them to scrap the work capability assessment, which is proving far too costly, in terms of the human life and finance wasted.
Suicide must not be thought of as an issue that solely affects men, just because the number of deaths is higher among them. Any campaign targeting suicide must focus on the entire population.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) for his thoughtful comments. I suggest that he, too, strayed somewhat off the topic in talking about the work capability assessment, because today we are talking about International Men’s Day as well as male suicide. I particularly want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who adopted a measured and helpful tone. The issue is sensitive, and it is helpful to address it in a calm and measured way, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) also did.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for securing the debate. He worked hard to do that, and International Men’s Day is a day when we should celebrate male role models and their contribution to society and family. It is also an opportunity for us to work towards improving gender relations. I do not agree with many things that my hon. Friend said. In particular, I do not agree with him on what he described as an obsession with increasing the number of women in Parliament. In fact, I consider that a noble cause, and I am passionate about it. Nor do I agree that equality means putting more women in prison. We may have to differ on that one.
Mr Nuttall
I am sure that my hon. Friend is capable of speaking for himself, but I think he said that he wanted to be sure that more women who were convicted of serious offences went to prison.
Lucy Allan
I am sure that my hon. Friend is correct, and I apologise if I misunderstood the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley.
I declare an interest because, like many of those present, I have many men in my life. I have a partner, a father, a son and brothers. It is the supportive men in all our lives who enable us to do what we do, and to be the best we can be at it. I wanted to take part in the debate because I believe that I should speak for all the people whom I represent. We have 191 women in Parliament, representing men and women. It is right that we should talk about issues that affect the people we represent. Too often we polarise the gender debate to depict men as aggressors and women as victims. Many women who, like me, have a passion for gender equality and who identify as feminists feel deeply uncomfortable about the increasingly negative caricatures and gender stereotyping of men. My son said to me, “I don’t like feminists, mum.” I said, “Oh, why’s that?” “Well, they don’t like men, do they?”
It is wrong to blame today’s men for the patriarchal society of yesterday. It does not enhance equality for women to antagonise and create hostility towards men. We should all bring up our boys and girls to believe in equality for all; but certainly we should not bring up our boys to be ashamed of their sex. For me equality is not about forcing men to wear a white ribbon. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has left the Chamber, mentioned that campaign, which is wonderful, but men do not need to be shamed about the violence of other men towards women, and to demonstrate their shame with a badge. Nor is equality about forcing an elder statesman of this House—a man from a different era—to say the word “tampon” in the Chamber. Equality is always about having the same chances in life, and that is what today should be about.
I spent last Friday evening on patrol in Telford with police. We were talking about violence against men. We had just attended a domestic violence incident and I asked about the incidence of domestic violence against men. I was told that it is rarely reported and that the police are fully aware that the figures skew reality, particularly in relation to those under 30. There are many reasons why men under 30 would never admit to their girlfriend having smacked them or given them a shove; we do not talk about it. Today is an opportunity to focus on all the issues that adversely affect the life chances of men and boys and their ability to be the best that they can be. The cause of extraordinarily high rates of male suicide is simply that men feel unable to vocalise their emotions. They bury them. Should society, or indeed Parliament, say that it is not appropriate to discuss those issues? I say not.
In my constituency, a particular area of concern is the underachievement of boys at school. By any measure of attainment, boys from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups perform less well at school. Only 28% of white boys on free school meals in Telford achieved five A to C GCSEs, whereas girls from a similar background were doing significantly better. More boys than girls experience behavioural difficulties; they have more exclusions from school and more admissions to pupil referral units. I used to be involved in a pupil referral unit, and there were very few girls there. Boys then start to self-identify with a bad boy image. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with all that goes with it—the anger, frustration and self-harming—and then their life chances are kind of set in stone. We see that more young men are engaging with the criminal justice system, are in the prison population, or are in gangs and involved in knife crime. Then we wonder why those same young men have violent relationships with the women in their life.
It is deeply simplistic to characterise men as either violent or chauvinistic. Most men are neither. I did not come to Parliament to talk only about women’s issues, and I definitely did not want to find I could not talk about issues of fundamental importance to my constituents. We talk a lot about hedgehogs, UK sea bass stocks and trees, and various other topics of constituency interest, but I want to talk about issues that are important in Telford. In Telford the male suicide rate is higher than the west midlands average and the national average. However, what does Telford and Wrekin Council talk about? It, too, has embarked on an elaborate social media campaign parading photographs of men on Facebook holding up signs saying “I support the white ribbon campaign”. The poor men can hardly refuse, for fear of being labelled anti-women. I really wanted to know what the council was doing about men and boys in Telford.
The fact that no one wants to talk about the issue is the crux of it. I am on the Select Committee on Education. We talk about getting girls to do STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths. That does not mean much in Telford, particularly for a boy from Brookside who struggles with maths and English and is getting into trouble at school, becoming angry and frustrated, being excluded and then getting into trouble with the police. So men feel they must talk about women’s issues and wear white ribbons, and women feel that they do not want to be disloyal to the sisterhood. Today I thought twice about coming along. I did not want people to take to Twitter and attack me for wanting to talk about men’s issues. Then I remembered why I came to Parliament. It was to talk about issues that matter to people in my constituency. I am glad that I am here, along with everyone else who has come along—and I am glad about the valuable contributions they have made. I feel that I owe it to the failing boys in Telford, and the young men they will turn into, to be here today to put their case.
The men in my life talk a lot. They talk about sport and work, and sometimes politics. They definitely know how to get their voices heard; but they do not always say what they are feeling or what is worrying them. They feel the need always to be strong, brave and the breadwinner—the man with the chiselled jaw in the Gillette advert, if anyone remembers that. Men are uncomfortable expressing their feelings and talking to someone about how distressed or desolate they feel. That is because society has embedded the social expectation for men to be strong at all times. Failure to do that is considered weakness, or failure as a man. We need only look at society today to see the pressures that the workplace and providing for their family place on men’s shoulders. Not feeling able to talk about the issues only makes things worse. I echo what many hon. Members have said—that the impact of suicide on children and the families left behind is indescribable: the guilt, the sense of abandonment and rejection, and the loss, which a child can never quite fathom. A family member left behind does not recover from suicide.
I want to finish on a positive note. Today is about men’s health. It is about improving gender relations, promoting gender equality and highlighting positive male role models, so I am delighted that this debate has been held. We definitely need a more collaborative gender politics. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley quite achieved that, but I am sure that was his intention. Let us make sure that it is okay to talk about all these issues. Let us remember that women have men in their life whom they care about deeply. Seeking help is hard, and it is harder still for men, as an admission of weakness. It is even harder still if society generally will not talk about these issues. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate, and I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for being brave enough to call for it. I particularly thank him for urging men to seek help, and letting them know that they are not alone. If this debate has achieved that, he is to be congratulated.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
As the shadow Mental Health Minister, I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate on International Men’s Day. I will respond specifically to the motion, which tackles male suicide.
I thank Members from throughout the House for their contributions to the debate, which have revealed just how significant a challenge male suicide is in all our communities. I also add my thanks to CALM for the work it has done to raise the profile of the issue and push for a debate on it. Its #BiggerIssues Thunderclap campaign today has reached millions of people on Twitter and across social media. That is an important indication of the strength of feeling on this issue. On Monday, the Mind media awards featured countless nominations for programmes and coverage that had raised the profile of this significant issue. The campaign award was won by the #FindMike campaign, which was run by Jonny Benjamin and Neil Laybourn, recognising the contribution that they have made to the debate.
I pay tribute to the chair of the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), for the vital contribution that she and the group have made and continue to make to the ongoing debate on suicide. As a society, we should be doing everything that we possibly can to prevent it. I also thank the Samaritans and the Royal College of Psychiatrists for their helpful briefings ahead of this debate.
The rate of male suicide in this country is a national scandal. It is shocking that in today’s society the number of people taking their own life is increasing. The fact that such a disproportionate number of those suicides are by men demands our urgent attention. I shall share again some statistics that we have already heard, because they are so significant: of the total number of suicides in the UK in 2013, 78% were male and 22% were female, and suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged under 45 in the UK. Every time a person is lost to suicide, it is a tragedy—for their loved ones, their friends, their community, and society as a whole.
Members from across the House have mentioned cases of suicide in their constituencies, and sometimes within their own families; each one is tragic and devastating in its own right. The impact of suicide can be wide-reaching and incredibly long-lasting. Apart from the obvious human cost, which often affects whole communities in schools, colleges or workplaces, we must consider the huge economic cost. I was particularly struck by the Department of Health impact assessment, which put the economic cost of just one suicide at a staggering £1.7 million.
This debate has given us an important opportunity to examine the factors that might lie behind the shocking statistics. A report by the charity Mind outlined some of the possible reasons why men are more likely to take their own life. It suggests that men compare themselves to a gold standard of masculinity, power and control, and are more likely to feel shame and guilt when they fall from that standard. There is a link between unemployment and suicide—unemployed people are two to three times more likely to take their own life. Just this week, the University of Liverpool published research into the number of suicides that, tragically, have happened in areas with a higher number of work capability assessments.
Philip Davies
The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) try to draw attention to work capability assessments and blame suicides on them. Will she accept that it was the Labour Government who introduced work capability assessments, under which more than 60% of people were found fit for work? In work capability assessments now, only 27% of people are found fit for work, so her Government were finding more people fit for work than this Government ever have. Will she at least acknowledge that fact, rather than trying to make a rather cheap political point?
Luciana Berger
I pointed out just one reference to the work capability assessment that is particularly relevant because that research has been prominent in the press today. There are many other factors—that is just one—and I will come on to address them, but that research has been conducted academically and is particularly relevant this week. That is not a political point; it is something that is significant in many communities and that has been raised by Members of all parties, not just by the Opposition.
Some groups of young men are particularly at risk. Research conducted by the charity METRO found that more than a third of LGBT young people have attempted suicide at least once. Shockingly, it has recently come to light that suicides in our prisons have increased by more than 50% in recent years. Every four days a prisoner takes their own life, and the majority are men. Analysis by the Samaritans and a number of academic studies show that there is also a very strong link between socioeconomic class and suicide, with those living in deprived areas on the lowest incomes being most at risk.
Men are more likely to take risks with drugs and alcohol. They are also much less likely to open up to their friends and family and seek emotional support, as many Members have said. We have also heard concerns about the impact of economic crises on suicide rates, which I echo. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) referred to debt, and we also heard about the challenges in Greece, which has seen an increase in suicides.
All those individual factors are important and demand our consideration and attention, and I hope that the Minister will respond to each of them in turn. Whatever factors contribute to a person wanting to take their own life, there is one thing of which we must never lose sight: suicide is not inevitable. If people are in crisis, good care can make a vital difference, and it can and does save lives.
We have heard about the challenges in ensuring that people with mental health problems get the support that they need, and there are particular challenges due to fragmentation in the system. Service users, professionals and experts are warning of a mental health system under unsustainable pressure. The number of people becoming so ill with mental illness that they need hospital care has increased. At the same time, the number of mental health nurses has decreased, and we are hearing of too many instances of people having to travel hundreds of miles for a bed or, in some cases, not getting any help at all.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists has advised that men tend to use more lethal forms of suicide than women. It is therefore vital that the very first time someone says they have had suicidal thoughts, they get the best support possible. It is vital that that support is provided in the first 24 hours after a crisis begins. Mental health charities have long been campaigning for better crisis care. Research from the charity Mind has found that people in mental health crisis might not be able to get help immediately.
I echo the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Bridgend and for York Central about the role of the police. Some important pilots of street triage teams are going on throughout the country. I had the opportunity to join one in Liverpool and saw at first hand the fantastic work being done by the police and mental health professionals to contend with issues of suicide and suicide prevention. They often identify people and take them to a safe place, but we know that only one third of people who use NHS crisis care services are assessed within four hours, which should concern all hon. Members. Research has found that when people present to services, perhaps after having been brought there by a member of the police or a street triage team, there are often not enough staff to provide the care that they need.
When someone has a mental health crisis and is most at risk of suicide, one of the places they are most likely to be taken is the local hospital’s accident and emergency department. I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately): there is a serious shortage of liaison psychiatrists in acute hospitals. I have had the opportunity to join a number of such teams in A & E. They do an incredible job in very difficult circumstances and under a lot of pressure. I have heard the staff say that they are not able to deal with all the cases they would like to in an adequate time, which should concern all of us. Having experts on hand is key to ensuring that people get the support they need. I would welcome an update from the Minister on the work he is doing to increase the number and coverage of liaison psychiatrists in our hospitals.
Labour Members welcome the mental health crisis care concordat—the national agreement between local agencies to work together more closely when responding to people in mental health crisis. I note that great strides have been made in supporting the police to improve their response to people with mental health problems. However, it is not clear what tangible progress is being made on the ground in relation to suicide as a consequence of the crisis care concordat. A King’s Fund report published last week found that just 14% of people felt that they received appropriate care in a crisis. I hope the Minister will share with us his plans to evaluate what the crisis care concordat has achieved and what it might go on to achieve.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend rightly raised the complex and under-researched issue of suicide contagion. I echo the concerns raised by Members from both sides of the House about the challenges caused by the lack of research into suicide. There are some great research facilities, but they are few and far between. Although their work leads the way, funding for all types of mental health research is significantly lower than funding for research into physical health conditions. Public Health England published guidance in September on how to identify and respond to suicide clusters. I hope the Minister will tell us about the work his Department is doing to understand more about and prevent suicide contagion.
Ensuring that people in mental health crisis get the support they need is an urgent priority. However, to stem the tide of male suicide, we must do much more to prevent men from reaching the crisis point in the first place. A number of hon. Members have talked about the important fact that three quarters of people who take their own life are not in contact with mental health services. Men who suffer from depression are much less likely than women to look for formal help from mental health professionals. They are also less likely than women even to talk to their family and friends about how they are feeling. We need a cultural shift so that men feel able to discuss their mental health, seek help and get the support they need.
Just as important as ensuring that men feel able to talk openly about their mental health is ensuring that when they come forward, there are services available that they feel comfortable accessing. We need to do more to ensure that men can access information about mental health problems. We must make support available in what might be considered traditionally male settings, such as where men meet, eat and watch sport. That point has already been made this afternoon. I have seen at first hand the work done by Everton in the Community, an organisation connected to Everton football club that looks at mental health in particular. It has mental health champions and does work on the football playing field and just after matches, and it has a significant impact. It is a great project and there are others, but they are not the norm, so we need to do more work.
There is a real need for joined-up working between different sectors, including health, social care, education, employment, social welfare and the Ministry of Justice, to reach out to men who are depressed and at risk of suicide. Underpinning all of that is the need for a concerted and co-ordinated approach from the Government to prevent suicide. The Government’s suicide prevention strategy was published in 2012, yet there is still a high rate of suicide in our country. The strategy has not been as successful as any of us would like. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend said that she is concerned that the strategy lacks teeth and that there are no timeframes or tangible reporting mechanisms by which to measure its success. Does the Minister agree that it is time for an urgent review of the suicide prevention strategy? We also need timely access to data about suicide. It is not right that there is a two-year delay in receiving such figures. What plans does the Minister have to improve the availability and transparency of information about suicide across the country?
In the light of the rising suicide rates, it is clear that we need a revolution in suicide prevention to address the fact that many more men than women take their own lives. For too long, mental illness has been the subject of stigma and prejudice, which means that people—particularly men—often feel that they cannot talk openly about their mental health problems. A few brave public figures, such as Stephen Fry, Graham Norton and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), have spoken up about their own mental illness, but for too many people mental health remains hard to speak about openly. Only last week, in my constituency surgery a man in his 50s told me that he is not able to relate to either his siblings or his parents about the mental health condition he has been affected by throughout his adult life.
It is incumbent on all of us to make the rhetoric about parity of esteem a reality. Challenging stigma is key to making equality for mental health a reality. We need a cultural shift in our schools, colleges, universities and workplaces to enable men to discuss their mental health and feel able to seek help. We need to overcome the stereotypes of masculinity placed on men’s shoulders and give them the support they need. Each suicide is a terrible tragedy and a waste of precious life. Members from both sides of the House have talked about the important work that must be done to tackle the challenge and about the many practical steps that must be taken. It is clear from their contributions that together we can prevent suicide and save the lives of many men. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. Do I have until half-past 4?
Alistair Burt
It is nice to get a reasonable amount of time without being shouted at for spending a bit of time on my feet. I am pleased to be in that position today.
Alistair Burt
And so is my hon. Friend.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and picking the topic. I thank CALM and the other charities that backed the debate, as well as all the colleagues who have spoken. I will come to everyone’s speech in due course, but a couple of colleagues—my hon. Friends the Members for Worcester (Mr Walker) and for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately)—have been in here for the whole time and have not made a speech. It is sometimes unusual for colleagues to sit and listen because they are interested in the debate, without feeling the need to contribute. We all appreciate their presence. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) for her comments, which I will come on to. I am only mildly annoyed that she said some of the things I wanted to say, but I can say them again. She either read my mind or had a look at my speech in advance.
I will spend the bulk of my remarks dealing with the suicide element of the debate, but I want to start with International Men’s Day because I recognise its significance and because it is why we are here. I have previously referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) as “the Member for grit and oyster”, and he proved that to us once again today. This place is used to rough speeches. If any hon. Member wants to get anything done, say anything mildly controversial or challenge people, there is the chance that they will not only challenge but put some people’s noses out of joint in doing so. My hon. Friend is particularly good at both those things. We all have to take the rough with the smooth—we have all sat in the House of Commons and heard things from both sides that we do not like, but that is all part of it. That is what this place is about and we do not get things done by always going along with the status quo. Today, I heard from my hon. Friend things that I appreciated and things that that I thought were profoundly wrong.
I echo the feelings of those who said today that the purpose of International Men’s Day is to highlight the fact that gender equality is not a zero-sum game. It is not one thing to be gained at the disadvantage of another. The Department of Health’s approach to illnesses and conditions that might specifically affect men or women is that both deserve equal attention and neither is supported at the expense of the other. That is important. There is a strand of that argument on both sides that occasionally expresses itself in challenging ways. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made brave reference to the row at the University of York to say that it is right and important to think about International Men’s Day, and for a university to censor it and prevent something from happening frankly looks rather silly. There is a lot of stuff in the United States at the moment about the prevention of free speech that is getting into that area. Academic institutions need to be particularly careful about ensuring that they do not shut down debate just because they do not like it. The hon. Lady was quite right to say what she did.
I think our debate today has emphasised that this is not a zero-sum game. There are particular issues on which men are specifically challenged. It is important that they are raised as issues in their own right and that it is not suggested that they have arisen because men have been disadvantaged by women. The underachievement of boys, particularly white, working-class boys, is a real issue that any of us would be concerned about. It does not need to be considered in the context of whether girls are doing better. It is just a fact for those boys, and what can we do about it? My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley was right about that.
The difficulties of family problems, separation and other such matters are particularly hard because the courts have as their primary objective the interests of the child. It is not about the interests of one party or the other; the paramount duty of the court is to have the interests of the child as the basis of what it does. How that is interpreted can be tough in contested situations. The pain felt by men who suffer separation is real. That is not to suggest that pain is not suffered by women in similar circumstances, but the facts are as they are and not to raise them and not to regard them as important would be to miss something. My hon. Friend was also right on that.
As for the issues my hon. Friend raised, some of his challenges to put things on the record were right and some of them, I feel, are wrong, but I am grateful to him for being prepared, as he always is, to confront issues that some others might shy away from. That is what this place is all about.
The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) made a quite excellent speech, again demonstrating to people outside this place that some colleagues here get so immersed in a subject that they really know their business and are able to speak authoritatively on it from years of experience and practice. The hon. Lady gave us an object lesson in that. She was right about language. When she said that the phrase we should use now is not “to commit suicide” but rather “to take one’s own life”, that was not designed to chastise my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley or anyone else. I had a conversation on this subject this week with Jonny Benjamin, who I am pleased to say is here and following the debate closely, because I had also used the former phrase. I did so because it is a common phrase, but it is right to challenge its use, because, exactly as the hon. Lady said, it suggests that to take one’s own life is similar to committing a crime. That was not my intention when I used the phrase and I understood entirely when Jonny suggested that the right wording is “taking one’s own life”. As the hon. Lady said, the feeling of loss experienced by affected families is considerable; that the language used could add to that a sense that their loved one did something criminal had not occurred to me, but on reflection I certainly understood it. Her remark was not meant to chastise anyone. I have corrected my way of looking at the matter as a result of what I was told. That is just sensible sensitivity.
The hon. Lady also mentioned the importance of coroners. In case Members do not know, because I did not know until I took on this job, I can tell them that coroners write to me if they feel that there is something in a case that has a wider governmental impact that relates to my Department. It is an important part of the process that coroners indicate when they feel that they have uncovered something in a particular case that has a wider implication and the Government can do something about. I appreciate the work of coroners and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to them and thank them for their thorough work in investigating deaths. It is much appreciated by Government.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) spoke about attitudes and the importance of gender equality not being zero-sum game, which I appreciate. I also recognise that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley quite rightly challenged gender stereotypes in his contribution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke mentioned parental leave, which is dealt with by the Department for Education, so we will get an answer to her on that. It is an issue, and it is strange, although perhaps not surprising, that it is handled similarly around Europe and around the world and that men do not take the opportunities that are given to them, but I suspect that that attitude may change over time. I will ensure that the Department for Education gives her an answer.
My right hon. Friend also made reference to living in a multi-generational household. I too live in such a household, but there are only two males in mine. All the rest are women. There is me and Mr Darcy, my darling daughter’s pug. We are the only two blokes in our house, and I depend on him for male company when I get home. Multi-generational houses can be a lot of fun, and I appreciate living in one very much.
I have mentioned the hon. Member for York Central challenging the University of York, but she also made reference to the issues at Bootham Park hospital, in which we are both well versed. I appreciate her work on this and that of my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy). It is a particular situation that has arisen owing to the closure of that hospital because of the risks that she mentioned. It exemplifies the fact that work has to be done as swiftly as possible to replace the facilities that have been lost, and she is entirely right to say that the trust must have a good eye on where people are being treated now and how we can get back to local facilities as soon as possible. She knows that my door is open if she wants to see me when the moment is right, and we are pressing the local authorities to bring forward their plans.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall)—may God continue to bless his constituency and all its wonderful people—spoke of the need to challenge stereotypes. He also made reference to something that I want to highlight because it is absolutely central to the problem—the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree also mentioned it. This is what has been so wrong: the acceptance. My hon. Friend gave every impression of being outraged that we have sort of accepted that there is a figure for suicide in this country and a gap between men and women; we have sort of got used to it. He is right, and that will be at the heart of my remarks about how we deal with the matter. He has looked hard at the statistics to examine the gap between men and women and found that it is not only consistent, but widening. I thank him for his work.
I visited the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway) a few months ago to meet a group that she brought together to deal with a variety of mental health issues. She can take my kind regards back to them, because I found the meeting to be very instructive. In her contribution, she spoke of her difficult personal experience and made reference, as several colleagues did, to the issue of men’s feelings about their place in society, their feeling of inadequacy should they admit to any sense of failure, their worry about not fitting in, banter and everything else. That brought to my mind the relatively recent tragedy of Gary Speed, the Welsh international manager, and the impact it had on the sporting community that someone seemingly in full command of his life and everything else could have such things going on to lead him to do what he did. Along with other celebrities and colleagues in the House talking about such things, it is those occasions that wake people up and make us say, “This is a bigger problem than we realised.” That is probably one of the reasons why we are all present today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derby North and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree referred to the good that can come from sports clubs, associations and so on. In my constituency I am lucky enough to be a member of a number of organisations—for example, I am president of Biggleswade athletic club and I regularly go to see matches at the football clubs. They are places where people can go, gather together and form associations. Bearing in mind the difficulties we have been discussing, including feelings of loneliness and isolation—for men in particular—the more people can be scooped up by and remain part of groups and organisations the better. They are a vital link. Perhaps women do such things differently from and better than men, but perhaps sports clubs and other such places can do something more for men. In that connection, I commend the work being done at Everton.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derby North commented on asking people how they are and getting the reply, “Fine.” Are they really fine? Most of us leave it at that, because we do not want to get involved in the conversation, but it is important to take such opportunities.
May I make another point? It is a bit personal, but not too harrowing as it turned out. It is an important point. Last year my old school magazine reached me and in the obituaries column was the name of one of my classmates, someone I had also been at university with. I was completely horrified. We had been in touch reasonably regularly over the years, but perhaps not for a year or so. I thought, “My friend has died and I don’t know anything about it.”
In actual fact, fortunately, it turned out to be a mistake. My immediate reaction had been to hit the last number I had for my friend to find out what had happened, and I had discovered that the magazine was wrong. It had shocked me, however, and I remember saying to him, “Do you know what this teaches me? We have a number of friends we haven’t been in touch with for a while—we don’t always know where they are—and we will end up seeing each other’s families at each other’s funerals.”
At my sort of advanced age, if we have not been in touch with friends for a bit—I have a lot of school friends I remember well, even if I have not spoken to them for a while—we might simply miss something. Again, I think blokes do such things worse than women. If it were not for my wife keeping up with friends using Facebook and so on, my social life would be much worse. That is something for men to think about. If we have not been in touch with friends for a bit, we should do it this weekend.
The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) made reference to Scotland’s suicide strategy, and I was pleased to hear about it. The strategy goes back a long time, to 2002, so it is a long-term strategy to combat the brutal fact that the suicide rate is higher in Scotland than in the rest of the United Kingdom. Any lessons to be learned from a falling rate are important. It is right to focus on what might work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), too, talked about the underachievement of boys at school and the particular issues in her constituency. She mentioned Twitter—she need not be worried about being attacked on it, because she has nothing to worry about—and I will speak about social media later. The importance of her remarks, however, was in talking about the issues.
Although the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) did not make a speech as such, she intervened with particular pertinence, as she always does on such occasions. It is good to see her in her place and taking a strong interest in the debate throughout.
I have a little more to say, given the time and the opportunity. I hope to be pertinent. I want to put on the record some of my own thoughts on the subject—although the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree has anticipated some of my views. I want to see the ambition of our society and of the Government changed in relation to the issue of suicide. Fundamentally, I want our position to be that we challenge the inevitability of suicide. As far as our statistics are concerned, our rates are mid-range for societies such as ours, but that is not good enough.
Do we need to know more? How do our strategies compare with those of others? Have we identified the right drivers, and are our local and national strategies flexible and dynamic enough to respond? Why, in a world where gender equality is encouraged as the norm, must we speak specifically about men because this affects men more than women?
Since I have been in office, I have been much moved by those I have met in relation to suicide. I have met those who help in prevention and counselling, those who work clinically, those who campaign and, most of all, those who have been touched by the tragedy of suicide in some way. I am fortunate. I have not personally been affected through the loss of a close friend or a family member, but I have known others more tangentially who have. I have met people whose children have taken their own lives, and others who have come close to it themselves.
The other day I met Jonny Benjamin, as I said, whose story of having been persuaded against suicide by a stranger on a bridge led to his extraordinary efforts years later to find, successfully, the man who saved him. He is taking a close interest in the debate today. He spends much of his time taking his story, and the issues surrounding it, out there to help others. Other people around the country are also doing such things—I commend their work, and I deeply appreciate what Jonny is doing. The shock and emptiness left by suicide is excruciating to behold, hard to listen to and desperate to feel.
We have a new challenge. What must we do to have the best suicide prevention strategy in the world? To be mid-range is no longer good enough for any of us. With that in mind, I assure the House that mental health is a key priority of the Government, and I set our work in that context. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree raised that issue. We want to do all we can to build on our momentum and to ensure that people get access to the services they need when they need them. We have done a certain amount towards fulfilling that commitment, and the hon. Lady was generous enough to praise one or two of the things that have been done.
Jonny Benjamin and others have done a great deal of work on making people more aware. His #FindMike campaign has captured many hearts and minds. We have legislated, for the first time, for parity of esteem between mental and physical health, through the Health and Social Care Act 2012. We were the first Government to include access and waiting times for mental health. Last year we gave the NHS more money than ever before for mental health services, with an increase to £11.7 billion, and we have invested more than £120 million to introduce waiting times standards for the first time.
I am conscious that when I say such things, people say, “Well, not in our area.” There is an issue with how the national money appears in local clinical commissioning groups, but we are on to it—there will be better monitoring this year, and we have made it clear that CCGs must use a proportionate amount of an increase that they receive for mental health services. We are watching out for that, because it is a fair criticism.
We have also helped to extend the accessibility of successful talking therapies, in which field we are a world leader. We invested more than £400 million in recent years in the improving access to psychological therapies programme, to ensure access to talking therapies for those who need them. That has led to real improvements in the lives of people with anxiety and depression.
We have also invested more than £33 million in crisis care. We launched the crisis care concordat in 2014, and every local area now has in place a crisis care action plan to support people experiencing a mental health crisis to receive the right help and support when they need it. I welcome the Care Quality Commission report of some months ago, which we commissioned. Although it was a bit tough in places, it provided a sort of baseline for where we do well and where we can do better. I recognise that accident and emergency did not come out well, and we need to strengthen the relationships there. I noticed that police and ambulance services did well when responding to people in crisis, but best of all were the independent and voluntary agencies involved with such people.
There are lessons to be learned, such as the need to build on all that work through street triage and so on. I shall mention that later, but it has been one of the most interesting outcomes. The crisis care concordat is not found universally, and some local areas that I have visited might want a different approach, but there is no doubt that the concordat and what the Government have sought to achieve through it have made a real difference. It is certainly being monitored locally and nationally—the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree is right about that—and I take a keen interest in it. I expect to see the CQC reports improve as times go on, because we want to look at the areas where concerns were found.
One of the ways in which we can better look after people with mental health issues is to recognise that they often have physical issues as well. Sometimes that has been poorly regarded in the past, and it can add to feelings of depression, isolation and not being considered and so play into the issues that we are discussing. It is important to address premature mortality in people with mental illness, and we have committed NHS England to doing so through the NHS mandate,. One way in which we can do that is to look at the person behind the illness and provide treatment and care for the whole person, so that we also address the physical health and social care needs of people with mental illness.
Let me say a brief word about children, because this starts early. I am particularly keen to ensure that we get the right support in place for young people. We have committed to invest an additional £1.25 billion over the life of the Parliament to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. We know that, for many people, mental illness can manifest itself early in life, and that the first experience of psychosis is often during adolescence. We are using that additional investment to improve awareness of mental health issues in our children and young people and to improve the information and support they receive at school on mental health and wellbeing.
There cannot be enough warning about the dangers of peer pressure and social media and the ways in which they can induce depression and harm among young people at a sensitive age. My hon. Friend the Member for Telford referred to Twitter, and we see that what young people face on Facebook and other social media can be immensely damaging. New technology is a boon, but it has risks and dangers and it is important to talk about that.
May I commend the report issued just this week by the British Youth Council’s youth select committee on young people’s mental health? It made this recommendation:
“Cyberbullying and sites which promote self-harm can have a significant impact on the mental health of young people. Hoping that children will simply stop using social networks is not a solution. We recommend that the Government should facilitate a roundtable for charities, technology companies, young people, and the Government to work together to find creative solutions needed to help young people stay safe online”.
The Government will issue a full response from both my Department and the Department for Education, but I commend the Youth Council and that select committee for the hard work they have put in, which will certainly be taken seriously.
About a month or so ago I got a letter from a young lady not in my constituency—she had written to the Prime Minister. She said:
“I am writing to you to express my ideas on new legislation…The topic I have chosen is extremely personal to me. I have lost a friend to suicide, and I feel as though if he had had a better understanding of his own illness, he would not have felt the need to take his own life. Not only this, I also feel that if the people surrounding him at his time of suffering were better educated on the topic, it would have helped him to feel less alone and unaccepted in today’s society.”
It was a good, brave letter and I hope to see the young lady at an event we are doing to combat stigma. She made the point that the problem starts early, and I am pleased that the Government now have a Minister in the Department for Education, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), who is devoted to mental health issues in schools. I appreciate his work. We are working together on that, which demonstrates the Government’s determination to work across Departments on these issues.
Finally—I appreciate the House’s indulgence—I turn to talk about suicide and men.
Mr Robin Walker
One issue that we have not touched on much in the debate is homelessness. Men are more likely to be homeless and sleep rough: I think that 87% of rough sleepers are men. A constituent of mine, Hugo Sugg, has talked about how sleeping rough drove him to thoughts of suicide. He now wants to campaign for a better attitude towards youth homelessness and how we encourage people to look at those who are suffering from homelessness, to give them a chance to turn their lives around, working with some of the fantastic charities in this space. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the charities and organisations that campaign on homelessness for the job they do in saving men from suicide?
Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those connected with housing increasingly recognise the relationship between housing, mental health issues and suicide. When I was with my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North, I met the lady responsible for the YMCA there and its housing outreach, and she made some pertinent comments. Housing and homelessness are closely connected with the problem we are discussing, and I commend the constituent that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester mentioned.
We know that men are often reluctant to talk about mental health problems. Many colleagues have referred to men’s attitudes, so I do not think that I need to labour that point. They are reluctant to seek help when they need it. In part, we know that is because some men feel that it may be a form of weakness. We need to assure men that that is not the case, as many colleagues have said. We, along with the charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, are seeking to reduce the stigma around mental illness through the Time to Change campaign.
Time to Change aims to empower people to challenge stigma and speak openly about their own mental health experiences—particularly men—and to change public attitudes towards those with mental health problems. The campaign has improved the attitudes of more than 2 million people. However, we know that men can be a particularly hard-to-reach group, and we are looking at further ways to improve reach in that area.
We know, tragically, what the outcome of unacknowledged mental ill health can be for a person. When someone bottles it up—that phrase was used in this Chamber today—their condition can worsen and may, in the worst cases, increase the risk of suicide. As I mentioned earlier, suicide rates in England remain low compared with in other European countries and other UK administrations, but I am concerned, as we all are, to see that rates have been rising in recent years. We anticipated that after the global financial crisis in 2008, and it has been seen in other countries around the world, as the hon. Member for York Central said. We know about that, but it is important that the inevitability of that does not go unchallenged. We can appreciate that such times bring extra pressures, but we need to ask what we can do when we know they are coming.
We know that the recent rise in suicide rates has been driven by an increase in male suicides, which is what led my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley to call for the debate in the first place. The threefold difference between male and female suicide rates has increased further, and we know that is a common experience in other countries around the world. It is right, therefore, that preventing suicide is dominated by efforts to prevent male suicide, but we recognise that this issue affects everyone. Whether men or women, boys or girls, when it happens it is an immense tragedy.
The greater risk of suicide among men is a complex issue. Many of the clinical and social risk factors for suicide are more common in men. Cultural expectations that men will be decisive and strong can make them more vulnerable to psychological factors associated with suicide, such as impulsiveness and humiliation. It is critical that, in addressing those issues, we provide information and support in a way that suits men’s needs and behaviours, and that we provide services that are appropriate for men, which may include moving away from traditional health settings.
What are we doing about it, and what will we do about it? We published the cross-Government suicide prevention strategy for England in 2012, and I am committed to implementing it by working across Government and with our partner organisations in the NHS and other sectors such as transport and the community, voluntary and charitable sectors. I will also be speaking to our partner organisations soon to discuss how we can review and strengthen the national suicide strategy. I want to make it clear that I see that as a dynamic and flexible instrument, not as something that we will do and then I will see how it works and make some decisions in years to come. We are looking at it now. It needs to be reviewed and refreshed now. It is an ongoing process, and I am committed to it.
The objectives of the strategy are to reduce suicide and to support the people bereaved or affected by it. It is right that men are identified in the strategy as a high-risk group for whom our suicide prevention activities should be and are prioritised. The strategy also recognises that schools, social care and the youth justice system have an important contribution to make in suicide prevention by promoting mental wellbeing and identifying underlying issues such as bullying, poor self-image and lack of self-esteem.
As well as having the strategy, we continue to provide financial support for the National Suicide Prevention Alliance, which brings together our key partners across Government and the community, voluntary and charitable sectors with expertise in suicide prevention. I am particularly pleased to say that many of the organisations that campaigned for the debate are members of the NSPA. It has been working with all those organisations to develop its strategy for delivering improvements in suicide prevention, which I welcome. My Department of Health officials are helping with that work. Those organisations make tremendous individual contributions to suicide prevention. The Campaign Against Living Miserably, which was prominent in calling for this debate, works tirelessly to target men specifically, and to support them, so that they feel able to talk about mental health issues. The Department of Health provided financial support to CALM in its early days, and I am proud to see how it has grown in size and profile.
I have had a variety of meetings on the issue since I took office; I have mentioned some already. I went to see the Samaritans bereavement centre in Peckham for World Suicide Prevention Day, and to mark the launch of a new initiative between Cruse Bereavement Care and the Samaritans. I met the British Transport police and saw the extraordinary work they do with Network Rail. I saw some of the triage work going on in Birmingham, including placing a mental health professional in the police control room 24 hours a day to help provide necessary information. I held a meeting on suicide prevention on 29 June, with researchers, the Samaritans, and representatives from areas such as Merseyside, the east of England and the south-west.
We have started to look at something called zero suicide. I have an interest in the concept and ambition of zero suicide. It was pioneered in Detroit by a college acquaintance of mine from many years ago, Ed Coffey, and I am very interested in his work. We can follow part of it, although some things are different in the States and will not be pertinent here. The whole concept of zero suicide—recognising that as an ambition, and challenging the inevitability of suicide—is really important and has very much grabbed my attention. Public Health England also recently published the refreshed “Help is at Hand” document, which provides compassionate support and information to people bereaved by suicide.
I will conclude by saying a little about research and data, as it will cover a number of issues raised by colleagues. One of the key drivers for improving our approach to suicide prevention is investing in research and data. I want us to lead the world in suicide prevention research, and to be at the forefront of service delivery, using the best knowledge and information to provide the best care. We have invested over £1.5 million in suicide and self-harm prevention research since bringing in the national suicide prevention strategy, to inform and target our strategy for reducing suicide rates. I will have a look at whether that is enough, and at what more needs to be done.
The hon. Member for Bridgend mentioned longitudinal studies. We are committed to carrying on the work on that. We have provided the Multicentre Study of Self-harm in England with £300,000 this year. I will very much bear in mind the opportunities that there might be for us to do more.
The zero suicide ambition I mentioned is being piloted in three areas: Merseyside, the south-west and the east of England. Early learning from the pilots has identified some innovative practice, which I am sure will help other areas to develop innovative plans for reducing suicide in their communities. There will be more research that we can work through to find whether it could have applications elsewhere.
Luciana Berger
Will that work extend to our prisons, which are a particular area of concern?
Alistair Burt
I know the Ministry of Justice is looking closely at the increase in prison and detention suicides. Again, it is not huge, statistically, but any increase is a matter for concern.
The work capability assessment has been mentioned. It started in 2008, which is about the time that the rise in suicides began. The authors of the recent study that has been mentioned have said that they were cautious about making a link or claiming cause and effect, but I have already asked the Department of Health to have a look at that study, because I feel it is important that my Department looks at the matters involved.
This has been a really good and important debate. First, it has put the issues connected to International Men’s Day on the agenda and allowed us to talk about male issues, in a way that is not a zero-sum game. We have been able to make reference to some difficult issues that are not discussed enough, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley for that. We have spent the bulk of our time discussing suicide, and Members on both sides of the House have been able to work together and demonstrate a common interest in things that affect us all. The sense I get from everyone is that none of us is prepared to accept the status quo and simply see the statistics accepted—my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North made that point.
These will not be easy issues to tackle. More men commit suicide than women, not because someone is making them do so—it is not anyone’s fault—but that is a fact. What more can we do? What can we learn from overseas and from the work being done in different areas of this country? I am absolutely confident that this House will talk about this issue again. I hope that when we do, we will have learned still more. People and organisations outside the House do such excellent work on this; with the benefit of that work, perhaps our ambition to make this the country with the best suicide prevention strategy in the world can, in time, become a reality.
Philip Davies
Thank you, Mr Rosindell, for chairing this debate, along with the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). We very much appreciate that.
I echo the Minister’s remarks: we have had a very good debate. We had the expertise of the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who chairs the all-party group on suicide and self-harm prevention, and represents a constituency that has been more tragically affected by suicide than most. It has been great to have my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) here, as she is Chairman of the Women and Equalities Committee. I certainly support her view that we need greater genuine gender equality.
I am grateful for the presence of the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who, as a good constituency MP, rightly drew attention to how the issue affects York. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) is a member of the Backbench Business Committee and so helped to grant this debate, and I am grateful to him for that. I was very struck by his point about how stubborn the levels of suicide have been for many years, and how difficult it is to tackle the issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway) talked powerfully about the need to end the stigma around some of these issues.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), who went on to make a very good speech after her early criticisms of me; I will forgive those. She spoke about her son, who sounds like a hero to me—I very much hope to meet him sometime soon—and her genuine belief in true gender equality. I echo the Minister’s remarks to her on not worrying about Twitter; I have 11,000 Twitter followers and all of them hate me.
We were very grateful for the perspective from the Scottish National party, given by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan). He spoke about what the Scottish Executive are doing and how seriously they treat the issue, before going slightly off piste on the work capability assessment; I am sure we will forgive him for that. The shadow Minister spoke about how much more there is to do on this issue. Everyone here would echo that. We all appreciate the Minister’s commitment to this difficult issue, and how hard he works to try to tackle it. He comprehensively covered everything he personally and the Department are doing to tackle it.
The debate was enhanced by the passionate and important contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) and for Worcester (Mr Walker). I echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester about homelessness. I spent some time volunteering with a wonderful charity in Leeds called St George’s Crypt, which does great work on that. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) has stayed here for the duration of the debate, which does her an awful lot of credit. I should also mention my hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who have also sat and listened to the debate with great care. We are grateful for that.
Before we conclude, I will say that I do not agree with the Minister and the hon. Member for Bridgend about language and the word “committed”. One problem we have in our society is political correctness. Lots of people in this country are petrified of saying anything in case someone takes offence. I do not believe that any word or phrase is offensive; the context in which it is used and the intention behind it are what makes it offensive. When people start taking offence where none was ever intended, we get into terrible problems, because people will not speak out lest someone complain that they were offended. If people feel offence where none was intended, that is more their problem, as far as I am concerned, than the problem of the person who made the remark. I cannot agree with the Minister and the hon. Lady on that point.
This has been an important debate. We have raised issues that very rarely get discussed in the House of Commons. Lots of people throughout the country are delighted that some of those issues have finally been raised, as they have been campaigning on them for years and years, and not really getting the recognition they deserve. We have done the country and the House a great service by debating these things, and for that I am incredibly grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate. It has shown why that Committee is so important to the House; long may that continue.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of male suicide and International Men’s Day.
Written Statements
Afghanistan: Locally Employed Civilians
(9 years ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Penny Mordaunt)
Following our announcement of the start of the drawdown of British forces in Afghanistan on 19 December 2012, the Government established redundancy and intimidation schemes for their current and former Afghan local staff. The scheme recognises the vital role locally employed staff played in working with us to achieve a more secure, stable and prosperous country.
I want to update the House on two important changes I am making to our intimidation policy. These should enable us to investigate claims of intimidation better, and to reassure the House and the public that our investigations are conducted in an effective and professional manner.
First, in order to address the concerns of our armed forces, veterans and Government officials who have served in Afghanistan, the MOD is setting up a dedicated email address which will enable those who have worked with Afghan local staff to report concerns over the welfare of specific individuals.
Our dedicated investigative team in the country will look into each concern and, where possible, confirm the welfare of the former local staff member. If they raise a concern it will be investigated by our team in Kabul, who have already supported over 330 people in country, providing financial support to enable 30 to move to a safer location within Afghanistan. If the local staff member consents, we will aim to provide reassurance to those contacting us that their former colleague is safe.
This email address gives our people direct access to the investigative teams and should become the first step for all of those concerned about their former colleagues. More information on the email address can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-uk-locally-employed-staff-in-afghanistan.
Second, to provide further assurance that the policy is being delivered acceptably I have decided that we will establish an assurance committee. This will reflect on the application of the policy in a cross-section of cases and make recommendations on how the policy could be improved. The committee will be made up of people with relevant expertise, including a former interpreter who is relocating to the UK under the redundancy scheme. He will provide a direct interpreter perspective on what the process is like for former local staff and the challenges they face in Afghanistan.
This is in addition to steps we have already taken to ensure the professionalism and independence of the policy: investigation of intimidation claims is undertaken by highly trained police officers either from the MOD police or seconded from Home Office constabularies: the legal adviser for decisions in Afghanistan is independent —the current post-holder is Danish; and, to provide further assurance, an independent barrister assessed the first 160 or so cases and will assess 20% of future case decisions to ensure the policy is being applied correctly.
The UK is committed to supporting our former local staff. We are taking reasonable steps to protect them when they are at risk because of their work for us. I am confident that the Government are meeting their responsibility through these comprehensive arrangements.
[HCWS318]
Queen Elizabeth Class Base-porting: BT Solent Cables
(9 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)
I have today laid before Parliament a Ministry of Defence Departmental Minute describing the contingent liability for the installation of British Telecom (BT) Solent cables in support of Queen Elizabeth Class (QEC) base-porting.
It is necessary to conduct dredging works in the Solent and approaches to Portsmouth Harbour ahead of the arrival of the QEC aircraft carriers to ensure their safe transit to and from their home-port.
Two BT fibre-optic cables currently lie between the mainland and the Isle of Wight and must be removed prior to commencement of dredging works. BT have proposed that rather than burying the replacement cables they ’surface lay’ the cables to ensure they are relocated as soon as possible, minimising the impact to the capital dredging works which are scheduled to commence on 17 December.
Surface laying the new cable is not BT’s preferred solution as they consider the new cables will be more vulnerable to damage from fishing activity. BT requires the MOD to carry the liability for any repairs to the cables until they have naturally ‘self-buried’ into the seabed and forecast that the cables could be at risk to damage twice within the first five years and once in the following five.
If cable repairs are necessary, each one is estimated to cost £360,000. The maximum contingent liability against the MOD is therefore £1,080,000. The duration of the liability will be 10 years from the date the new BT cables are installed, with this activity scheduled to complete in early December. If the liability is called, provision for any payment will be managed through normal supply procedure. The Department will be noting this contingent liability in its accounts.
[HCWS315]
Ukraine: Ministry of Defence Support
(9 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)
I have today laid before Parliament a Ministry of Defence departmental minute concerning a further gifting package which the UK intends to make to the Government of Ukraine.
Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and its destabilising activities in eastern Ukraine, including direct military support to the separatists, has demonstrated its disregard for international law. Since fighting began, nearly 8,000 people have been killed and approximately 18,000 injured. Around 1.4 million people have been displaced in Ukraine.
The latest ceasefire agreement, reached on 29 August, has seen a reduction in violence in the conflict zone. However, until there is a political settlement to the conflict the Ukrainian armed forces (UAF) have to remain deployed forward and continue to suffer fatalities and casualties. As a result of the prolonged engagement in this conflict, the UAF face a chronic shortage of basic equipment, and have requested help.
This Government are committed to supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. Our proposed gift of non-lethal equipment is designed to prevent further Ukrainian fatalities and casualties and to help improve resilience on the ground.
The gifting package consists of 170 large tents with ancillary equipment to mitigate winter conditions and 600 sets of cold weather clothing. Subject to completion of the departmental minute process, delivery is expected to be undertaken over the coming weeks. The total cost of this proposed package of equipment is approximately £971,000, including transportation costs and contingency.
[HCWS317]
Yorkshire and Humber CCS Cross Country Pipeline
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
I have been asked by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to make this written statement. This statement concerns the application made by National Grid Carbon Limited under the Planning Act 2008 on 18 June 2014 for a proposed development known as the Yorkshire and Humber carbon capture and storage (CCS) cross country pipeline.
The pipeline would transport CO2 from the proposed White Rose CCS generating station via a multi-junction at Camblesforth (North Yorkshire) to a coastal point near Barmston (East Riding of Yorkshire). The CO2 would then be transported by an offshore pipeline (which would require separate consenting) to a saline rock formation storage site under the North sea.
Under sub-section 107(1) of the Planning Act 2008, the Secretary of State must make her decision within three months of receipt of the examining authority’s report unless exercising the power under sub section 107(3) to extend the deadline and make a statement to the House of Parliament announcing the new deadline. The Secretary of State received the examining authority’s report on the Yorkshire and Humber CCS cross country pipeline on 19 August 2015 and the current deadline for her decision is 19 November 2015.
The deadline for the decision is to be extended to 19 May 2016 (an extension of six months). This extension is to enable a decision on the Yorkshire and Humber CCS cross country pipeline application for development consent to be made after the decision on the White Rose CCS generating station application for development consent is taken. This will allow the need for the Yorkshire and Humber CCS cross country pipeline to be fully assessed. The extension will also provide further opportunity for any outstanding issues to be considered.
The decision to set a new deadline is without prejudice to the decision on whether to give development consent for this project.
[HCWS313]
Justice and Home Affairs Pre-Council Statement
(9 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
An extraordinary meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council will be held on 20 November in Brussels. The meeting has been convened by the Luxembourg presidency of the Council of the European Union, in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris. I will attend on behalf of the UK.
I will of course reiterate our deepest condolences to France, and make clear that the UK stands ready to provide any additional support and assistance. In terms of the EU’s response, I will press the need for greater information sharing and action on information, including alerts via the second generation Schengen information system (SISII) which will allow appropriate action to be taken at external border crossing points. I will also highlight the need to reinforce border management. I will underline the urgency of adopting, with the European Parliament, a strong and effective passenger name records (PNR) directive, including intra-EU PNR. I will highlight the range of actions needed to tackle the threat posed by firearms, as well as sharing information on our approach. And I will encourage other member states to develop an early identification system for those at risk of radicalisation, offering to share our own training expertise in this area.
[HCWS314]
Surveillance Camera Commissioner: Annual Report
(9 years ago)
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The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is today laying a copy of the 2014-15 annual report of the surveillance camera commissioner before the House, as required by section 35 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. The report has also been published on the commissioner’s website.
The surveillance camera commissioner is an independent role appointed under section 34 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 to encourage compliance with the surveillance camera code of practice, review the operation of the code, and provide advice about the code—including changes to it or breaches of it.
The current commissioner is Tony Porter, whose three-year term of appointment commenced on 10 March 2014.
[HCWS316]
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Bruce of Bennachie
Introduction: Baroness Rock
Police: Officer Offences
(9 years ago)
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Baroness Doocey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many serving police officers in England and Wales have been convicted of offences of violence or dishonesty in the past 10 years.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the Home Office does not currently hold data related to police officers convicted of certain categories of offences centrally. These are held at individual force level.
Baroness Doocey (LD)
I thank the Minister for that response. I asked all police forces whether any of their officers who carry guns and Tasers have convictions for physical violence. Half the police forces were unable to answer; one police force said that it would require a PNC check on every officer in order to answer the question; and one police force said that the data it could provide may not be accurate because officers may not have reported the fact that they have had a conviction. Does the Minister share my concern that this appalling lack of data could have very serious consequences?
Lord Bates
I certainly do share the noble Baroness’s concern about that. The College of Policing, which was set up to raise standards in this very important area, has said that in all but the most exceptional circumstances it would not expect anybody with any conviction, except the most minor conviction perhaps committed in their youth, to be on the force. Therefore, the type of circumstances that the noble Baroness refers to should not arise. Of course, one issue is that, because of the particular legal entity of a police constable, it is a matter for the local constabulary to act upon that, and we very much hope that they will.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that when I joined the police service, many decades ago now, each applicant had to be fully vetted? As well as that, the applicant’s spouse and family were also vetted. I noticed recently that pass-holders on the Parliamentary Estate are also required to go through a similar strict vetting procedure. Does the Minister draw any conclusion from that?
Lord Bates
We draw the conclusion that that needs to be improved. We recognise that. That is one reason why the College of Policing has introduced a new code about how vetting is undertaken. At the moment, it is done on a constabulary by constabulary basis and there are differences. We want best practice across all constabularies. A new authorised, professional standard of vetting is being issued and is expected to be introduced across all the constabularies in the country.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that conviction in open court for a criminal offence is a matter of public record? Will he therefore take steps to obtain the information which the noble Baroness asked for and publish it in Hansard, with the names of those concerned, the dates of conviction, the offences for which they were convicted and the sentences that they were given, as soon as possible?
Lord Bates
My noble friend is right to say that it is a matter of public record. What we are trying to do here in the wider sense is to have a central role for the College of Policing, which we have established, to raise standards across a whole raft of areas. It has now introduced a “struck off” list. Some 444 police officers have been struck off, and that is a matter of public record. We have also said that disciplinary hearings need in future to be held in public and to be chaired by an independent, legally qualified individual. These are all steps in the same direction that I think the noble Lord wants to go.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
A recent freedom of information request asked how many officers and PCSOs had been convicted of criminal offences since 2012 and for the total number of serving officers with criminal convictions. What was surprising from the outcome of that FoI request was the number of police forces—nearly half—which declined to provide the information sought on grounds of cost or did not respond at all. Of course, the overwhelming majority of police officers are committed to their job and to serving their community and it is important to place that on the record, but since police and crime commissioners were meant to provide greater police accountability to the public, do not the Government find it surprising that PCCs would not have already obtained for themselves the information sought in the FoI request to which I have referred about their own force, including the policy on recruiting new officers with previous convictions and retaining in the service those convicted of offences while in the force? That clearly could not have been the case in respect of those PCCs for those forces which did not provide the figures sought.
Lord Bates
One role of the PCC is to have exactly that conversation with the chief constable in their area and to make sure that they are aware. When I looked into the detail of those freedom of information requests—which, on face, cause me as much distress as I am sure they cause the noble Lord—I found that in many cases, while there was a conviction for a current officer, that was countered by the fact that they were still undergoing gross misconduct procedures or appealing a particular decision. That was one of the reasons why those figures came out, but those conversations should be going on as a routine matter between PCCs and chief constables to maintain public confidence.
Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Freedom of Information Act has been important in eliciting information on this question and many others? Will he give the House an assurance that the Government will not weaken that Act?
Lord Bates
Certainly for individual forces there can be a great cost of that. That is one of the reasons why we need better systems of central reporting. For example, from next year the annual data return will collect misconduct and conviction numbers. That can be done centrally and therefore there will not be a greater need for freedom of information requests. That will be better all round.
Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)
My Lords, I think that this is actually a problem of recording rather than having convicted officers still in the force. The reason for that is that they will have been charged in a police station and that fact will have gone to the professional standards department and the chief constable. If they are convicted, they will be put on a discipline hearing, which has the power to dismiss if someone has been convicted of an offence. The problem is not that we will have lots of people wandering around wearing blue uniforms who have been convicted of violence and dishonesty but that we do not know how many have been convicted. That is still a problem, but it is not the same as the hideous idea that there are lots of people with serious convictions inside the police service.
Lord Bates
On that point the noble Lord is absolutely right. The number who have been struck off, which I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, was 444 out of 127,000 serving police officers. It is absolutely right that the vast majority behave to the highest possible standards of integrity.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, is there a national policy not to charge police drivers with killing people on the roads? I believe there has not been a single conviction of a police driver for killing other people—be they pedestrians, cyclists or people in other cars—for the past 10 years or so.
Lord Bates
Whenever there is a fatality where the police come into contact with the public and those tragic circumstances happen, it is a mandatory requirement that that is reported to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and investigated. I am not sure of the actual numbers, but I will be happy to look into the issue and write to the noble Lord.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Funding
(9 years ago)
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Baroness Helic
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the current level of funding of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is sufficient for the department to fulfil its mission of promoting the United Kingdom’s interests overseas and supporting United Kingdom citizens and businesses globally.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will continue to play a leading role in delivering the Government’s ambitious international agenda. The Government are committed to eliminating the deficit. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has played its part and will continue to do so. Since 2010, the FCO has cut its operating costs by more than £100 million while flexing its network to meet new opportunities and challenges. We have opened or upgraded 18 diplomatic missions, increasing our presence in the fastest-growing economies.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his Answer. The terrible attacks in Istanbul, Beirut and Paris remind us that security is the most valuable currency of our times. From the Middle East to Asia and Europe we face challenges that cannot be resolved by aid or military deployments. Although hard power is sometimes necessary, these problems require diplomatic solutions, yet the Foreign Office has been at risk of being stripped to the bone. The department protects British interests in 168 countries with far fewer staff than Sheffield City Council. Its diplomatic network is the same size as that of France—
Baroness Helic
Certainly. I fully understand that we have to meet our financial obligations, but I respectfully ask the noble Earl whether, as we wait for the national security strategy—no doubt with more tasks for the Foreign Office—he can assure the House that the FCO will be funded in the current spending review?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, we all have the greatest respect for my noble friend Lady Helic and her work on the preventing sexual violence initiative. She is quite right to draw attention to the national security strategy, but perhaps the best way of answering her is to quote my right honourable friend the Prime Minister when considering the picture of diplomacy, which cannot be neglected and will not be. He said on Monday:
“The National Security Strategy that we are publishing next week will give Britain the resources it needs to increase both its hard and soft power and build the relationships that can project and enhance our influence in the world”.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, it is a truism that development works best in a climate of security. Do the Government recognise the interrelationship, as demonstrated by Syria, between the military budget, the foreign affairs budget and the development budget? To reduce the FCO budget, as they are doing, not only harms our development effort but leads to a substantial decline in FCO morale.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has mentioned the ODA budget. We have an excellent record of leveraging the ODA for the broader priorities of Her Majesty’s Government, not just the important role of poverty alleviation but the other areas to which the noble Lord has drawn attention.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, when the Ukraine crisis broke out, the FCO really felt its lack of expertise on Russia. If the FCO’s staff is cut further, expertise to analyse what is happening at the moment in countries in other very sensitive areas such as Central Asia, the North Caucasus and the Middle East will be in short supply. Do the Government take that into account when considering whether they can further cut the FCO both at home and abroad?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, I always take careful note of what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has to say, due to his previous role in the department. Just to go into the number of posts, yes we have fewer posts than we had 10 years ago. However, since 2010 we have not closed any sovereign posts and we have opened or upgraded 18 posts under the network shift programme and strategic reprioritisation exercises, as well as deploying around 300 extra front-line staff in more than 30 countries.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Has my noble friend noted that we are now actually spending less on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is the spearhead of our overseas influence, than we are expending on, for instance, one individual experimental programme for reducing carbon—namely, the carbon capture and storage system at £1 billion—which so far has produced very few results? Is it not time for some rebalancing?
The Earl of Courtown
My noble friend is an expert on both subjects, while I try my best at them. I should say that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has scrutinised the FCO budgets closely and has tried to identify further efficiencies which can be delivered through reductions in running costs, travel and staff costs and by reviewing our support for arm’s-length bodies.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, given the importance of diplomatic efforts for the reasons that have been explained by other noble Lords, will the Government give a clear guarantee that whatever the level of cuts in the Budget to be announced by the Chancellor later in this Session, the Government will bring to the House an opportunity to debate the strategy behind the implementation of those cuts to the Foreign Office budget, and in particular to look at what opportunities there are to work more closely with the European External Action Service, which now has diplomatic offices in many of the countries where we are represented as well?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, as the noble Lord will be aware, not long ago we had an interesting debate on the responsibility to protect, to which I was able to respond from this Dispatch Box. It is up to noble Lords to put down debates on this subject at any time, and I am sure that the noble Lord will attempt to do so.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is not just about the amount of the allocation but about the efficiency with which the money is spent? Will he join me in welcoming the comments made by many businessmen, both from SMEs and from large businesses, about the dramatic change since 2010 in the FCO’s ability to help exporters abroad?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, my noble friend is quite right. Perhaps I should underline the facts about the good work being done by UKTI. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has helped to deliver some £37.6 billion-worth of business wins for UK industry. We also have the GREAT campaign, which emphasises that this country is a great place to visit, a great place in which to study and a great place to do business in.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, I think we are going to move on to the next Question, but it was the turn of the Cross Benches.
Drones: Risks to Passenger Aircraft
(9 years ago)
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Lord Glentoran
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to manage the risks posed to passenger aircraft by drones flown by private individuals.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are working with the CAA to develop a comprehensive education campaign on drone safety, and are talking to airports and the manufacturers and retailers of drones about the steps that can be taken to minimise the likelihood of negligent airspace incursions.
Lord Glentoran (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that reply. It seems to me to be pretty positive. Having flown around with my own pilot’s licence in the various spaces we have in the country, I see that they are already very overcrowded. Privately owned drones, if not strictly controlled shortly, are almost certain to bring some other disaster into our airspace.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend raises an important point about safety and that is why the Government have also undertaken to launch a specific public dialogue on the issue of the use of drones, particularly in the leisure area. We will also be consulting next year specifically on proposals for registration, licensing and tracking of drones. My noble friend is right to point out the increased number. If we compare 2014 to current-year statistics, we have seen possible incidents going up from 10 to 64, so with the increasing use of drones, the safety issue is very important.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that there have been near misses recently, and are the Government considering total exclusion zones for drones in the take-off and landing flight paths of major airports?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Again, I can say to the noble Lord that this is an important issue. It is on the Government’s radar—to use an aviation analogy—and, for example, Sussex Police is carrying out a specific pilot around Gatwick Airport, addressing the very points raised by the noble Lord.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, the Government’s response to the EU Committee’s report on drones referred to ongoing discussions on the wider use of geofencing. The Committee recommended that the Government should look at mandatory geofencing. Have they considered this and what conclusion have they come to?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The noble Baroness refers to a very positive debate we had in this House. As I have already outlined, the Government will be introducing a public dialogue very shortly on this issue, which will be across the country, including in Scotland and Wales. In addition, there will be a full public consultation in which the point she raises will also feature. We hope to conclude that public consultation by the middle to end of next year.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I do not share the view already expressed that the Minister’s response was positive. The Civil Aviation Authority is warning that drones being flown as high as 2,000 feet are putting passenger aircraft in danger. It has now issued safety guidelines known as the drone code to discourage hobbyists from using their equipment in areas where large aircraft are present. Frankly that seems a pretty tepid response if it reflects the Government’s approach. First, the potential dangers of drones to passenger aircraft have been known for a few years and, secondly, six incidents involving drones at or close to airports were reported between May 2014 and March this year. Do we have to wait for a major incident to occur before meaningful action is taken? How can the potential risk to passenger aircraft be said to have been addressed when there appears to be so little effective control over who can acquire and fly a drone, and where?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I look forward to the day when the noble Lord says I have made a positive remark from this Dispatch Box. That remains a personal ambition. I am sure that that is not the case, I say to the Opposition Chief Whip. The noble Lord is fully aware, I am sure, that the Air Navigation Order 2009 lays out specific measures for operators, covering issues of safety and security. Equally, as I have already said, it is right that we look at this evolving area, particularly over the fact that drones available for leisure activity are more widespread. The noble Lord talked about the negative response. The CAA has launched a particular campaign for small operators, which is entitled You Have Control: Be Safe, Be Legal, which the Government support. I have already alluded to the public dialogue and the consultation that I am sure will yield positive results.
Lord Geddes
My Lords, I will try again, since I have been on my feet once. Could my noble friend advise when a model aeroplane becomes a drone?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
We would have various technical responses to that. If a model aeroplane is operated by a particular individual and controlled through a remote control device, it falls within the definition of a drone. As I said earlier, it is important, with the evolving nature of this industry—in particular the availability of small drone aircraft from your high street—that the Government consult widely on this.
Lord Lawson of Blaby
My Lords, given the need to reduce the deficit, which has already been referred to this morning, would my noble friend care to suggest to the Chancellor that there might be a useful new tax base here?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I am sure that my noble friend speaks from great experience and my right honourable friend will have taken note of his helpful suggestion.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, is this not a worldwide—or at least a European—problem, because the Americans can pinpoint bombing in Syria by controlling a drone from somewhere in the States? Who are the CAA and the Government talking to outside the UK? Surely it is much more than a UK problem.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
This should not be looked upon just as a problem. There are benefits to be had from the expansion of drones; for example, in agriculture and in parcel delivery. Also, with the tragic, sad events we saw over the weekend, there is an increasing need to look at drone technology when it comes to surveillance. In that regard we are looking at this not just nationally; as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, it is also being looked at across the EU and with our international partners.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Is my noble friend aware that you can buy these gadgets in the basement department of Selfridges? No doubt plenty will be given for Christmas. Surely the lesson from this is that we had better get on with proper controls PDQ.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend makes a very valid point. As I said, the leisure element of this particular expansion of drones is readily available. I am sure that many people will be getting Christmas presents from not just Selfridges but other stores that now host this—just to ensure that there is a level playing field here from the Government. The serious point is that this is an evolving area. We need to ensure that we consult widely and put the right measures in place.
Employment
(9 years ago)
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Baroness Seccombe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of last week’s employment statistics, what progress they are making towards their manifesto commitment of achieving full employment in Britain.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Altmann) (Con)
My Lords, we are making excellent progress towards full employment, with the latest figures showing 31.2 million people in work—a record high, and more than 2 million higher than in 2010. The employment rate of 73.7% is also a record high. There are 735,000 vacancies in the economy—also near the record high.
Baroness Seccombe (Con)
That is such good news, but no one can fail to be moved by the plight of a young person receiving repeated rejections. Will my noble friend the Minister tell the House how the mentoring initiatives are progressing in trying to get these people into work?
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, in Jobcentre Plus we have across the country a network of trained and dedicated work coaches. They are transforming the relationship we have with claimants, and, in turn, the relationship they have with the labour market. Since the 2010 election, youth unemployment has fallen by 285,000 to its lowest level since early 2006.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, while welcoming the increase in the quantity of jobs, I put it to the Minister that when the full employment White Paper was published in the middle years of the 20th century, the assumption was that the jobs created would be adequately paid, secure and long term. Only a small proportion of the jobs created in recent years have been of that nature. What is the Government’s strategy to improve the quality of employment, and what contribution do they consider the trade unions can make to that strategy?
Baroness Altmann
I am not entirely sure what figures the noble Lord is referring to, but since 2010 around two-thirds of the rise in employment has been in managerial, professional and associate professional occupations, which generally command a higher wage.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, we know that the poorest families are often working families. While I welcome the Government’s statistics, would it not be useful to know how many of the jobs are part-time—following the noble Lord’s question—how many of them pay a living wage, and what hope there is of these families reaching a point where they are self-sufficient?
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, those are indeed important issues but over the year, and since 2010, the majority of employment growth has come from full-time work—up by more than 1.5 million posts since 2010.
Lord Wrigglesworth (LD)
My Lords, encouraging though those national figures are—
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Lib Dems.
Lord Wrigglesworth
My Lords, encouraging though those national figures are, does the noble Baroness accept that they mask massive disparities between different regions of this country, in particular between the north and south? What are the Government doing about that?
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, there have indeed been concerns about disparities but they are reducing significantly. The plans for the northern powerhouse will make a difference. The latest figures from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG show that the Midlands and the north led a broad rise in demand for permanent staff, with salaries rising as well.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
What evidence do the Government have that docking £30 a week from half a million disabled people in the work-related activity group will act as a work incentive and help close the disability employment gap?
Baroness Altmann
It is indeed the aim of this Government to halve the disability employment gap. The reforms to the employment and support allowance are designed to ensure that we have the right incentives in place to help people in the work-related activity group, of whom 61% do want to move into work, to do so.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, many years ago, when I was taught economics, I was taught to define my terms. Will my noble friend explain whether the 2% to 3% unemployment rate which was valid in the 1980s still constitutes full employment?
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, there is no recognised definition of full employment as far as the economics profession is concerned. The Government’s measure of full employment will be released in the first progress report on the full employment Bill.
The Lord Privy Seal
We will go to the Lib Dems but, if the contribution is brief, we can get another Labour Peer in.
Baroness Manzoor
My Lords, in education, girls outperform boys in GCSEs, A-levels and graduate studies. However, across 90% of all sectors there remains a pay gap for women working full-time, particularly for those working in the finance and insurance industry. What are the Government doing to address this gap?
Baroness Altmann
The latest figures show that the pay rate for women under 35 is now higher than that for men. However, I agree with the noble Baroness, and we will look at the fact that there is still a gender pay gap for older women.
Baroness Corston
My Lords, will the noble Baroness confirm that apprenticeships are included in the figures she has given to the House? If so, is she aware that apprenticeships are now commonly for a duration of six weeks and can be for skills such as wrapping vegetables, putting flowers into bundles for supermarkets, sweeping stable floors and working in a fish and chip shop? Surely, this demeans the word “apprenticeship” and is just a way of massaging unemployment figures.
Baroness Altmann
My Lords, the aim of the apprenticeship programme is to get young people ready for work. The types of work are not as important as the fact that they are in work.
Business of the House
(9 years ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That the debate on the motion in the name of Lord Foulkes of Cumnock set down for today shall be limited to 3 hours and that in the name of Viscount Hanworth to 2 hours.
Northern Ireland: Political Agreement
(9 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Scotland Office (Lord Dunlop) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the other place. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, I would like to make a Statement on the agreement reached this week in the cross-party talks at Stormont. But first I would like to pay tribute to Peter Robinson, who announced this morning that he will soon be standing down as First Minister and leader of the DUP. Peter has been a central figure in Northern Ireland politics for over four decades. In his long and distinguished record of public service both in this House and the Assembly, he has championed the interests of Northern Ireland with unparalleled effectiveness, determination and dedication. Peter was key to the agreement reached this week and he can be rightly proud of his contribution. I am sure the whole House will join me in wishing him a long and happy retirement.
Last December, the Stormont House agreement was reached after 11 weeks of negotiations between the five largest Northern Ireland parties and the UK and Irish Governments. That agreement addressed some of the most difficult challenges facing Northern Ireland, including: the finances of the devolved Executive; welfare reform; flags and parades; the legacy of the past; and reform of the Assembly to make devolution work better. All of this was underpinned by a financial package from the UK Government that would give the Executive £2 billion in extra spending power.
In the Government’s view, the Stormont House agreement was, and remains, a good deal for Northern Ireland. By the summer, however, it was clear that implementation had stalled. There were strong differences of opinion within the Executive over the budget and the implementation of the welfare aspects of the agreement, and these were preventing other elements of the agreement going forward. We were facing a deadlock, which, left unresolved, would have made early Assembly elections more and more likely, with an ever-increasing risk that the collapse of devolution would follow. After all that has been achieved in Northern Ireland over recent years, a return to direct rule from Westminster would have been a severe setback, and it is an outcome which I have been striving to avoid.
In August, a second issue arose to threaten the stability and survival of devolution. The suspected involvement of members of the Provisional IRA in a murder in Belfast raised the spectre of paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland and its malign and unacceptable impact on society. Faced with these circumstances, we concluded it was necessary to convene a fresh round of cross-party talks with the five main Northern Ireland parties, and the Irish Government on matters for which they have responsibility, observing the well-established three-strand approach.
The talks began on 8 September and ran for 10 weeks. The objectives we set were twofold: first, to secure the implementation of the Stormont House agreement; and, secondly, to deal with continued paramilitary activity. I believe that the document published on Tuesday, A Fresh Start: The Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan, makes real progress towards fulfilling both these objectives. Crucially, it tackles the two issues that have posed the greatest threat to the stability and survival of devolution in Northern Ireland.
First, on the Stormont House agreement, the new agreement will help give the Executive a stable and sustainable budget, assisted by further financial support of around £500 million from the UK Government. These funds are to help the Executive tackle issues unique to Northern Ireland. They include support for their programme of removing so-called peace walls and an additional £160 million to assist the Police Service of Northern Ireland in its efforts to combat the threat from dissident republican terrorists. The package also paves the way for completion of the devolution of corporation tax powers to the Northern Ireland Executive, something which could have a genuinely transformative effect on the Northern Ireland economy. The measures in the Stormont House agreement designed to address issues around flags and parades will now go ahead. There is also agreement on reforms to the Executive and Assembly to make devolution work better, including on the size of the Assembly, the number of government departments, use of the petition of concern and provision for an Official Opposition.
Secondly, the agreement takes Northern Ireland’s leaders further than ever before on paramilitary activity. It strongly reaffirms the commitment to upholding the rule of law and makes it absolutely clear that in no circumstances will paramilitary activity be tolerated. The agreement places new shared obligations on executive Ministers to work together towards ridding society of all paramilitary groups and actively challenging paramilitary activity in all its forms, and commits all participants to a concerted and enhanced effort to combat organised and cross-border crime, which the UK Government will help to fund.
A key element of the Stormont House agreement on which we were unable to agree a way forward was the establishment of new bodies to deal with the past. We did establish common ground between the parties on a range of significant questions on how to establish these important new structures but, sadly, not enough to enable legislation to go forward as yet. The Government continue to support these provisions because of the pressing need to provide better outcomes for victims and survivors—the people who, we must never forget, have suffered more than anyone else as a result of the Troubles. So it is crucial that we all now reflect on what needs to be done to achieve wider consensus to get the new legacy bodies set up.
I want to emphasise that in very large part, the agreement takes on board a wide range of points made by all five Northern Ireland parties during the 10 weeks of talks that have just concluded. As the overwhelming majority of issues were in devolved areas, this agreement has rightly been driven by Northern Ireland’s elected leaders, in particular the First and Deputy First Ministers. I reiterate my sincere thanks to them and to all the five parties which worked with determination and commitment in the talks. Thanks go, too, to my honourable friend the Northern Ireland Minister and to Ministers Charlie Flanagan and Seán Sherlock from the Irish Government, who devoted many long hours to this process and made an invaluable contribution to its successful outcome.
Implementation of this week’s agreement is already under way. On Tuesday, the Executive voted to support it. Yesterday, the Assembly passed an LCM on welfare reform legislation at Westminster and the Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill will be introduced to Parliament this afternoon. I believe this package as a whole gives us the opportunity for a fresh start for devolution. It is a further stage in delivering the Government’s manifesto commitment to the implementation of the Stormont House agreement. It is another step forward towards a brighter, more secure future for everyone in Northern Ireland, and I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord McAvoy (Lab)
My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for his Statement and for the early sight of it. In the House of Commons, my honourable friend Vernon Coaker has paid due tribute to Peter Robinson and his contribution to society in Northern Ireland. I endorse and support that tribute; I have been a friend of Peter Robinson since our days together on the House of Commons Select Committee on Northern Ireland and always found him a straight talker. What he said, he meant—and he always fulfilled—so I join in the tributes to him. His contribution to peace and progress in Northern Ireland has been immense. He has taken tough decisions. Most recently, in an interview in the Belfast Telegraph, he called for complete co-operation between the nationalist and unionist communities. Northern Ireland is a better place in no small part thanks to his work. I wish him and his whole family well.
I also compliment all those who have contributed to the document, including the Irish Government. It is a document which, despite some obvious challenges and, indeed, omissions, once again offers Northern Ireland a way forward—one more stepping stone towards the brighter, better future that the people of Northern Ireland want and deserve.
Does the Minister agree that the implementation of the agreement is crucial and that the people of Northern Ireland do not want to be faced in a year or two years with yet another crisis? This really has to be a fresh start. Is the Minister, like me, confident that the measures contained in the agreement really offer a way forward in a number of areas?
In particular, we welcome the commitment to bring an end to paramilitarism. Paramilitary activity has to end, and the proposal for a new strategy to bring this about, overseen by a panel, is critical. As Vernon Coaker said in the House of Commons, there are also worries about the attraction of these groups for some young people. Apparent easy money, lack of career opportunities, educational underachievement and a false belief that membership of such groups can give them status have to be tackled, with many of them having grown up in relative peace.
Will the Minister confirm that the Secretary of State will use her position to ensure that countering the attraction of those groups for some young people is one of the strategic priorities, as I believe it must be? Will the Minister say more about how, in establishing the joint agency task force, cross-border co-operation will work, what resources there will be for the PSNI and whether he expects prosecutions to increase? We also welcome the confirmation of the work to be undertaken with respect to flags and parades. Does the Minister agree that that aspect is crucial?
Does the Minister share my disappointment that no agreement with respect to legacy issues and the past has been possible? Collectively, we have done well to get here, but unless something concrete is done on legacy issues, the potential is there to return again and again to difficult situations. Will the Minister say more about the issues and how he believes that they can be resolved? For example, how will the clash between national security and disclosure be resolved? Clearly, victims and survivors have to play a key part in any agreed process. We all understand that dealing with the past is incredibly difficult, with competing narratives and contested versions of events, but a comprehensive approach is vital to continuing progress in Northern Ireland.
Does the Minister agree that in the search for truth and justice, they often seem unobtainable, yet is it not the case that the people of Northern Ireland and their politicians have made an apparently impossible compromise and built consensus when none seemed likely—thanks in large measure to Members of your Lordships’ House?
Will the Minister ensure that further efforts are made to deal with the past? We cannot let this slide; we really must tackle it. What plans do the Government have to meet victims to discuss a way forward? Given that there is no agreement, is funding to be made available to the PSNI to continue its legacy work as a contribution to settling this difficult past?
The House has also been asked to legislate on welfare reform, and we will not oppose those measures, but I must say that for Northern Ireland, as for the whole of the United Kingdom, a programme for jobs and growth is also needed. What measures are there in the agreement, over and above the devolution of corporation tax, which will achieve that while also improving infrastructure?
In conclusion, as I said at the beginning, this is a stepping stone towards a shared future. Of course, there are frustrations and disappointment at the inability to reach agreement on legacy issues—that is the one big task still facing us jointly—but could not the alternative have been a situation where the devolution settlement itself was at risk, with a return to direct rule, both of which are surely unthinkable? So, whatever people see as its imperfections, whatever faults people come up with, justified or unjustified, and whatever people see as being a disappointment, there is another breathing space and another opportunity for Northern Ireland to move forward to combat criminality, banish paramilitarism, tackle sectarianism and have a stable Government financially and politically. That opportunity must be grasped, outstanding issues resolved and a fresh crisis avoided in a year or two. The people of Northern Ireland deserve and expect no less, and Her Majesty’s Official Opposition will be fully behind this.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement in your Lordships’ House and endorse fully what has been said about Peter Robinson, who announced overnight that he was stepping down as leader of the DUP. He has played a significant role in Northern Ireland politics for some 40 years.
We welcome the fact that the DUP and Sinn Fein have been able to reach an agreement with the British and Irish Governments, but we are disappointed that the agreement was not more comprehensive. Significantly, the parties were unable to make progress on the fundamental issues arising from the Haass talks in 2013—for example, on parades, flags and dealing with the past. This is a considerable failure for the agreement. However, although the deal has been agreed and will prevent the collapse of the devolved institution, the package of measures is not a comprehensive outcome and does very little to tackle the underlying issues of the divided society in Northern Ireland. The failure of the political parties to come to an agreement on those issues has the potential to undermine public confidence in politics, devolved institutions and the peace process as a whole. It is clear that these issues will have to be settled for the good of everyone in Northern Ireland.
Of course, we welcome any agreement that sustains the Assembly and we are content to support the fast-track welfare Bill. But is it not the case that this agreement does not take us beyond or even, arguably, as far as the Stormont House agreement of 2014? How do the Government propose to assist, or at the very least encourage, the parties to address the unresolved question of flags, parades and the legacy of the past? What further progress can be made towards a genuinely shared future in Northern Ireland? The additional government financial support of £500 million to assist the Executive in tackling issues unique to Northern Ireland, including support for the programme to remove the peace walls, is welcome.
We very much welcome the agreement’s initiative to tackle paramilitarism and organised crime. The new commitment by all politicians to uphold the rule of law is to be strongly welcomed. There is no place in a democratic society for paramilitary activity. We also welcome the additional funding for the PSNI. Can the Minister give further details on how this will be used? Will there be scope for some of this funding to be used for further recruitment of officers to continue to tackle all crimes in Northern Ireland?
Lord Dunlop
I thank noble Lords for their words and for the indication of bipartisan, cross-party support, particularly to get the legislation on welfare reform through this House. I agree very much that the implementation of the deal is absolutely crucial, and we should be in no doubt that the agreement has broken a real impasse in Northern Ireland politics and offered a prospect of a brighter future for Northern Ireland. Critical to this is a thriving economy. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, mentioned this and it will be critical as we go forward. The deal unlocks not just the corporation tax powers but £2 billion of additional spending power that was part of the original Stormont House agreement.
The noble Lord mentioned the need to stop young people being drawn into criminal activity, and I agree very much that that is a crucial part of any strategy to deal with paramilitarism. Of the new money coming forward in this agreement, £25 million will be used to support the strategy to deal with paramilitary activity. Further work is required on the details of the joint agency task force, but it will be underpinned by £160 million extra security funding to make that activity fully effective.
On the importance of dealing with flags, identity, culture and tradition, the agreement makes provision for the creation of a new commission on these matters and on the commitments into which the Northern Ireland Executive has entered. We are all disappointed that it has not been possible to include the institutions that were part of the original Stormont House agreement to deal with the past as part of this agreement. The Government are committed to reflect with the parties the best way to take this forward because, as I said yesterday, victims and their families need to achieve closure in these matters.
I reiterate that I welcome the commitment that the parties opposite will not stand in the way of the welfare reform legislation.
Disclosure was mentioned. It is a tricky issue, and it is important to balance transparency with a duty to ensure that information release must not damage our ability to protect people.
This agreement offers Northern Ireland the prospect of a brighter future, and the important work of detailed implementation now starts.
Lord Trimble (Con)
My Lords, the existence of private armies anywhere within the United Kingdom presents a challenge to the authority of the United Kingdom Government, and responding to the existence of private armies should be with the Government in the lead. Pretty words said in the Executive are all very good and well, but it requires something more effective. The reason that the original Independent Monitoring Commission was effective at dealing with paramilitaries was that it had the power to sanction those bodies. Furthermore, not just the character of the persons who were in it but its independence had the effect of keeping the Northern Ireland Office honest and inhibiting its tendency to brush things under the carpet. We are missing on both those counts.
Lord Dunlop
My noble friend speaks with huge authority on these matters. With regard to paramilitary activity, the assessment done a few weeks ago showed that all parties in Northern Ireland are committed to the political path. Under this agreement, all the parties have signed up to ambitious commitments to eradicate paramilitary activity. A strategy must be agreed. It needs to be backed by the joint agency task force. The monitoring body is a crucial part of this agreement. It will need, at a date in the future, to be given statutory underpinning and will be the subject of an international agreement with the Irish Government.
Lord Eames (CB)
I declare an interest as co-chairman of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland, which published its report some years ago. Will the Minister tell us more about the efforts of Her Majesty’s Government to unravel the continuing problem of how we deal with the legacy issues, because so many other issues that he mentioned in the Statement are linked with the way in which we deal with the past? Will he enlighten the House about how the Government propose to tackle that part of the problem?
Lord Dunlop
I am not sure that at this stage I can give more detail than I have already given. The Government are disappointed that creating the institutions to deal with the past does not form part of this agreement. However, it remains a huge priority for the Government to deal with the issues of the past and take forward what was in the original Stormont House agreement to get these institutions set up. I think we can be optimistic that some very intractable issues, such as welfare reform and budgetary issues, have been dealt with in the agreement. That shows what can be achieved with good will and all the parties getting around the table. We need to bring that same spirit to how we take forward the issues that were not included in the agreement, and that will be a high priority for the Government.
Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I very much welcome the successful conclusion of the talks and the new fresh start agreement, which sets out a practical course to consolidating peace, stability and helping to promote economic development in Northern Ireland. I, too, pay tribute to my party leader, Peter Robinson, for his tireless work on achieving reconciliation in our community over a number of years.
I particularly welcome the additional security funding of £160 million for the Police Service of Northern Ireland to address the continuing severe national security threat, and to tackle continued paramilitary activity and criminality. However, will the Minister provide clarification about the nature of the severe national security threat and what steps the PSNI will be expected to take to address it?
Lord Dunlop
In this House a few weeks ago we had a Statement about the assessment that had been made. The Government continue to agree with that assessment, and I am not sure that I can add more at this stage to what was said on that occasion. Clearly, though, we are determined to tackle organised criminal activity, which has such a corrosive effect on the well-being of Northern Ireland.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, I take this opportunity to wish Mr Robinson well in his retirement. However, I wish to disabuse the House of any idea that this is a five-party agreement. The document was pushed in front of our faces at 3 pm on Tuesday, and that applied to three out of the five parties. The final plenary session of the talks process was one hour later, and no one should be required to absorb a 67-page document in one hour. So let us be clear: this is a two-party agreement, it is less than the one that we had Statements on a year ago and huge areas are unresolved.
Will the Minister address the fact that the reason why we have a huge impasse here is not only that Sinn Fein reneged on the agreement on welfare that was made a year ago but the four consistent years of massive financial mismanagement? We are now faced with the situation that the budgets were known four years ago but no action was taken to meet expenditure on budgets, which meant that for the first time since 1921 Stormont could not balance its books. Secondly, and worse, we are now being allowed to borrow £700 million to pay off 20,000 public sector workers, instead of action having been taken at the time to gradually run things down by natural wastage and other mechanisms that would have cost the taxpayer nothing. Why did the Northern Ireland Office allow this situation to develop, watching millions of pounds of public sector money being squandered and wasted? What steps will the Minister take to ensure that the budget will be operated properly in future and that taxpayers will get value for money?
Lord Dunlop
I thank my noble friend. I note what he says about the position of other parties. All the parties have been engaged over a 10-week process and, as I said, it has broken a very damaging impasse. I hope that all Northern Ireland politicians will want to get behind the agreement and build upon it.
As for the finances, welfare reform and putting the budget on a sustainable footing have been two of the most intractable problems that we have been grappling with. It is important to say that all the new money that is part of this agreement is contingent on the Northern Ireland parties meeting the commitments that they have entered into. The agreement includes spending to save measures and there is no free ride in it. In addition to the implementation of welfare reform, instilling fiscal responsibility into managing the finances of Northern Ireland is critical to the agreement. Additional financial controls are part of the agreement—it is no longer possible to set unrealistic budgets—and it makes provision for a new, independent fiscal council. These are all things that are really important to ensuring that we do not get into the financially risky situation that we have seen over the last few months.
Lord Lexden (Con)
What has been the actual cost of the prolonged welfare stand-off between Stormont and Westminster? When will the paramilitary structures highlighted so worryingly in the report published in September actually be dismantled? Are the Northern Ireland parties now confident that they can handle the consequences of the devolution of corporation tax, which I have long supported?
Lord Dunlop
I cannot give my noble friend precise figures on the cost of welfare reform, but I am very happy to write to him with as much information as I can provide. Clearly, I cannot give a specific date for when paramilitarism will be eradicated from Northern Ireland, but I can give an absolute assurance to this House that this is a top priority for the Government.
Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned that Sinn Fein was against the welfare changes. To avoid any blame game in the future, will the Minister confirm that all parties, including Sinn Fein, gave the Westminster Government power, through an Order in Council, to pass these welfare changes?
Lord Dunlop
It was a very positive sign of the commitment to see that this agreement goes forward that the Northern Ireland Assembly passed a legislative consent Motion yesterday. That is a very positive development.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, paramilitarism will continue, even if the paramilitary forces are dismantled, for as long as the paramilitary instinct can find recruits among young people. I have some experience in this area and I remind my noble friend that one of the top priorities of young people emerging into adulthood is to achieve an identity of their own. They wish to stop being somebody’s son or somebody’s nephew and want to be themselves. An easy way to do that in times when paramilitarism is rife is simply to undertake acts of criminality, preferably very public and very damaging, whereupon they cease to be Paddy’s son or Maeve’s brother and become “a hard man”; they become recognised as somebody to be respected among their equals. Unless we provide them with alternative activity this will go on. It is no good waiting for the economy to pick up and for jobs to bloom; there have to be accredited voluntary organisations giving such people meaningful, constructive things to do. I hope that my noble friend will see that this is treated as a priority.
Lord Dunlop
My noble friend has great experience of these matters and I agree very much with what he says. Community groups and organisations have a big part to play in creating a more prosperous, more stable future for Northern Ireland and we will certainly do what we can to support those groups.
Arrangement of Business
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, it may be helpful if I make a brief business statement to explain how it is envisaged that this House might consider the Northern Ireland welfare reform Bill. The House of Commons is due to take all stages of the Bill next Monday 23 November. We will therefore receive the Bill for a First Reading at the end of their proceedings, and the Bill will be printed overnight. Following discussions in the usual channels, we have agreed to propose that the House should take the remaining stages of the Bill next Tuesday 24 November, with a suitable interval between Second Reading and the remaining stages to allow Members who wish to table amendments to do so. The speakers’ list for the Second Reading is already open, and the Legislation Office has kindly agreed to offer drafting advice on amendments to Members who require it ahead of the Bill’s arrival in this House.
Enterprise Bill [HL]
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clauses 2 to 13, Schedule 2, Clauses 14 to 17, Schedule 3, Clauses 18 to 26, Schedule 4, Clauses 27 to 31, Title.
Trade Unions
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
That this House takes note of the role of trade unions in a democracy and their contribution to the general economic wellbeing of the nation.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I first declare an interest as a member of the GMB union, although I must confess that I am now, very appropriately, in the “retired workers” category. I very much look forward to the debate, but particularly to the contributions of the two maiden speakers, the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, whom I know from the other place and whom I know will make excellent contributions. However, I also look forward to the contributions from the many former trade union leaders—I was going to say “trade union barons”, but perhaps that is not the right phrase to use here—who know so much more about this matter than I do. We are in for a very well informed debate.
Labour’s contribution to the debate on the Trade Union Bill in the other place has of necessity been somewhat defensive, because that Bill represents such a fundamental and, frankly, malign attack on trade unions. However, on behalf of Labour, I sought this debate today so that we can be much more positive and praise the work of the trade unions over the years and the contributions they have made and continue to make to our democracy and economy, as well as to protecting the well-being of the workers they represent.
Trade unions, from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1387—not many Members will remember too much about that—
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
—although my noble friend Lord Lea does; through to the industrial age, when, I am proud to say, the weavers in Ayrshire led the way, workers got together to challenge the injustices and abuse they faced. The state was controlled by an unrepresentative minority of wealthy people—in fact, a minority of wealthy men—
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My noble friend Lord Grocott says that it has not changed completely. They were intent on increasing their wealth, and ordinary workers were excluded and exploited.
The Chartists, founded by the London Working Men’s Association, agitated for political rights for ordinary people and set in train the long series of events that, by 1928—only then—led Britain to become a full democracy. When we take time to look back at the achievements of the unions, we begin to appreciate how different life would be now for ordinary working people without them. I will give a few examples.
First, on workplace safety, workplaces with union safety representatives have half the serious injuries of non-unionised workplaces. In particular, the London Olympics of 2012 were the first Olympic Games ever in which nobody was killed while constructing the venues. It is not accidental that for the 2012 Games there was strong union representation on both the London Olympic committee and the Olympic Delivery Authority. In comparison, at last year’s Winter Olympics at Sochi in Russia, 60 people died.
Secondly, there is the minimum wage. Unions were among the early supporters of what was arguably—it is a view I hold—new Labour’s most successful achievement: lifting the purchasing power of low-wage workers, particularly women, without negatively impacting on unemployment and, incidentally, thereby helping economic growth.
Thirdly, on equal pay, as we all recall, the female trade unionists at Ford’s Dagenham and Halewood plants forced the introduction of the Equal Pay Act 1970, which was a key step in the battle for gender equality in the United Kingdom. However, we are not all the way there yet. Since last week until the end of the year, women will on average be working for nothing in comparison with men in equivalent jobs.
Tremendous advantages have been won by the trade union movement, including full statutory maternity leave since 1993, and there are all those achievements without even mentioning the insurance cover, the legal representation and the other services that we ordinary union members receive from our trade unions.
Our economy also benefits hugely from the presence of trade unions at both the micro and the macro levels. At the level of individual workers within the economy, unions have had a positive effect for every type of worker. In relation to salaries and holidays, unionised British workers earn 8% more than non-members on average, and they have 29 days’ annual leave as opposed to 23 for non-members. For young people, workers between the ages of 16 and 24 earn on average 39% more when they are union members. That is a huge and significant difference. Women in a union earn 30% more on average. The gender pay gap among unionised workers is 6% compared with 22% among non-unionised workers. Finally, workplaces with recognised unions are 24% more likely to offer training to their workers, and training in skills is vital to developing our economy if we are to make progress.
Unions also impact positively on the macroeconomy in three major ways. First, although some people claim that unions inhibit productivity growth, the opposite is true—our economy is more productive where there are trade unions. Productivity growth since the recession has been disappointing across the economy as a whole. However, a recent study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that this productivity gap is connected to the decline of trade unions and that, in reality, high union density is associated with stronger productivity growth. The sectors of the British economy that are experiencing strong productivity growth, such as aerospace and engineering, tend to be those with stronger union representation, where employers actively encourage and engage with the trade unions in their workplace. Professor Kim Hoque of Warwick Business School has found that workplace productivity in the public sector is improved by union representation, and he has raised concerns about the effect on productivity of the Government’s impending Bill—an issue we need to return to when we debate that legislation.
Research by the New Economics Foundation found that high union membership boosts GDP by redirecting a larger share of capital to consumers or purchasers, thus expanding the domestic market for goods. Therefore, increasing the level of unionisation to that of the early 1980s, for example, could add nearly £23 billion to GDP. For every 1% reduction in the proportion of the workforce in unions, GDP is reduced by more than £2 billion.
Lord Clinton-Davis (Lab)
As an active trade unionist all my life, I agree with what my noble friend says, but some trade unions are not affiliated to the Labour Party and they do an enormously valuable job. My noble friend Lord Monks and I have been presidents of BALPA for a long time. Would my noble friend say something about trade unions such as the National Union of Teachers and my own union, BALPA?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My noble friend has a very distinguished record as president of the British Airline Pilots Association. Naturally, I would like all trade unions to affiliate to the Labour Party—of course I would. But I recognise that that is not likely always to be the case, and there may be very good reasons why they feel unable to do so. Part of our democracy is that they should have the right to make that decision.
If I may, I will move on to the point I was going to make about income equality. In the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada union membership has been strongly linked to greater income equality. Research has found that the more rapid rate of de-unionisation in America, for example, accounts for two-thirds of the greater income inequality compared with the United Kingdom.
I turn now to the unions’ contribution to democracy. As we all know, in a democracy, it is not enough just to cast your vote every four—now every five—years; that is only part of our democratic system. Real democracy demands civic engagement from people through churches, as the Bishops will testify, charities—I am proud to be a trustee of Age Scotland and many noble Lords are involved in charities—political parties and other parts of civil society. But the trade union movement is perhaps the single strongest embodiment of such civic engagement, critical not just as a way for employees to engage with employers on equal terms but as bodies representing and lobbying for wider changes in society on behalf of ordinary working people. We have seen trade unions do that. They serve as a vital conduit for the interests of millions to be heard here at Westminster, at Holyrood, at the Welsh Assembly and at Stormont, and in local government. They keep actively promoting the interests of working people in these areas where decisions are made. They promote the interests of a huge number of people—over 6 million British citizens—and are therefore essential to our democracy.
Trade unions also promote political participation by the citizens. According to figures from the OECD and the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the 10 most unionised countries have an average voter turnout of 78%, while the 10 least unionised have a turnout of 62%. That is a remarkable difference and there must be some correlation.
Trade unions do not just help democratic participation; they also campaign and impact on a wide range of social issues. They fight not only for their members in the narrow confines of the workplace but also for a better society for their members. For example, on child poverty and opportunity, greater trade union membership is associated with lower rates of child poverty and significantly better economic mobility. On equality, the Trade Union Share Owners, controlling £1 billion of shares, has openly used this financial clout to pressure for more women on FTSE 100 boards. Such power could be used even further and more effectively, and I would certainly encourage it so to do. On anti-slavery, trade unions in this country have lobbied DfID, the ILO and the Home Office to fund anti-slavery programs for the benefit of people working in slave conditions, both abroad and at home.
Trade unions are sometimes cast as an anachronism, and some people say that they are redundant. But in spite of the tremendous advancement of workers’ rights, the coming years point towards severe challenges that British workers will face. It is critical that we in Parliament work with employers and trade unions to mitigate and reverse some of these threats. The Trade Union Bill, which we will come to later, is one such threat.
The experience of the United States is a dire warning. Safety in the workplace is worse in the United Sates and wages are lower, particularly in states where there is anti-union legislation. If we compare those states with the others, we see a very significant difference.
In conclusion, the essence of a successful democracy is that the country works for the benefit of all the people. The Labour Party, which we recognise was born of the trade union movement, embodies that ideal. We are here to make the case for a more just and a more equitable society, to give voice to those who would otherwise be silent and to champion the continued journey of a nation towards our democratic ideal. Our trade unions should be a vital and valuable partner as we make this journey. I beg to move.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for putting down this Motion. I am sure that we welcome this debate at this important time. Perhaps I, too, could begin with a few declarations. I am the parliamentary adviser to BALPA, the pilots’ union, a majority of whose members I am pleased to say vote for the Conservative Party. I am also the president of the British Dietetic Association, a TUC-affiliated union, and I believe that the majority of its members do not vote for the Labour Party. In neither of those instances was this a matter for my being appointed to the role. Both those unions wanted to demonstrate that they were not dominated by one political party.
I should declare another interest. Since the age of 16, I have been a member of a TUC-affiliated union. For a good portion of that time, I was a member of AUEW-TASS, which I still think of as one of the finest unions that this country ever had. I am now a member of the Unite retired members section—like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, we are most of us, I suspect, in retired members sections—but I still look back with fondness to AUEW-TASS and in particular to its leader, my good friend Ken Gill, who would not have found a place on the Benches opposite for reasons that we will not go into.
Some 30% of trade union members vote for the Conservative Party. We have increasing evidence of this; we have done surveys and we have looked at polls. I was for five years the envoy of the now Prime Minister and then leader of the Opposition to the trade union movement, from the end of 2007 through the election to 2012. Indeed, when I came to this place, he said to me, “This has nothing to do with your distinguished service in the European Parliament; it is your service on behalf of the party”.
Lord Clinton-Davis
When the noble Lord was in the European Parliament, did he hold those views at that time? Have they rather altered in recent days?
Lord Balfe
Like anyone who has known me for many years—of course, I knew the noble Lord when he was the Member for Hackney in the other House and as a distinguished commissioner—he will know that I have always had a wide range of views, which is why I was such a good friend of Ken Gill. Those views have evolved, as have all views, but they have not fundamentally changed: I am still standing here today on these Conservative Benches saying that I am proud to have been a lifelong member of a TUC-affiliated trade union.
I make the point about the Conservative Party—it is no secret; it is nothing new. The members of unions have always voted in large part for the Labour Party but in significant minority for other parties. Many of them do not vote at all; they actually mirror the population remarkably closely—much more closely than we might like to think. I am pleased that the Conservative Party has recently appointed Rob Halfon, its deputy chairman, to resuscitate the official trade union body within the party.
So we are at a bit of a crossroads, but one positive point that I want to repeat for the Minister is that one of the great achievements of the trade union movement has been the Unionlearn programme. It was recognised many years ago that active trade unionists are often the first people who are in touch with people, particularly migrants who have come to this country, who have first-class skills but who often lack English language skills and sometimes numeracy skills.
I was very impressed when visiting one or two of the Unionlearn projects to find out that while there was a problem with English as a foreign language, there was often no problem with numerical skills. I was told by one or two of the tutors that the people they were tutoring were much better mathematicians than the person who was doing the tutoring. Of course, mathematics is an international language, unlike written and spoken languages. There are now some 30,000 Unionlearn reps in this country and almost a quarter of a million people in work are benefiting from the Unionlearn scheme. It is to the great credit of the Government that they have continued to support this scheme and I would like the Minister in her response to mention and endorse the fact that they will continue to support the scheme.
I saw the noble Lord, Lord Monks, frowning slightly. Of course the scheme has evolved, but the basic support for the principles of scheme is still there. It is there because the scheme benefits employers as well as employees. It is to the advantage of an employer to have a workforce that can read the health and safety notices; to have a workforce that has a sufficient command of the language to talk to other people on the shop floor who may also not be of a UK/English background but need to communicate in a common language. Courses in English, maths and technical studies are the backbone of the Unionlearn programme, and they have been extremely useful.
There is also a pay-off in economic return. If you improve the efficiency of workers, you improve their earnings, you improve the tax take and you improve the profits for the firms. It is not a charitable institution but one that is useful for benefiting the economy.
I have good news. Just under eight years after I first asked to meet Len McCluskey’s predecessor as secretary of the T&G, I received an email yesterday saying that Mr McCluskey would very much like to meet the Lord Balfe. I have of course replied and said that I would be delighted to meet him. I wonder what that can be about.
It is totally self-defeating for the Labour Party to try to monopolise the unions, because unions need friends on both sides of the House. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, unions play an important part in the economy. It is important for them to have friends across the political spectrum. If I was to give them one message it would be to stop backing just one horse because occasionally that horse might not win the race. You need friends on all sides of the House. My challenge to the unions is to settle down, to stop being totally dominated by one political party and to look across the House. Then they might find that they have more friends when they have difficulties with impending legislation.
Lord Monks (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes for bringing the positive role of trade unions to the attention of the House and for doing so in such an interesting and powerful way. I too look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and the noble Lord, Lord Robathan.
This debate is a timely curtain-raiser to the debates we are about to have on the Trade Union Bill, which will come to the House before Christmas. It is a trailer for some of the positive features of trade unions which I fear, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said, are being ignored by the Government at present. I too should declare my interests as a former general secretary of the TUC and of the European Trade Union Confederation, and currently president of BALPA. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and I form a sort of odd couple in that particular union, but a very fine union it is too.
I wonder how many Members of the House have recently been through Westminster Hall, where there is an exhibition of the progress towards democracy that we have made in Britain since Magna Carta. Perhaps some have noticed that one of the banners hanging there pays tribute to the positive role of the trade union movement, and the particular role played by the Tolpuddle Martyrs. I invite the Minister and perhaps some of her colleagues to take a trip through the hall—I would be very happy to accompany them—and to take a look and remind themselves of the debt this country owes to trade unions in times of both peace and war.
I am very proud to have a strong connection to the world of trade unionism. Along with my family it is the central purpose of my life. I believe that trade unions have been, are and will be a tremendous force for good in the country, and I accept the stricture of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that we need friends across the political spectrum. I just wish that our friends over there were a bit more powerful in the Conservative Party than currently seems to be the case, because they are failing lamentably to have any influence at the moment, if the Trade Union Bill is anything to go by.
Just last week, Sir John Major lamented the lack of equality in Britain. He called on employers to pay more and acknowledged that the state alone was not rich enough to rescue all those left behind. In a remarkable speech, he called for a crusade and echoed similar sentiments that have been expressed by President Obama, Christine Lagarde and Mark Carney. But what Sir John omitted to mention is that the rise in inequality has been in inverse proportion to the fall in the coverage of collective bargaining. In the 1980s it was more than 70%, but has fallen to around 30% today. Strong unions pressed and even crusaded for higher pay, but by their very presence they imposed a degree of discipline on the way managements did things and on the reward packages they constructed for the people at the top. After all, it is not easy to help yourself when your employees are watching and may well be seeking some measure of comparability. As that pressure has eased, we have seen what has happened to boardroom pay.
I recognise that other countries with wider collective bargaining coverage are displaying some similar trends in inequality to ours, but the harsh fact is that the UK is the European leader in the inequality stakes, the front-runner setting the pace for others to follow. I usually like it when the UK is the front-runner and I wish we were in the lead on skills, productivity, innovation and investment, but alas we are not; only in inequality are we way out in front. The combination of an overpriced corporate elite and weakened unions has not only fostered inequality, it has been a brake on our economic growth as the purchasing power of many of those who are worse off has been strongly squeezed.
I acknowledge that the Chancellor has made moves on the living wage, even if currently it is really a rebranding of the minimum wage, and at anything like its current levels it is certainly not a justification for slashing in-work benefits. I believe that a more fundamental approach is necessary, and that is to alter the way Britain does its business. It was President Roosevelt in the 1930s who persuaded much of US business that it was the trustee of all the economy, not just individual firms, not just the next quarterly results and not just the next takeover bid. He also strengthened trade unions and collective bargaining as a countervailing force. The historians on the other side of the House might remember that Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative Prime Minister, tried to do the same thing. With the then Minister of Labour, he promoted collective bargaining, and there was support for that across the political spectrum in the late 1920s and 1930s. I think that we need to do the same again. We need to promote mechanisms that do not involve taxpayers’ money, but which provide for proper negotiations between employers and unions at the sectoral level so that we can iron out some of the inequalities and shine a light into the dark corners of the British labour market where exploitation is still rife.
However, that is not the way the Government are going. They are not going the Baldwin route; they are going a Thatcher route. Other Conservative Governments have had Bills on trade unions so it is a rite of passage for us to have ours as well. The barrel has been well and truly scraped of all the possible options in BIS. I will not debate the Trade Union Bill today; there will be plenty of opportunities to do that. We are being demonised. Blemishes here and there are seen through a prism which exaggerates them to give an impression of trade unionism that somehow we are the enemy of the state, when nothing could be further from the truth. We are a sword of justice. We wish we were a more powerful sword of justice to try and ensure that people get a fair deal.
The Trade Union Bill is to come and I hope that Members on all sides of the House will take an interest in it. I shall not go through any of the particular measures today—no doubt others will touch on them. Let us remember this: trade unions are not clapped out; they are not finished. Trade unionism is the norm in companies with more than 500 employees. It spans important sectors, such as aerospace, cars, chemicals, utilities, banking, transport and supermarkets. It would be good for equality if it spanned rather more sectors.
Will the Minister revisit the programmes of the present Government and look back a little at what Baldwin was trying to do in the 1920s and 1930s, and see trade unionism as an ally in what the Chancellor said he is trying to achieve, and what we are all trying to achieve: a fair deal for the people of this country? That is what this debate today should be about. It was unions that brought us the weekend and many other things that we take for granted. My plea today is: work with us not against us.
The Lord Bishop of Derby
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for this timely and important debate, and for his introduction to it. I want to say a little about the context in which we are having the debate and then make one or two points about the future of the trade union movement. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, hinted, the trade union movement as we know it came out of chapels and churches and concern for the welfare of human beings in the world of work. We face similar challenges. If I may, I shall name some of the challenges that face not just churches but trade unions.
We live in what I call a non-joining culture. People want their rights and services in their lives but there is less energy to join and put your back to the wheel to make it happen. As people do not join and our numbers go down, there are fewer people to take up this important work. That is a real challenge for the trade union movement, as it is for the church, not least as the world of work gets more complex. We need more energy, more wisdom and more contribution from the experience of those in the world of work.
A second part of the context that intrigued me and which I want to name is that, in researching this, I discovered that the trade unions are relatively strong in their base in middle-income employees and in the professions. That is very much like the Church of England, if I may say so. We face a similar task in terms of people on the front line of the world of work in poor conditions—how to be alongside, encourage and support them.
The last bit of the context is about public perception. People think the church is about pitching up to a building on a Sunday. They think that trade unions are about having a fight about wages through strikes that cripple everybody else’s lifestyle. The public perception is very wrong. In Derby, where I work, trade unions are involved in some of the most creative and important work in the community, supporting and paying for community workers in deprived areas. They have been involved in helping churches and other voluntary groups respond to the food crisis on the ground, using their resources, contacts and expertise in partnership to make a difference to people in need in deprived areas. That story needs talking up. That is the base to build on and to encourage.
I will name two things that trade unions are and have been about, which should be the pillars on which their future health depends. The first is interest. Trade unions have always represented the interests of their members, but, as I said, the method is often perceived to be confrontational. When there were strikes in the 1860s the Guardian, which was not a left-wing paper but a church paper in those days, had a very interesting article pointing out that strikes and confrontation were in the interests of nobody. They were not in the interest of the employer, the employee or the public. If unions are to represent the interests of people, it has to be done by way of partnership, where people from different angles and views can participate and make a difference together. There is a responsibility on the unions as well as on employers, and on the public in our attitude, to challenge too simple a view of confrontation and to look for common ground. There is a shared interest that unions have to explore and step into with businesses and the public.
The second area in which unions have developed concerns identity. Historically, workers were hands—that was the word, “hands”, just a bit of a hand to help something happen. I was privileged to be part of the Joint Committee on modern slavery, examining where human beings are still commodities today. Actually, zero-hours contracts are not too different from people being in slavery, in a sense. There is a terrible way in which people are being treated as hands and commodities now, not just historically.
When the Government helped shape the then Modern Slavery Bill, the Minister’s argument was rightly that businesses have to take a lead in shaping a business culture that is accountable through its auditing to ensuring that human beings are treated not like commodities but as part of the business in a responsible way. For that to happen, the workers and people in work need representation in the process of what the business audit is about, how it works, how it operates and what it is trying to achieve. Some noble Lords may have noticed that the Pope produced an encyclical earlier this year, Laudato Si’, which brings together the issue of slavery and sustainable economic and environmental development—that is, we are commodifying not just the planet but people. We need joined-up practices to audit business practice to see where not just the planet and the environment but people are being commodified, what that experience is about and how to challenge and change it. That can be done only through partnership—through different voices being in the mix—not through confrontation.
The Modern Slavery Act produced the anti-slavery commissioner. I am privileged to chair his reference group. Some noble Lords may have received his first strategic plan, which was published this autumn. It calls on businesses and trade unions to work together to challenge the commodification of human beings in the workplace. That cannot be done by business alone. It needs the representation and all the skills that unions have to get alongside people, to hear what is happening to them, to articulate it and to put it into the mix. As we develop better business audit systems, we must have the voice of those in work.
The Gangmasters Licensing Authority makes the same plea for businesses and unions to work together. It highlights specific areas of economic activity that have a desperate need for this partnership. It highlights agriculture, construction and hospitality, where there is not only a lot of technical slavery and a lot of very unsupportive work practices. We desperately need unions to help some of the most vulnerable in the workforce to have a voice and to make a contribution to business audit, business planning and business performance.
There is an enormous, vital and necessary future for the historical trade union movement to be alongside people in work and to be in partnership with business. We are at a stage where businesses are looking at a social and sustainable audit practice, trying to be socially responsible. Business needs the contribution of those who represent people in the workplace. I invite the Minister to comment not only on how we encourage businesses to have sustainable audit, but on how the Government can encourage the participation of those who listen to and represent the workers, and help the far from satisfactory experience of many in the workforce at the lower end of the scale, to be taken seriously and tackled creatively.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, welcome very much this debate from my noble friend Lord Foulkes. Quite frankly, it is almost sad that it has been necessary to hold it and to put forward the positive contribution that trade unions have made. I look forward very much to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt. Her experience in personnel will be very helpful.
We have just heard from the right reverend Prelate about history. Historical credentials are important in this House. I declare that I am a member of a trade union. I have been for more than 50 years and will continue to be until I die, because I believe in trade unions and in the rights of working people. History comes into it, in that I was elected general secretary of one of the printing unions, which was more than 200 years old—much older than any political party in this Chamber. It was formed out of hardship by people who were deported to Australia because they had the audacity to try to band together because they could not live on their wages, and if they threatened to do something about it their homes were taken off them because they lived in tied cottages.
We have come a long way. The record of the positive contribution of trade unions to this nation goes without question, in my view. I just hope that when we come to the Trade Union Bill that list of positives will be taken in the balance, because the Government pushing forward that Bill have a pretty poor record of looking after the ordinary man and woman in this nation. The party pushing forward this anti-trade union legislation—it is anti-trade union—opposed the formation of the health service. It opposed the Equal Pay Act when Barbara Castle brought it forward to try to help women. It opposed the Sex Discrimination Act. It opposed the minimum wage. If noble Lords look at the balance of where the positive contributions have been, it is a very hard argument from the Government that they are for working people.
Lord Balfe
I remind the noble Baroness, since we are in a history lesson, that the Labour Party opposed all the Thatcher trade union reforms but repealed none of them.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
I take that point, but I am talking about the positive contribution for working people in Britain, not just members of trade unions. The policies that trade unions put forward benefited those in work, both within and outside trade unions.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I am someone who has no particular knowledge of trade unions. I have never been a member of one and I have never seen them as particularly relevant in most of the places I have worked. Does she accept that the Bill we will debate is not anti-trade union but pro-consumer? Many of us who have no connection with trade unions get very irritated with the role of many trade unions as, first of all, they spend all their time campaigning against my party, so why should we have any respect for what they do? Secondly, they get in the way of many of us who want to go about our daily business.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
I thank the noble Lord for that contribution. It is on the record and we will be able to remember it. I am a trade unionist; I am also a consumer, as were all my members. When I was in the trade union movement I learned a big lesson. I had 220,000 members who I was privileged to be elected to represent. Some 4% of them worked in Fleet Street. Noble Lords might have thought my union’s members were Fleet Street. Yes, they were the screaming child and they did not bring a good reputation to my union, but the other 200,000-odd members were decent men and women at work, trying to get on with a decent job. They were good, decent trade unionists, yet the union’s reputation was based on Fleet Street.
That is the very point I am trying to make on the Trade Union Bill, which, in seeking to deal with an issue that certainly exists, will take away the rights of a whole organisation representing decent working men and women. That organisation has more members than all the political parties put together and of any other organisation in the UK. Its members can join voluntarily. They do not have to join but choose to do so. One of the reasons they choose to join is that an employer who runs a workshop, for example, will probably have a full-time HR person, or someone he can refer to, and a lawyer to represent him. However, the individual worker has very little impact as an individual. Therefore, the right to combine with others is in my view one of the most important points of any civilised, free society. To do anything that damages that would damage our democracy and would take away the rights of working people.
I believe in industrial partnership and I tried to practise it as a trade unionist, as do most trade union representatives. We have heard reference to the Thatcher years. I recall Mrs Thatcher calling the trade unions “the enemy within”, giving a label to nearly 12 million working people in Britain. That was a nonsense. I see Members across the Chamber shaking their heads. I was a trade union official when that statement was made. It did not help me in my work but rather hindered me in trying to develop partnerships.
The contribution that trade unions make to this country depends on the freedom of individuals. Any economy that does not allow free trade unions is not successful. If the Government argue that their proposals will help our economy, I will challenge that—and it will be challenged in debate.
I will end with two points. Legislating to tackle a small but important problem in a way that penalises a whole sector of people in Britain is wrong and will not work. Secondly, I would like to accept the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, to make friends as trade unionists across the Chamber. I look forward to working with him to achieve a balanced outcome when the legislation arrives in this House.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech today. I feel enormously privileged to be here and hope to make a productive and positive contribution to this House. I am grateful also for the welcome I received from noble Lords at my introduction and for the enormous support, courtesy and patience of parliamentary staff in the way they have helped this particular “new girl”. I have found the politeness and helpfulness of all the staff in this place without parallel. However, I am sure that it will take me a while to get used to the ways and customs here, so I feel that now is a good opportunity to apologise in advance for any faux pas I am likely to make as I feel my way.
I have been told that one’s maiden speech should be relatively non-controversial. I will try. I have been bruised and battered many times in the fray in the other place and have been impressed by the politeness and civility I have witnessed in this Chamber. It is refreshing, and I aspire to measure up to the standards that noble Lords maintain here.
Politics, in my past experience, has been a brutal game. I have served in local as well as national elected chambers, as a local councillor in Dudley—Lenny Henry country—and for 10 years as MP in the rather more genteel Solihull, overturning a 9,400 majority in 2005. This result came as an enormous surprise not only to the party that lost but also to many in my own party. At least one colleague on election duty with the media that night asked them to double-check the result before they discussed it on air. But although it was the street fighter from Dudley who originally won that seat, I chose Solihull for my peerage title because today I am a Silhillian—I live there, love it and love the people I have served for the last 10 years.
Before I discovered politics, my career was in public service—the Prison Service, in fact—in commercial business and then as an entrepreneur with my own businesses. I have spoken up for business large and small throughout my parliamentary career, so this short debate today seemed ideal for my maiden speech. My party, the Liberal Democrats, is a pro-business party. We feel a special affinity to small businesses; that independence of thinking, preparedness to back up your beliefs with actions and working hard are all traits we share with the entrepreneur. Indeed, many party members are entrepreneurs, but many also are trade union members, a lot of them in the public sector, selflessly serving in health, education and other services.
We all recognise that businesses and public services are nothing without the people who staff them, put their energy, time and creativity into making businesses grow, deliver the best service they possibly can, take pride in seeing the success they have helped to create and rightly expect to share in that success. Business is a partnership between those tasked with managing the business and those who put energy and effort into making that business or that service the best it can possibly be. Here I cannot help being a little bit controversial. I think that anyone who seeks to profit at the expense of one side or the other will only defeat themselves. Taking sides is counterproductive—and I am sad to say that we see this all too clearly in politics at the moment.
The Trade Union Bill, to which several noble Lords have already alluded, in my view seeks to diminish union power when there is no evidence that strikes are on the increase and the number of trade union members is at its lowest for 20 years. Having said that, however, trade unions have a big responsibility, too. They serve their members poorly if they seek to push management too far, protect unproductive working practices and hamper the ability of employers to create wealth for all. That is why Liberal Democrats favour employee ownership so strongly. It is sad that many unions do little to support mutual and shared ownership when their own roots come from the co-operative movement. So, we welcome the constructive role that trade unions can play in the partnership that enables everyone to benefit from their labours.
In case anyone is thinking that I am unrealistic in my description of the working partnership I have outlined, I point noble Lords to an example of what happened in Solihull when Jaguar Land Rover fell on difficult times and we feared that either the Solihull or the Castle Bromwich plant would have to close, spelling disaster for our area and affecting the wider West Midlands. Management and unions worked together to agree a plan to reduce workers’ hours and pay, thereby enabling more skilled staff to remain in work so that the skills would not be lost when the hoped for upturn arrived—and, boy, did it arrive. Since that terrible time, JLR has become one of the most successful manufacturing companies in the UK, investing and building a long-term future to guarantee the success and prosperity of all the partners involved. That is the way to do it. Successful, long-term businesses are built on firm and committed partnerships between owners and staff.
I commend the spirit of this Motion and thank all noble Lords for listening so patiently.
Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness on the occasion of her maiden speech. It was a speech of content, passion and, of course, authority. The House warmly congratulates her on that speech and looks forward to many more contributions in the future.
When considering today’s debate, I was tempted to reflect on my 12 years as general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. But in order to avoid being labelled a “trade union baron”, as I anticipated, I decided instead to share my thoughts based on my 18 years as an employee and workplace representative at Hardy Spicer Ltd, subsequently a member of the GKN group.
As a believer in the values of a fair and just society, I have no difficulty in rationalising my role as a trade unionist. Today’s debate seeks to explore the role of unions in a democracy and their contribution to the wider economy. I take the view that a free, independent trade union movement goes hand in hand with a fair and just society. But without playing devil’s advocate, I would like to put exactly the same question to the employers: what is the role of employers in a democracy and their contribution to an economy that is fair and equitable? What are they doing that could not be done by other agents or, indeed, the state?
What I am seeking to establish is that there is an interdependence between capital on the one hand and labour on the other. Both working together, and working well, benefits society for the common good. It is clear that production and consumption are two sides of the same coin. The debate is about not the acquisition of ownership but equitable distribution. Trade unions provide a mechanism for dialogue between workers and employers, helping to build trust and commitment among the workforce. They ensure that problems can be identified and resolved quickly and fairly, bringing significant productivity benefits.
Many employers and employer bodies such as the EEF and the CBI have recognised the positive role that trade unions have played in supporting employer-led issues such as training and health and safety. Employers have long recognised the contribution that unions make in implementing organisational changes. They offer a mechanism for the effective negotiations and consultations that are generally needed to make significant change to programmes within the workplace. Trade unions are ambassadors, both at home and abroad.
In addition, trade unions have long worked alongside companies, business organisations and their communities in supporting national infrastructure projects. We have heard about projects such as the fifth terminal at Heathrow and of course the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. As we speak, these groups are working together to build the case for other projects, yet some politicians and newspapers talk of trade unions as the scourge of economic well-being, in the past even describing us as the “enemy within”. These claims are made even when workers seek health and safety protection for themselves and, more importantly, the general public.
A recent report produced by the independent think tank the New Economics Foundation and the University of Greenwich points out that the number of days lost per year to industrial action has fallen dramatically over the past 30 years and has today reached an historic low. The report concludes:
“The UK has paid a heavy economic price for three decades of anti-union policy and law”,
and argues:
“If the recovery from the recession is to be placed on a secure footing, the status of trade unions as an essential part of sound economic policymaking must be restored”.
The report argues that the UK economy is wage-led, not profit-led, and that increasing wages would kick-start spending and increase GDP by 1.6%. The collective strength of trade unions’ negotiation means that on average union members take home higher pay and have better sickness and pension benefits, more holidays and more flexible working—all of which benefit the economy.
The World Bank agrees that unions are good for the economy. In a report based on more than 1,000 studies of trade unions and the performance of national economies, the World Bank found that high rates of unionisation led to less inequality of earnings, lower unemployment, lower inflation, higher productivity, and speedier adjustment to economic shocks.
So far I have looked only at the contribution of trade unions to the economy. What of their role in a democracy? I take the view that free, independent trade unions go hand in hand with a just and fair society—locally, nationally and globally. On a basic level, trade unions are agents for change and will always strive to protect and advance the interests of those they represent, including those without a voice. A major ILO study found that countries in which income inequality was on average lower tended to be those in which a greater proportion of workers were members of trade unions. It also found that higher rates of union density had a positive impact on the range of social rights afforded to citizens.
It is no coincidence that in countries in which there are free and active trade unions, there are more democratic, transparent and representative forms of government. In countries where there are no trade unions or where the movement is not visible, the vast majority of citizens continue to be trapped in poverty. It is in these conditions that instability and extremism thrive at the expense of democracy. Therefore, by pressing for better social, economic and environmental policies, trade unions are good for the economy and for society, and make democracy work better.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I add my tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, who spoke earlier. Like my noble friend, I look forward very much to hearing more from her in the future. I was also delighted to hear the tone with which my noble friend Lord Foulkes introduced this debate. There is a Bill coming and we will have the opportunity to say things about it, but it is not a bad thing to remember that the trade unions are a part of our national life—not sectoral, not subdivisional but an integral part of our national life—and it is good that we hear the positive news.
I am therefore encouraged by my noble friend to bring up something that comes from a rather personal angle. I was 10 when my grandfather died. He had been a coal miner all his life and used to tell me, until I could tell the story off by heart, of how in 1910 at Penygraig in the Rhondda valleys he was one of those miners who came out on strike after there had been a lock-out. The miners were asking for 1 shilling and ninepence for mining a ton of coal. They were protesting that the price was not quite enough and the owners shut them out, so the workers came out on strike. My grandfather told me so graphically about Samuel Rhys, who died of a fractured skull right alongside him in the crowd. I am absolutely certain that every one of the 12,000 miners on strike that day told their grandchildren that they were next to Samuel Rhys. At the same time, at that very incident, the then Home Secretary ordered the British troops to move into the valleys. The Riot Act was read and bayonets were fixed. My grandfather could tell that story pretty graphically. I was only 10, but I remember it to its last detail.
The mining industry has gone. Traditional heavy industries are no more. The injustices—let us be honest, that is what they were—under which workers went down those mines continue to exist, but they have morphed into other places. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby mentioned some of those areas. If it is a matter of justice, the fight has to go on. The champions who are behind the standard that they raise in the name of justice must not be vilified because they are doing that.
I want to go on to pay tribute to one of my personal political heroes, who is almost never mentioned in Parliament but deserves to be recognised much more. He was Jim Griffiths—no relative of mine, although he lived in Burry Port where I grew up. As a coalminer himself, Jim Griffiths came up to become president of the federation of miners in South Wales and, in that way, he became Member of Parliament for Llanelli in the 1930s. With the Labour victory in 1945, Clement Attlee invited Jim Griffiths to take up office in the Foreign Office but he refused. Clem Attlee was a little surprised: “Well, what do you want?”, he said. “I want to do something for my people”, said this former trade union leader, and so he took on the job of Minister for National Insurance. Under his leadership, four of the six parts of the welfare state as envisaged by Beveridge were put into place. He implemented the Family Allowances Act and brought the Industrial Injuries Act, National Insurance Act and National Assistance Act on to the statute book. We know about Nye Bevan and 1948; we know about Rab Butler and 1944; but nobody knows about Jim Griffiths, who did all four of the other Acts, so I pay my tribute to him here.
However, let us remember that the welfare state was itself created to address those evils that are called poverty, ignorance, disease, squalor and idleness. Let nobody in this House pretend that that battle has been won. All of us who have our feet on the ground and visit people in their homes and neighbourhoods can point to places where the scourges of those particular enemies continue to have their place. We rejoice, however, that we have had 60 years of benefiting from the implementation of those measures to address those enemies, and we stand fearfully on the threshold of the dismantling of those measures in our own day—woe to all of us. Of course they need reform and can no longer hold up in the way that they were envisaged originally but, my goodness, we are going to be a fragmented society if we lose hold of that.
I then want to pay tribute to another Jim Griffiths: my brother, who was an area organiser for the GMB. He did not live long enough to get into the retired GMB members and join my noble friend but my brother, who failed the 11-plus and did hard work on a factory floor, managed to impress the union by his ability to communicate with fellow workers. He soon became a shop steward. I have been with him many times at 6 am, when the shift ended, as he tried to recruit new members for the union. I saw my younger brother stand on a soap-box and arraign them with his oratory: Griffiths the preacher listening to Griffiths the soap-box orator. He was so persuasive in helping the people coming through those factory gates to understand what the real benefits of joining a union were. He became an area organiser and this failure at school used to phone me to ask what I thought about John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant or Aristotle and Plato. He was offered a place at Ruskin College. We must not underestimate the contribution to the social fabric and leadership skills of this country that has come through the trade unions. They must not be typified and thought of exclusively in terms of certain well-rehearsed and well-publicised confrontational moments in our national life. There is far more to trade unions than that, and they ought to be honoured for it.
Finally, I pay my tribute to a Member of this House, Lord Murray of Epping Forest, a very close friend of mine. He attempted to work out something that he called pragmatic socialism in the social contract, which he played his part in establishing, and in attempts with the CBI to see that, across the employers/employees divide, there should be joint ways of solving our national problems. He had to endure the winter of discontent and understand how the new Prime Minister of 1979 had her own way of doing things. ACAS was formed in his time, but confrontation came out of the new political realities.
By paying tribute in this way to people who have touched my life, I should have added myself as a Methodist minister. Goodness me, where would the trade unions be without Methodists? One after another, they gave the public-speaking skills, organisational skills and self-confidence in public to working-class people who went on to found the Agricultural Labourers Union, the stonemasons union and, in Durham in 1832, the mineworkers union. All these things and so much more came from the Methodist Church—not Wesleyan Methodism, the posh bit that was going through a long mahogany phase, but the primitive Methodists who were out there doing their stuff in the highways and byways of the land. I owe to Methodism my self-confidence—I would not be standing here now without it—and Labour owes more to Methodism than to Marx, having come down the ILP route rather than the SDF route.
So, my friends, I just wanted to say how much I owe to the trade union movement, even though I was in it officially only as a junior member, aged 21. I was in the Association of University Teachers when I had a cameo career in that part of our life. I pay tribute to the trade unions and say that they must, in their stance for justice, continue to be approved, wanted and helped to morph into the modern realities that they face. God bless the trade unions and God bless this House, if it can see the good side of them.
Lord Robathan (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, this is my second parliamentary maiden speech. The first was made some 23 years ago, when I introduced a debate on recycling down the corridor. These are rather grander surroundings. Nevertheless, I approach this speech with some trepidation.
After my first speech, people were remarkably nice about it. It was not bad but probably did not deserve the praise that it received, if the truth be known. I particularly remember that Tam Dalyell, then the Labour MP for Linlithgow and now Sir Thomas Dalyell of the Binns, Baronet, was very complimentary. He particularly said that I was a great improvement on my predecessor in Blaby, about whom he went on to say some very disobliging things. Now, first, it was not true that I was a great improvement on my predecessor, and, secondly, I was somewhat shocked by the quite vicious attacks made on him. Here in the House of Lords, I already find that there are far better manners, much greater courtesy and real friendliness from all parts of the Chamber. For that I am very grateful; it is not always in evidence in the House of Commons.
I have been told that I should say something about myself, which of course is an irresistible invitation to any preening politician. Briefly, I was elected with the previous majority Conservative Government 23 years ago, after serving 18 years in Her Majesty’s Forces, and I stood down as this majority Conservative Government were elected. I spent some four years in the previous Parliament as a Minister in the Ministry of Defence and the Northern Ireland Office. The truth is that it was time to move on, and I think that those who have been in the House of Commons would agree that 23 years is a pretty long sentence.
It is genuinely an honour to be here. Of course, there are issues and arguments about the future of this House, but I do not think there is any disagreement about its remarkable history. I would like to thank everybody across the Chamber for being so welcoming: my sponsors, my noble friends Lord Astor of Hever and Lord Spicer, my mentor, my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale, and everybody for the advice and assistance that they have given me—not least the staff of the House. In particular, I should like to mention the Principal Doorkeeper, Mr Keith Phipps. For a couple of years in the late 1980s, he and I worked together in the Army in Hong Kong and Northern Ireland. He tried to steer me in the right direction—well, usually in the right direction. As you may have guessed, he was not that keen on my emphasis on physical fitness and fitness training, but he was usually right about most matters, and I expect that he will try to put me right in this place, as well. Lastly, because old habits die hard, I would like to thank the Prime Minister for nominating me.
Turning to the substance of the debate, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for calling this debate. We have known each other over the years and have always got on in a relatively civilised manner, I hope. I was told to be uncontroversial, which is to break the habit of a lifetime. As a frightful, dyed-in-the-wool old Tory, just my speaking on trade unions might be thought to be partisan, but I hope to avoid so being. I wish to approach this debate from an historic, discursive perspective in a genuine spirit of inquiry, because I think that there is a place for discussion on this matter. I would like to look also, only briefly, at the future of organised labour.
I say at the outset that, along with other noble Lords who have spoken, I absolutely believe in the right—indeed, the need—for any workforce to have representation. Twenty years and more ago, when I was on the Employment Committee in the House of Commons, I was astonished when chief executive officers would come to tell us with pride that they had started having regular discussions with their workforce. Surely they always consulted their employees—but this was not the case. In the Army, paradoxically, I always knew what my soldiers thought, and I listened to them. In the SAS, we used to have things called Chinese parliaments. In a Chinese parliament, anybody and everybody had their say and said what they thought. Very often, it was extremely helpful.
As we have heard, the trade unions have hugely improved the lot of the workforces of this country over the years, from pensions to statutory sick pay and other matters. They have been assisted by the party of labour; I state that absolutely. Others here, particularly on the Opposition Benches, know the history of the labour movement much better than I: Keir Hardie, the Labour Representation Committee and the Labour Party, born out of organised labour. However, in my lifetime, I recall the 1960s: the seamen’s strike of 1966, I think, and Jack Dash, who was of course a communist, leading the dockers on strike in London, which contributed toward the demise of the London docks. This, of course, was all under a Labour Government led by Harold Wilson, and it led Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle to produce In Place of Strife. Others on the Opposition Benches will know more about that than I, but it was not very popular.
At university, I remember, under the Heath Government, attempting to study by candlelight. I recall the electricians’ strike, the postal workers’ strike, and, finally, Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers creating the three-day week under Heath and Heath then calling the election on “Who Governs Britain?”. We know what answer was given. Then the Callaghan Labour Government struggled with Red Robbo and British Leyland and were finally fatally undermined by the winter of discontent, led by some trade unionists.
I will gloss over the Thatcher reforms, because that would be controversial, but, in the second decade of the 21st century, what did my former constituents in South Leicestershire think of trade unions? It was a prosperous area, I agree, but generally, the larger proportion of younger people were not attracted by trade unions and felt that they were somewhat irrelevant to them—except, of course, when they needed their assistance in a dispute. More relevant than any anecdotal evidence that I produce is the decline in membership of the trade unions from 13 million in the year of the winter of discontent to now fewer than 7 million members. That is partly why some unions have amalgamated.
Of course I deprecate strikes on the transport system and in the public sector, but trade unions still do good work. As a Minister in the Ministry of Defence, I chaired meetings with trade union representatives. They were very honest and told me at the start that they would have preferred to have had a Minister from a different party, but they were generally good people who stood up for their membership. That was their role and I applaud them for it. Noble Lords may be surprised to know that we almost invariably parted on amicable terms.
I think that we would all agree that there has been a huge impact of technology, health and safety legislation, automation, globalisation and different ways of working, all of which have affected trade unions and led in part to their decline in membership. While I believe that representatives of organised labour have an important role to play, I pose a question to everybody in the House: does the current structure of trade unions and having a party of organised labour still best serve the interests of the workforce—of workers? Indeed, will trade unions and the TUC as currently constituted remain? Why, in the 21st century, is there still a party of organised labour? I pose that question in a genuine spirit of inquiry.
Especially now, when—I do not think it is controversial to say—we have a somewhat divided Labour Party, should those on the left of centre in politics still want to be a party of organised labour? The world has changed dramatically since the matters that I and other people have mentioned—since the 1906 creation of the Labour Party. I regret to say that even the Conservative Party has changed. Romantic views of past struggles may not best serve either those who are currently union members or an opposition party that covets power. I can see a time when the Labour Party parts from organised labour. Tony Blair and Ed Miliband enacted changes and distanced the party to a certain extent from trade unions. I would not presume to advise political opponents on what they should do, but I can see a possible realignment of those who support views that are broadly left of centre—and that would include the Liberal Democrats as well. The world has moved on and parties must move on, as indeed the Conservative Party—now caring, compassionate, et cetera—has also moved on. By the way, perhaps I may also say that whoever forms the Government, our country needs an effective Opposition. As I said, those comments are made in a genuine spirit of inquiry and for discussion, and I hope that they are taken as such.
In conclusion, I am told that people may be complimentary about my speech, probably along the lines of, “Frightfully good. Jolly good speech. Pity you were talking complete rubbish”.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I may start by congratulating my noble friend on a fine maiden performance; we look forward to many more. Taking over the constituency of South Leicestershire, formerly Blaby, in 1992, my noble friend had a rather large pair of boots to fill. He had had a distinguished career in the Coldstream Guards and the Special Forces. He then moved to the world of big business, only to volunteer to return to the colours for the first Gulf War, so he was the natural choice for the Prime Minister to ask to go to the Ministry of Defence, after service as Opposition Deputy Chief Whip, on the formation of a new Government in 2010, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Welfare and Veterans. Subsequently, of course, he became a Minister of State and served both in the MoD and, as he said, at the Northern Ireland Office. We all look forward to his future contributions in your Lordships’ House—as we do to those of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, for bringing this debate on this very important subject. I might start by saying that, when I was at Defra, I enjoyed a highly constructive relationship with the trade unions, especially—and I was going to say “most strikingly”, but perhaps “most significantly” would be a better phrase—in the case of making amendments to the Dangerous Dogs Act to improve the level of protection for postal workers and many other workers going about their jobs every day. The Communication Workers Union was extremely helpful—an ally, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Monks—as was Royal Mail. Together we improved the situation quite markedly, and I thank them for that.
Trade unions have done and continue to do brilliant work for their Members—the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, explained some of that—and long may that work continue. However, cases continue to occur where there is abuse of the system and it is reasonable to think about making changes to the law. I am aware that we will get into that in detail in your Lordships’ House over the next few weeks so, there being limited time, I shall confine myself to a few general points today.
First, I am concerned about the effects on inoffensive and uninvolved members of the public, whose efforts to get to and from work or education become severely hampered by industrial action. The public sector strikes in 2011 closed 62% of England’s schools, while the NHS cancelled tens of thousands of operations, yet the turnout for both the ATL teachers’ union ballot and for Unison’s was only about 25%. Does my noble friend the Minister think that that is fair or right? I do not think that many people would disagree with me in thinking that it is not. Indeed, the majority has indicated in polls that it strongly agrees that strike action should be undertaken only as the last resort.
My second point is that I am concerned that the number of days lost to industrial action in the public sector has doubled over 15 years, whereas in the private sector it has halved. There is a need to tackle that.
Thirdly, it must be unreasonable that industrial action can take place based on a mandate that is, for example, more than a year old. The NUT strike in 2014 led to the full or part closure of almost 1,500 educational establishments across England on a mandate almost two years old, on which there was an alleged voting turnout of just 27%. This surely has to change.
Those are some of the issues that the Bill that we are about to get into debating seeks to tackle. Other matters include bullying and harassment, check-off and transparency about facility time. The public gave the Government a mandate at the general election, and the public are looking to the Government to fulfil it.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a long- serving official of the TUC. Indeed, I am a lifetime member of what was the Transport and General Workers’ Union and, subsequently, Unite, having organised membership in the Economist Intelligence Unit in 1963.
Many of us are aware of the range of unions in the TUC; we do not need to be reminded of it, perhaps, but nevertheless it is an interesting and important point that people in professional occupations are now more likely to be in a trade union than those in the other half of the economy. Likewise, many unions with that sort of membership know very well that many of their members vote Conservative. I do not think that the TUC in its day-to-day work is working with a particular relationship with a political party—but let us put that the other way around and look for just one moment at the political connotations, as mentioned by two or three speakers on the other side of the House.
In any democracy one needs pluralism—in terms of political parties, unlike Russia, and in terms of people’s right to belong to a trade union, in this case. The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, nods his head, but it so happens that the £20 million or £30 million raised for an election on the part of the Conservative Party comes from somewhere, and that is the sort of money that the Labour Party cannot compete with, or even get near to, unless some considerable contribution is made through the trade unions. I make that point in passing without wanting to start a great debate about political funding.
Unity is strength for workers and seems also to be strength for capital. I was going to say “capitalism”, but that is a word that suggests that one belongs to a particular sort of analysis. But it is a fact that what drives capital in the City of London is very much mergers and acquisitions. In the multinational corporations of today, it is very difficult to get any sort of countervailing power if you think that capital and labour should be on the basis of some degree of equality. That is a much bigger debate than we can have at the moment, but capital is organised in a developing way that has a lot to do with the difficulties of trade unions in recent years. As my noble friend Lord Monks pointed out, the difficulty of organising in recent years has been associated with an increase in inequality—and that, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby pointed out in a very interesting speech, has in its turn produced a non-joining culture in a society of individualism. That has lots of downsides in society.
I shall briefly come back to that point if I may, but not before I congratulate the two maiden speakers. I am delighted to hear from a very strong friend of the trade union movement on the Liberal Benches, the noble Baroness, Lady Burt—and I wish her well for her future contributions. Then there was the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, whom I know to be a not particularly strong friend of the trade unions. We have had conversations in the past where the word “TUC” was treated, if not as a term of abuse, then as something along those lines—as I recall, and he will recall as well.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Yes, we know each other.
The question of how we redress the balance of these forces, which go against trade union interest and tradition, is a very thorny one indeed. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, made the point, which allows me to make the response—although he is not in his place at the moment. The noble Lord intervened from the opposite Benches on, I think, my noble friend Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, and said, “Of course, these organised producers are just against the consumer”. I think I am not paraphrasing him; I think that was right. Having thrown that hand grenade, he retired from the Chamber—well, it was quite soon afterwards. Somebody must have put something on his seat, but it was not me. That is a very interesting idea, precept or fallacy to spend a couple of minutes on. We are all consumers, and that is why we want low prices and everything hunky-dory as far as consumers are concerned—but that is nothing to do with what we get paid as producers, presumably, and nothing to do with the health and safety conditions of people producing tea, lychees or textiles in Bangladesh or wherever.
I shall make this comparison: I suspect that even the Chinese economy, as it evolves over the coming period, will find that it needs a degree of pluralism in its structure, and I think that that will be the development of the trade union principle in China. It is one to watch because it will give the lie to those people who think that the future of the world will be successful in relation to increasing gross national product without any reference to the degree of inequality that might be associated with it. Does the Minister agree that there is a model of the future where producers and consumers are opposed to each other and that the problem of inequality is not associated with that fallacy?
Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, a doughty parliamentary fighter for parliamentary rights and trade union rights, for initiating this debate. Most of the speakers have been from the other side for fairly self-evident reasons, but that has been very valuable for people on other Benches. I wish there had been more Tory Peers present today to listen to the authentic voice of trade unions and long-standing experience.
It is a great pleasure and honour to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, on an excellent maiden speech. We used to liaise on a number of issues when I had the pleasure of being in the Liberal Democrat group. She had a reputation for being an extremely hard-working MP as well as a very distinguished chairman of the parliamentary party. We welcome her here with great warmth and look forward to her contributions.
I have known the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, less, but none the less I congratulate him warmly on his speech. It verged on the quasi-fierce at stages, but none the less it was very gentlemanly, not quite one-nation Tory but trying to get there a bit. We thank him very much and look forward to his contributions. As someone quite rightly said, taking over in Blaby was no mean task, but he did it very well indeed.
I well remember going to the office of the noble Lord, Lord Monks, when one newspaper called me the most left-wing Tory MP—I was a Conservative MP in those days—in the 1980s. The noble Lord, Lord Lea, was in the office as his deputy. I tried to reassure him that there were Conservative MPs who were not anti-trade union. That was the position we had reached in those days, and it was tragic, agonising and painful, particularly with the manifestation of the miners’ strike and the use of the police. I was therefore credited equally with being far too avant garde and out of line with conventional policy in those days. When I was MP for Harrow, a subeditor on my local newspaper, the Harrow Observer, wrote “Dykes lashes Thatcherism” because it was at the same time.
Although I have had a City and financial background for many years, what worries me is that if you create a society where the only thing that matters is making money, that society gradually disintegrates. You can see that in America now. The latest manifestations in American society show that effect: an insecure, neurotic society based on medieval inequalities, not just the developing inequalities in this country that John Major rightly referred to last week, but huge savage inequalities and the despair of poor citizens in the United States who feel that they have no support. Now there is a threat from the Republican Party to dismantle even the modest Medicare system that Barack Obama brought in. I hope we will not get to that. I will not get to the Americanisation of British economics and society. I would call it the “Bullingdonisation” of society as well. That is just as bad as Americanisation from the present Government.
We have to thank the Library, as usual, for its masterly research and briefing in the pack it did for this debate. I am glad the debate was extended to give us a bit more time. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for achieving that. When I think of the latest Conservative manifesto, I look at page 18 of the briefing pack. It states:
“We will protect you from disruptive and undemocratic strike action. Strikes should only ever be the result of a clear, positive decision based on a ballot in which at least half the workforce has voted”.
This comes from a Government who were elected by 37% of those people who turned out to vote—I think roughly 24% of the electorate. No Government without a real majority has a right to introduce such obnoxious legislation without the authority and support of the people as a whole. That is the problem with our political system, with exclusion and one party again winning with no genuine majority. Mrs Thatcher had a majority that went down on each vote and was much less than 50%. In other European countries, that is not possible. You must have at least 50%, with a coalition arrangement if necessary, otherwise you cannot govern. The only possible exception is the other country I live in, which is France, where you must have 50% on the first round but there can still be huge discrepancies between seats and popular votes. A Government need real authority to introduce legislation like that. I hope the Lords will be meticulous in looking at the various provisions coming from the Commons in this legislation to make sure that it is fair for working people. Above all now, they need fairness in a society of zero-hours contracts and wages that are still very low despite some improvements in the minimum wage figures and the so-called living wage. There are now grim prospects for ordinary working families. John Major was quite right to refer to those dangers. I remember that it is all linked together.
The more I think about it, the more I think it is a great weakness that we do not have a written constitution because the parties can never get together to agree on fundamental matters. One of the glaring absences is the leaders of the main parties agreeing on a funding system for political parties. Mr Cameron originally proposed that there should be a limit of £5,000 on individual donations. That fell by the wayside. Ed Miliband, to his credit, started the opting-out, opting-in system to reduce the amount of support automatically, allowing people not to opt in or not to be compulsorily included, and he got no credit for that in the increasingly right-wing newspapers in this country. I think six out of nine of our hapless newspapers, with their declining circulations, belong to owners who do not pay United Kingdom personal taxes, live in tax havens, write long, boring editorials about the need for us all to be keen on work, even if it is low paid, and are very patriotic as well. I wish they would come to live in this country and pay taxes. We would be more impressed.
I go to Germany frequently and see the difference there in the trade union picture with the Government of the day. Angela Merkel regularly attends the equivalent of the TUC conference, the Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund, to make a speech as the Chancellor or Prime Minister. Here, our divisions are so massive that that is impossible. The antagonism continues. There is no leadership of the correct kind to make sure that people come together. The overwhelming evidence I have from studying entrepreneurs, business and financial matters at very close quarters over many years is that if you have a happy employer-union relationship in any company of whatever size, that company usually works successfully if the market is strong enough and the demand for the products and services is strong enough. I have seen no exception to that. Occasionally you get tough guys—more guys than ladies, of course, because if there were more lady entrepreneurs, there would be less strife in industry as we know—saying, “I’m not going to have unions here”, and keeping them out and that kind of thing. Sometime employers become very benevolent, like Branson, in return for agreeing not to have unions, but that is very rare, and usually, with the inequalities we have now, you are undermining the consumption function all the time and depriving people of the opportunity of spending money or, indeed, saving money, which also contributes to the economy through the banking and investment system. That is a recipe for disaster. I hope the Government will be enlightened enough to change their mind and think again about some clauses of the Bill.
Lord Hoyle
I also must declare an interest: previously I was president of ASTMS, which became MSF when we merged with TASS. The noble Lord, Lord Monk, referred to his friend Ken Gill. Along with another colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, I worked closely with Ken in taking that union forward.
I must thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes for tabling this Motion because it gives us a chance, as has been said, to show trade unionism in a positive light. At a later date we will deal with the Trade Union Bill, which makes it more difficult for trade unions to operate and protect their members. It is important that we remember what has been achieved by trade unions and employers working in partnership. When they come together, that benefits not only employees but employers and, in the case of the public sector, if there are good working relationships they benefit the public at large as well.
An important point that I want to make is that in unionised companies, support for women is greater than in those that are not unionised. The unions that represent them make it easier for them to work—and indeed to return to work—through flexible working, job-sharing, sensible hours for people with families, and enhanced maternity pay. It is important to establish a relationship between unions and employers so that both take an interest in people who are on maternity leave, keep in contact with them and ensure that they get training when they return to work.
We are seeing a higher proportion of disabled workers joining trade unions. I think the House will generally agree that it is not a satisfactory position when at least 50% of people who are disabled are seeking employment. The trade unions play an invaluable role in ensuring that these people are protected, and in achieving the conditions and providing the necessary facilities to enable them to do their work. That not only makes their working lives easier but, I would hope, paves the way for more people who are disabled to come into work. Similarly, a greater proportion of black and ethnic minority workers join trade unions because they also need that extra protection in the workplace, which is very important.
The valuable role that health and safety representatives play has also been emphasised. Not only do they make life safer, in that there are fewer accidents; there is also a benefit to the company in preventing accidents. People take less time off work and work in safer conditions, which in itself makes for a stable workforce, which is of benefit to all. Another valuable role that trade unions play is pressing for better training conditions. Better training conditions mean a better, more skilled and more satisfied workforce who, if they have the qualifications, can advance within the company or leave and join another one. That is very helpful.
Moreover, where companies are in difficulties, trade unions, working together, can bring about positive results. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby referred to Derby. It is important that we look at the example of Derby because, a few years ago, Bombardier—I notice he is nodding his head—was in terrible difficulties and it appeared that the plant was going to close. Fortunately, thanks to good working relations between the management and the trade union representatives, who met regularly, worked together and looked for other opportunities, the plant was saved and redundancies were kept to a minimum. Having suffered a difficult and dangerous blow that could have closed it down, Bombardier is now in a much stronger position, thanks to co-operation between the employers and trade unions. Surely we want to see more of that.
Reference was made to Jaguar Land Rover. Here again, we see the benefits of employers and trade unions working together. I think people in this House, throughout the country and indeed throughout the world will agree that this country is now producing first-class vehicles. Again, that just shows what can be achieved when employers and trade unions co-operate. It is a fact that we get value for money, as I said earlier, from workplace training. It has been established that for every pound the Government spend on it, there is an economic return of £9 and, as I say, it leads to enhanced qualifications.
This has been positive debate that takes us forward. It is good that it has emphasised the positive role trade unions can play in co-operation with employers, which benefits not only the company concerned but the economy at large, because there is more spending power. Improved conditions and communication between unions and employers are for the benefit of all. There is a greater need for trade unions than ever before. At a time of economic uncertainty and a lack of job security, I certainly believe, as I think do most people, that there is a great benefit to be derived from people belonging to the trade union movement.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for securing this debate. Despite working in business for some 50 years, I have never had a unionised workforce, but I have been supplied by, and dealt with, many of them. I can therefore appreciate how they have improved workers’ rights and secured fair pay for those they represent. Indeed, the Labour movement that they led has sired one of the great modern parties of government. It is true that in countries where unions are allowed to operate, wages are higher and workers’ rights are better protected. Nevertheless, in too many cases overly militant unions are damaging to society.
Unlike some noble Lords, I am old enough to remember the winter of discontent. Rubbish was piled to the shoulder in the West End, there was no petrol in the pumps and ambulances were grounded. Of course, this is the most extreme example of unions using their power for bad, but we can see examples of the same militancy today. Speaking as a Londoner, Tube strikes lose this great city up to £10 million a day. The TSSA, the RMT and Unite are not fulfilling their important duty to preserve workers’ freedoms so much as acting as pay lobbies to further raise the wages of their members, which are already far out of step with the restrained rises other workers have seen.
The majority of unions I remember in the 1980s and 1990s were led by sensible moderates, the sort of men and women who helped drag the Labour Party to the political centre and win three elections in a row. Now, they are led by a small elite of self-proclaimed communists, funding parties and activities such as TUSC, to which their members have not consented. Of course, unions have a place in providing a counterbalance to big business and, of course, they should serve as vehicles for progress in the labour market, but they should never be allowed to hold the public to ransom for wage rises way out of kilter with the public and private sectors.
The Trade Union Bill that is being steered through by the Business Secretary will go some way to addressing these problems; it will redirect unions to perform their historical functions, rather than seeing themselves as the Official Opposition.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Foulkes on a tour de force—I mean that genuinely. He gave us the historical sweep of the trade union movement and I am truly grateful. I am also grateful for the maiden speeches. I must confess to a slight bias towards that of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and her attitude towards industrial relations, rather than the SAS approach of the noble Lord, Lord Robathan. I am grateful to the noble Baroness because she was the first speaker to remind us of a really important example of the British trade union movement: when we needed careful, thoughtful action in that recession period, they negotiated not just a three-day week but an opportunity to retrain and reskill. It was a first-class example. Too often, we forget about that role.
I was thinking about this speech as I walked my dog this morning. The dog did not make a powerful contribution, but he gave me time to think about it. I sometimes wish the history of the trade union movement would be a bit more balanced. Unfortunately, it often focuses on the great struggles, and that is understandable, but in doing so it does not give enough credit, sometimes, to the solid, day-to-day work. I was a young lad of 16 when I managed to get into the General Post Office as a telecom apprentice. One of the first things that happened to me was that I was recruited into the union and I signed a form to join the pension scheme; both took place. I have been involved with trade unions for most of my life, from being what we called a local representative—what this House would know as a shop steward—until I managed, much to my surprise and that of a few others, to be elected general secretary of what was then the National Communications Union in 1989.
Trade unions do a huge amount of work. I did not agree with all his analysis, but I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for reminding us of the importance of Unionlearn. Of course, trade unions were heavily involved in education before Unionlearn. In fact, as someone who was dragged out of school at 15, I would say that the trade union movement completed my education. My mentor, although he was a member of the Communist Party, gave me a very solid grounding in how to run a branch, how to negotiate and how to write letters to management. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to him and to the trade union movement. Noble Lords may think that the education could have been a bit better, but I am what I am as a result of that involvement in the trade union movement.
I am glad that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby is back in his seat, because, in talking about modern slavery, he reminded me of my involvement, until very recently, with the Ethical Trading Initiative. Trade unions play a very big role in that, not just highlighting conditions for workers in this country but for workers throughout the world, in supply chains. That is the role of the international trade union movement as well. Trade unions play a very important role in trying to ensure fairness and justice for workers, not just in this country but throughout the world.
I could not help but smile when I listened to my noble friend Lord Griffiths. I am glad he is here. I must admit that my first attraction to the Methodist Church was not quite as pure as the examples he gave. If I recall, it ran the local youth club and my attraction was to table tennis and girls, I have to confess. Nevertheless, it played a role in society; my noble friend’s recollection of the importance of the Methodist Church in the origins of trade unionism is something I recognise.
I fear that the forthcoming Trade Union Bill will be a lost opportunity. What should the Government be encouraging? Surely, they should be encouraging more industrial partnership. If we want to improve productivity, improve the skills base in this country and get more apprenticeships, that kind of working together will make a huge contribution. If employers always got it right, why did the Government—I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised—reintroduce a training levy? If all employers were convinced of the benefits of training their workforce, presumably we would not have had to do that. Trade unions can and do play a key role in that area. I urge the Government to think very carefully about what they are doing with this forthcoming Bill. I hope we can encourage some positive things.
I do not pretend that everything the trade unions do has been perfect or that our history has been one long progression of simply fighting injustice. There are examples of where we had to reform our organisations. If I am honest, the union that I first participated in, the Post Office Engineering Union, was a very male-dominated union. It was not until we had a large influx of women members—my noble friend Lady Drake is not here—as a result of an amalgamation that we started to mend our ways. Nevertheless, we have been at the forefront of fighting for equality. We have been at the forefront, also, of fighting against racism; remember the anti-apartheid campaign. We have always been a very positive force in society.
As a trade union movement, we face a challenge. If you look at the demographics of the trade union movement, it is clear that it is skewed towards the older members of our society. We face a challenge in encouraging young people to understand the importance of the benefits of trade unions. Therefore, I will end by saying that I still believe that the role trade unions play is far and away a positive and constructive one, and I urge the Government to utilise that in their legislation. I hope that in that debate we will be able to arrive at a constructive engagement.
Baroness Prosser (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes for putting this debate down. It is both important and hugely timely.
It has already been mentioned that we in the United Kingdom are an unequal society, and that inequality is getting wider. In fact, according to the book The Spirit Level, an academic study of the western world, we are second only to the United States in inequality. As that book points out, that inequality brings with it a society which is out of balance, out of kilter and not happy or cohesive. I fear that the forthcoming Trade Union Bill, should it go through in the way in which it is currently envisaged, will only make matters very much worse.
The debate thus far has pointed out a lot of the things about trade unions which we never hear about. If you believed everything we read in the press or watched on the television, you would think that the trade union movement was a proscribed organisation. It has already been mentioned that we have been insulted in the past, and therefore an opportunity to demonstrate the hugely useful and valuable role that unions have played over the years is very welcome.
I will touch on three aspects: education and training, which has already been mentioned quite widely; the international work of unions; and equalities. My noble friend Lord Griffiths put it very succinctly in talking about the work of trade unions as an educator, describing their contribution to the social fabric of society. In the 20 years that I was employed by the Transport and General Workers’ Union as was, I must have seen thousands upon thousands of examples of people going through the union education programme and coming out at the end of it more confident and competent. Of course, that education covered such things as learning about health and safety, legislation which covers workplaces, equalities, how to be a good shop steward or branch secretary—all of that. Also, however, to correct something the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said, the trade union education hugely covers the whole area of literacy and numeracy. That was started by NUPE, long before Unionlearn came into being. That programme patched up the education gaps suffered by so many people in our society and enabled those older workers to learn and to catch up with their learning in a comfortable and supportive environment.
I can give many examples of the huge number of people I have come across who have moved on up through education, but I will mention just two. A woman who sat on the national women’s committee of the old T&G came from Bristol, worked in Bristol University as a cleaner, and was a single parent. She lost her job because she injured her back. She had already participated in a lot of trade union education and therefore after she had lost her work had the confidence to go on and learn further, and ended up going back to Bristol University as a lecturer. Another woman worked in Pendleton Ice Cream outside Liverpool; she was our convenor there and was made redundant when the factory closed. She was another example of someone who rebuilt her confidence on union learning and education; she also went on to become a lecturer. Those are just two tiny examples of my experience of union members who have the capacity and the ability but have never had the opportunity, and the trade union movement is the organisation that gives that opportunity to them.
Unionlearn, as has been said, is a massively successful experiment. It is an organisation funded by government and it pays back to government in spades, as has been mentioned, because of the greater earning power of the workers whom it trains and educates, because of the ability of those workers to participate in increased productivity, and by their spending power. Yet the funding for Unionlearn has been diminished and diminished. It is now hardly able to operate, despite being hugely popular with employers as well as employees. Clearly, however, it is not overly popular with the Government.
The second area I will touch on, very quickly, is international work. For 11 years I was chair of the women’s committee of the International Chemical & Energy Workers’ Union. The British TUC is the most respected trade union organisation worldwide. It has given training, assistance and confidence to newer organisations that have been set up around the world. The TUC sent massive numbers out to east European countries after the fall of the Iron Curtain, training those workers and union reps on the whole question of democratic structures, how to be a good steward and a good representative. Solidarity, the Polish trade union which of course helped to bring about the fall of the Iron Curtain, was then seen as a great hero—admiration that is ironic from a Government who have always taken a less-than-encouraging approach to the UK trade union movement. After the dreadful tragic collapse of Rana Plaza, who was first on the scene? IndustriALL, the international union, was out there, taking evidence, gathering information to ensure that those damaged workers were able to gain some recompense for what had happened to them.
Finally, I will comment on the whole question of equalities. Unions were the first organisations to identify the use of targets, use reserved seats—when I first joined the TUC in the early 1980s we already had reserved seats for women—and get proportionality on committees, and they work with companies up and down the land enabling those companies to use positive action to bring forward underrepresented groups within their workforces.
I think the word “partnership” has been mentioned only once in this debate, but that is what it is—a partnership between representatives of the workers and the employers, and in good workplaces that partnership brings benefits to all sides. Sometimes unions are described as greedy. As JB Priestley said, there is nothing wrong in asking for the moon, but it is very wrong to just take it.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
My Lords, I have always had a great admiration for the political antennae of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I congratulate him on this debate ahead of what will be quite an interesting debate on the trade union reform Bill. It is therefore useful to have this general debate on the contribution of trade unions in our democracy.
I also congratulate the two maiden speakers, the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, and in particular my noble friend Lady Burt. She is a legend in our party, the Liberal Democrats, for her victory in Solihull and for the 10 years during which she held that seat against all the odds. It is appropriate that this steely Midlander, who is the business spokesman for our party nationally, represents that part of the country which symbolises both the potential and achievement of industrial renaissance in this country with the turnaround of Jaguar Land Rover. We certainly look forward to her contributions in this House.
As a social democrat, I spent a career grappling with change in industry. I also frequently worked for a trade union so I, and these Benches, remain committed to sustaining, improving and supporting the work of trade unions in this country. I pay particular tribute to the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, which supported the values of trade unions. I agreed with every single word that he said.
Given that we will be debating the Trade Union Bill, I do not think that this is the moment to go into detail on it, but I will say that these Benches are opposed to the Bill, as we opposed its measures when they were proposed in the coalition. Fundamentally we are opposed to it because we see it as a partisan Bill, both industrially and politically, and because it seeks to further weaken the influence of trade unions when, frankly, they are no longer in a strong position. We think that it is irrelevant to the main economic issues of raising productivity and enhancing the country’s competitive advantage. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, challenged the Labour Benches on why they had not reformed the Thatcher measures, but I say to him that the very fact that the Labour Government did not change those measures is an argument for now leaving this field well alone.
Trade unions are not perfect—voluntary bodies never are—and I, for one, am deeply depressed by the political and industrial path being taken by the union for which I worked, the National Union of Railwaymen, although I do not think that it is fully representative of the movement. I went to work for that union inspired by what I regard as the most remarkable and brave political speech ever made by a trade union leader. It was made by Sid Weighell at the Labour Party conference in 1978, when he warned the Labour movement of the dangers of not supporting the Labour Government’s pay policy at that time. I was not the most obvious person to go and work for a trade union but I did it because I wanted to do it and because, as somebody who believed in changing management and industry in Britain, I had to understand where they came from.
On freedom of speech, we say that we may not like what people say but we will defend their right to say it, and so it is with trade unions. Despite the frustrations and the disagreements with them that we sometimes have, we will fight to maintain freedom of association to ensure that the rights and interests of employees are properly represented. Indeed, I believe that society will benefit if we do so. In this debate we have heard a number of arguments for trade unions and examples of their benefits to democracy. I will not go through them all again but I should like to draw out a few, some of which have already been mentioned.
Historically, trade unions have improved the terms and conditions of their members. I say to the House that one of the problems that we now have is that our trade unions are in a weakened position. We are now in a position where the Government have to intervene to try to arrange the living wage so that the state does not subsidise the wages paid by employers. That we are in that position is not a sign of strong trade unionism; it is a sign of weak trade unionism.
I also want to emphasise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, about boardroom pay and differentials in industry. I worked in a company which was very conscious of what it paid the board and the managers. In fact, I negotiated with the noble Baroness, Lady Dean. Frankly, I could not have faced trade union representatives if I had had a huge bonus or a huge salary increase at a time when we were announcing redundancies. That was how we behaved. It was a counterbalance which, to be frank, is lacking in much of industry and employment today, and I think that we miss it.
Historically, trade unions have made a big impact on health and safety. In debates on health and safety, too often we have concerns about regulation. People say that regulation of health and safety is completely impossible. I say that if we had more representatives on the ground, there would be less need for regulation; it would be automatic in industry, and that is a role that trade unions have played in that field.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, said—very potently, I felt—that trade unions have played a huge role in skills and education in this country. They have been very committed to self-education in their own ranks but they have also fought for equality for their members and employees in respect of apprenticeships and training. We are missing that in industry, and we are missing it in terms of the social mobility that trade unions used to produce in their ranks—and still do to a degree, although obviously the numbers have reduced—by bringing people through training and education processes.
Trade unions have also played a very important part in social cohesiveness. Obviously they have been an avenue for grievances and protests, but the involvement of local representatives in the workplace is an important act of citizenship and of commitment to the community and the broader appeal of man. We are missing that with the reduction in the number of those representatives in our workplaces.
It might also be appropriate for somebody outside the Labour Party to comment on the huge role that trade unions have played in various aspects of life—certainly in my generation. First, they saved the Labour Party in the 1980s. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, in his place, because he was assisted by that. But for them, the Labour Party would not have been transformed. Secondly—here, I give due credit to the noble Lord, Lord Monks—trade unions changed the view on Europe inside the Labour Party in the 1980s. But for the commitment to the Social Charter, countering the idea that the EU was a capitalist club, we would not be in the position we are in today with the Labour Party supporting Europe and the Conservative ranks now split. Maybe the Government can learn from that experience—indeed, I think they are doing.
Finally, unions act as a check on management in industry. I worked in the print industry and at times I would complain. We were sometimes too slow to make changes. However, we as management had to work harder, do better and be more progressive to get those changes. Eventually, we did—and we did so in my company by agreement. Similarly, things are now happening in the motor industry. Fifteen years ago, I visited Nissan when it was in its early days, and now it is the most productive plant in Europe. We heard the story of Jaguar Land Rover. None of that would have been possible without the contribution or leadership of the trade unions in those areas. We need to build better, more confident management in dealing with trade unions.
I do not accept that there is not room for the trade unions to modernise and to reach out more. I did not find the turnout of 4.4% in the GMB’s leadership election very encouraging, but falling membership will not make unions more representative. Indeed, as the membership falls and unions turn into silos, we will find—unless we try to reverse it—that the unions will be less representative.
Unions have to examine their role but so, too, does management. We have given too much attention to short-term decision-making and there has been an overemphasis on shareholder value. This is a time for the employee stakeholder to have a much more determining role. Trade unions are an essential part of a progressive social democracy and, for the foreseeable future, they will be central to progressive politics in this country.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to respond to this debate. First, I welcome the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Robathan—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, was not here to hear it—as well as that of one of the sisters, the noble Baroness, Lady Burt. As the first female chair of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party and the Government’s ambassador for women in enterprise, she knows well the strength of solidarity and support for others. Secondly, it is a pleasure because we have heard from former leading trade unionists at national and international level with a range of experience. Thirdly, I am pleased to respond to the debate because of the role that unions have played in society for well over a century.
Together with my noble friend Lord Howarth, who is in his place, I produced a book Men Who Made Labour in 2006, the centenary of the parliamentary Labour Party, which was formed by 29 Labour MPs. What was exceptional about those 29 self-educated men, most having left school by the age of 14, was how they found their confidence, their voice, their passion and their ability to speak for others through the union movement. Indeed, some 27 were active trade unionists, and eight were general secretaries of their union. It was their union experience that provided their education but also helped their apprenticeship in forming policy, explaining, negotiating, compromising, taking responsibility, understanding the positions of others and, most of all, seeing that advancing the interests of their members could not be done in the workplace alone but needed political change, whether that was through the introduction of health and safety legislation, school meals, pensions or sick pay. They learned that they could not rely on other parties but needed their own voice in Parliament—hence the Labour Representation Committee, created by the unions in 1900, and then the parliamentary Labour Party in 1906.
The contribution of these trade unionists—at the Versailles peace talks, in establishing the ILO, as Home Secretary or Prime Minister—to our democracy, to creating one of our great political parties and to the well-being of the nation and further afield was astonishing. Immediately after the 1906 election, which saw these trade unionists elected to Parliament, the Archbishop of York, in St Paul’s Cathedral, proclaimed:
“The great … mass of our working folk … has found its voice … Here are the men … who have worked in pit and factory … among the dwellers in our overcrowded cities … These men will bring first hand knowledge of the facts of life to … these problems. They will take care that amid all the business of politics ‘the poor shall not always be forgotten’”.
They lived up to that prediction, as did later trade unionists such as Jim Griffiths, the Minister.
Today, we similarly pay tribute to the movement, which really does constitute “the big society”, with over 6 million members plus the wider trade union family made up of their dependants, and also retired members, many of whom serve their community as magistrates, on health or school boards, in charities, as we heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, and of course here in your Lordships’ House, particularly perhaps by my noble friend Lord Foulkes today.
Interestingly, from my standpoint and, I am sure, that of the noble Baronesses, Lady Burt and Lady Neville-Rolfe, as well as that of my noble friends Lady Prosser and Lady Dean, women now make up the majority of union members. That is vital in an economy where women’s earnings still lag behind men’s, but where the wages of women union members are, on average, 30% higher than those of non-unionised women. As my noble friend Lord Hoyle said, union membership is proportionately higher among black and ethnic-minority workers. When discrimination, and often worse, is faced by these groups, especially at this time, it is a tribute to the trade union movement that it has embraced and incorporated minority groups into this oldest of voluntary organisations. Union organisation has helped women, the disabled and ethnic minorities get a better deal at work.
But union membership is good not just for individuals and their workmates, who also benefit from union organisation, as my noble friend Lady Dean said; the economy also benefits. As with the CBI and the employers’ organisations, as my noble friend Lord Morris said, many employers are supportive of a unionised workforce, particularly with its ability to collaborate on health and safety, productivity and training. Union workplaces are safer, largely due to the thousands of union health and safety reps. As BIS itself has demonstrated, by reducing time lost due to occupational injuries and illnesses, safety reps save taxpayers up to £0.5 billion a year. As we have heard, the motor industry improved as a result of union-employer negotiations over innovation and change, with unions playing a positive role in promoting skills and training. ACAS found that union reps play an important role in improving workforce engagement and morale, which improves productivity and quality of output, as the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, suggested.
So this is not about romantic nostalgia. It is about a modern economy and today’s politics. It is hard to understand why this Government want to shackle trade unions. They will not let them use electronic balloting, even while digital by default is being swept through government service and our welfare state. They want to outlaw good employer-union relations, often established through check-off, by effectively outlawing this in the public sector. Politically, they want to undermine the long-standing, organic relationship that the unions have with the Labour Party, by undermining the political fund system, a system not of secret donations or big money from rich companies or individuals, but a system which grew from the very origin of the party. Set up to give a voice in Parliament to working people, it is a system which allows millions of union members to make their small contribution—pennies rather than pounds a week—to keep our democracy vibrant, healthy and representative. Shame on a Government who fear that they cannot defeat their opponents politically and therefore seek to clobber them.
Anyone who believed in a pluralistic, open, big society would champion and cheer on independent workers’ organisations and facilitate the effective and efficient operation of this vital part of civic society. Clearly, the Government have other objectives. We have an opportunity today to champion, pay tribute to and thank the millions of trade unionists who volunteer their time to help their fellow workers, but we also have an opportunity to say to the Government that the unions are not an add-on to society but are part of our civic society. We should be supporting them, not undermining them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, before I respond, I join the House in congratulating my noble friend Lord Robathan and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on their excellent maiden speeches. I will not repeat the tributes, in the interests of time, but I am very excited by the wealth of experience that they bring. We know from today that they will hugely improve the quality of discussion in our House.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for initiating this debate. I am aware that he has a deep interest in the performance of our economy. I much enjoyed his speech, including his historical perspective. Of course, that was picked up on by so many noble Lords that it would take too long to list them all. However, I should say that I did medieval history for A-level, and I then did industrial relations as my special subject at university. Therefore, I have to say that I am a bit sceptical about some of the comments he made on productivity—the sorts of things he mentioned can actually increase costs and slow necessary change—but it is good to have a debate on these issues in this House.
I should also respond to the noble Lord, Lord Monks. As a south-westerner, I am looking forward to visiting the Tolpuddle flag with him—I suppose that going to see a Tolpuddle flag is the Labour equivalent of seeing etchings.
I am pleased also to talk about unions and their role in the modern economy. We have heard many examples of how unions help working people prosper in our society, in particular in an excellent speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby. I was struck by the parallel that he sought to draw with the church, including the challenge of the non-joining culture. He talked also of good partnership and the importance of stamping out modern slavery. That is an area where the Government, with the help of this House, have made radical changes. From October, the Modern Slavery Act has provided law enforcers with additional tools, including the two new civil orders, and the anti-slavery commissioner. I commend the right reverend Prelate’s own contribution in this area, and I was glad to hear also from the noble Lord, Lord Young, on the subject.
This is a free country. Everybody has the right to belong to a trade union. Equally, there is no compulsion in the workplace to do so. Closed shops are a thing of the past. I was glad to hear from my noble friend Lord Balfe about trade unionism in the Conservative Party. I agree with him that there can be value in backing more than one horse. The Government also recognise that trade unions can play a constructive role in developing the economy and, as I know only too well from my experience, in supporting employers in upskilling their staff.
On economic well-being, I should perhaps say to the noble Lord, Lord Monks, that, although he and I are often in agreement—I pay great tribute to the work that he has done in Europe over the years, as well as in the UK—I do not agree with his summary of the position of the UK today. We were the fastest-growing G7 economy in 2014. Our employment rate and our small business creation are the envy of other member states, and we are number two in the INSEAD-WIPO Global Innovation Index.
I turn to the point made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt: the trade unions have played a very important part where industrial restructuring has had to be done. She spoke rightly about the role that they played during Jaguar’s difficulties in Solihull, and the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, was right to talk about how the success of the modern car industry owes much to good industrial relations. I suppose that it is right to reflect that the current steel crisis is another example of good engagement by the trade unions. Their input in Redcar, in Scunthorpe and in Scotland before, during and after the steel summit in Rotherham last month has been invaluable.
I commend the point made by my noble friend Lord Robathan about his work with the unions in the Ministry of Defence, as I do the efforts of my noble friend Lord De Mauley and the good relations that he had with the trade unions in Defra, using that relationship to solve the perennial problem of dangerous dogs and postal workers. I know that, if he were here, my noble friend Lord Maude would pay tribute to the positive role played by the unions over public sector pension reforms and in the public services forum.
I agree about the long history of unions providing learning for their members. This is important, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, explained so well in a very thoughtful speech. My noble friend Lord Balfe talked about Unionlearn, the learning and skills organisation of the TUC, which is an excellent example of how unions help their members, employers and the country with skills development. Unionlearn has helped engage more than 53 trade unions in more than 700 workplaces. It has helped establish 600 union learning centres, where Unionlearn representatives help those with low literacy. As the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, said, it also helps older workers, which is a very important point. In the past two years, Unionlearn projects have also helped to recruit and support nearly 15,000 apprentices. My noble friend asked about the Government’s support for Unionlearn. We provided the TUC with a grant of £14 million in 2015. It is an important area, and any decision on funding beyond that will of course be subject to the outcome of the spending review.
We have a target of 3 million apprenticeships during this Parliament. Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, whom I was lucky enough to meet yesterday, has already said that she sees a role for unions in ensuring the quality of apprenticeships. We welcome this, and the input from the TUC and from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, on the new levy—the noble Lord and I have had many discussions about apprenticeships over the years and the new levy provides opportunities for all of us to contribute.
There are many important examples of where the unions have played a role beyond the direct well-being of their members. I know from experience of retail of the important cultural role that they play in health and safety. That was rightly mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth. Health and safety is very important, and it has improved hugely in my lifetime. I remember health and safety on farms as a young lass; some of it was fairly hairy.
Trade union members also participate in the many voluntary roles which help create cohesive communities—a point that was brought out so well by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, spoke of the gender pay gap and the work of unions over the years in this area. Although there is more to do, it was good to see that the recent 2015 survey of hours and earnings showed that the gender pay gap is at an all-time low. There is now a record number of women-led businesses and, partly as a result of the excellent, business-led work under the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, there are now no all-male boards in the FTSE 100. More generally, we are seeking to tackle the root causes that prevent women prospering in the workplace by providing a wider programme of support, introducing 30 hours of free childcare and giving nearly 21 million employees the ability to benefit from flexible working. Our approach is producing results, with an increase of nearly 1 million women in work between May 2010 and August 2015.
On current trade union reform, the noble Lord, Lord Monks, and others were right to say that this debate is a calm curtain-raiser to the Trade Union Bill, which was recently given its First Reading in our House. My noble friend Lord Callanan was right to talk about the consumer view and point to the problems that can be caused by the trade unions.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Before the Minister leaves that point, does she agree with her noble friend Lord Callanan, who said that trade unions by their nature are against the consumer interest by being producers? That is exactly what he said.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I was about to turn to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lea, on this issue. He referred, I believe, to a model of balance between consumer, producer and union interests and I share that general aspiration. I believe strongly in the power of well-run businesses, with good workforces, to do good, to serve consumers and to provide the taxes we need to pay for the schools, hospitals and everything else that a modern society requires.
As a parent and a grandparent, I know that when teachers go on strike, children’s education is disrupted and parents need to take time off work to look after their children. When healthcare workers strike, appointments are cancelled and patients do not get the service they deserve. When train, bus or underground workers strike, commuters cannot get to work. Even so, this Government are not seeking to ban strikes. We are introducing thresholds to require a minimum 50% turnout for all strikes, and the support of at least 40% of those entitled to strike in important public services.
I do not agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes. We must ensure that when strikes take place, particularly strikes that impact on the working families to which he referred, the strikers have the support of a reasonable number of the workforce. As my noble friend Lord de Mauley said, the public sector strikes in 2011 closed 62% of schools in England, and the NHS—I am not sure that he said this—cancelled up to 30,000 routine operations. The Treasury estimated the total impact of these strikes to be some £500 million. So, in reply to the question asked by my noble friend, that is not fair and it is not right.
Nor is it right that in 2014, the NUT closed or partly closed almost 1,500 schools; or that a strike among NHS workers was called by Unite on the basis of the support of only 12% of its members. Similarly, we have examples of strikes called on the basis of out-of-date ballots. For example, a strike undertaken by the NASUWT in October 2013 was based on a ballot mandate from November 2011. That is a difference of almost two years. It cannot be right.
That is why we have introduced the Trade Union Bill, which we will debate shortly. As others have not sought to run through the detail, I shall not do so either. However, I emphasise that the Bill seeks to strike a fair and effective balance between the rights of unions, the needs of employers and the interests of the majority of people who rely on important public services. Our aim is to provide a modern industrial relations framework to better support an effective, collaborative approach—which has been the sense of today’s debate and my own experience—and to resolve industrial disputes.
The Government recognise that trade unions have a valuable role to play in developing our workforce and in ensuring that the vulnerable are able to participate in work. We have heard many good examples of this today. I have stressed the importance of trade unions and why I believe it is right that the legislative framework needs reform. We are seeking through the Trade Union Bill to modernise the relationship between trade unions and their members and to redress the balance between the rights of trade unions and the rights of the general public. These are moderate, necessary and welcome reforms. They do not ban the right to strike and do not weaken the voice of working people or their ability to join trade unions.
We pledged to undertake these reforms in our manifesto and we have brought the Bill forward as a party that believes in trade unions. We are, as my noble friend Lord Balfe said, proud to win the support of many trade union members at elections. We want trade unions to carry on doing their excellent work in so many areas.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, the debate has been much more effective than I had expected—or even hoped—and it has been a pleasure to sit through all of it. Particularly effective were the two contrasting maiden speeches. I would hesitate to question the noble Baroness, Lady Burt—her having been deputy governor of Holloway among her many achievements—but I can assure her that the trade unions are now strongly supportive of mutuals and the Co-operative movement. Apart from that, it was a wonderful speech and we look forward to hearing from her many more times. My old friend, even though he is on the other side of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Robathan—whom my noble friend Lord Young described as having SAS views on the trade union movement—was equally effective. Again, we look forward to many more exciting and interesting contributions from him.
It was interesting that so few Tories participated in the debate. The noble Lords, Lord De Mauley and Lord Suri, did their duty by the Whips and will no doubt be suitably thanked for that. Apart from that, the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, was interesting, as usual. He has had an interesting political journey, and it shows. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, made an excellent contribution. He has had an even more exciting journey. He has moved right around the Chamber but always seems to be in the right place at the end. He certainly was today.
As expected, we had the most magnificent tours de force from the trade union Barons and from the Baronesses. It was interesting that the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, managed to elicit, in an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, the real stark face of the Tories as far as this issue is concerned. The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, rightly reminded us that I had forgotten to mention the wonderful international work of the trade union movement that I know so well. I remember talking to some old friends, trade union activists, who served in the International Brigade in Spain and did a wonderful job. We know what they did in Chile and elsewhere, and that must not be forgotten.
However, with no disrespect to all the other speakers, the first of my two highlights was the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, who said that it was his brother who was the soapbox orator. I think of Leslie as the soapbox orator, who was really good at it, as well. The noble Lord made a fantastic, enthusiastic and positive contribution, which I expected. However, what was unexpected was that I, as a heathen, agreed with everything that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby said. It was an encouraging speech—one of the best in the debate. I have many times spoken about partnership and there is an interesting comparison between the church and the trade union movement. He raised the interesting issue of the non-joining culture, from which all organisations suffer. I am hinting to him that that might in itself might be the subject for a debate, because it is a worry for all who are trying to build up democracy.
Overwhelmingly what came through was a recognition of the value of the trade union movement and its positive contribution. As to productivity, which I have studied, there is no doubt that you get better productivity from a happy, contented and organised workforce. I can guarantee that. Many examples and studies that show that.
I welcome the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham—it was encouraging to hear from the Liberal Democrat Benches their wholehearted support for the trade union movement—together with what my noble friend Lady Hayter said in her restrained but strong way.
I say this to the Minister: I hope she will acknowledge the sincere strength of feeling on the issue of the Trade Union Bill. I hope also she will say to her government colleagues that they are not going to have an easy time in this House when the Bill comes here. Sometimes in this House, we get the feeling that we should ask, “What are we doing here, when all the decisions seem to be made elsewhere?”. I hope she will take back to the people who make the decisions that there is a strong feeling in this place about the value and importance of the trade union movement. As I say, she will not have an easy time of it with the Bill.
I shall finish as I started, by talking about the positive role of the trade union movement within our democracy and our economy. That has been celebrated in this debate. It has been acknowledged time after time in speech after speech from all parts of the House. The trade union movement should be proud of the House of Lords for giving it such a warm welcome and such a great endorsement.
Sport: Exclusion of Drugs
Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking at an international level to maintain high standards by all countries and international sporting organisations in order to ensure the exclusion of drugs from sport.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when a little over a week ago I put down this Question for Short Debate on a topical matter, I had, as always, that slight feeling that the subject would have slipped from the news. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Indeed, this issue has become more relevant than it was when I secured the debate. At that point there had merely been an outcry against Russia, but since then Russia has been banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations, the IAAF. If ever there was a subject that is full of acronyms—and I do not like them—it is this one. Today, five other nations have been declared non-compliant: Argentina, Ukraine, Bolivia, Israel and Andorra—one of the world’s largest nations along with one of its smallest. More worrying still is the list of nations that have been placed on a watchlist for non-compliance. The coverage I have seen puts Brazil at the top. Brazil is the nation that will host the next Olympic and Paralympic Games. If anyone is feeling slightly complacent about this, let us look at who is with Brazil on the watchlist: France, Belgium, Greece, Mexico and Spain, four of which are members of the European Union. The international element of this is overwhelming.
I shall return to the original subject. ARD, a German television station, did a wonderful piece of investigative journalism which pointed out the problems in Russia. For this the station should be thanked wholeheartedly by the rest of the world. Indeed, it is a good thing for this House to be able to thank any branch of the press for doing excellent work, and I hope others will follow me in that.
The World Anti-Doping Agency sent in an independent commission to look at Russia. The commission’s report is one of the most depressing documents I have ever had to go through. There is state corruption or state collusion in corruption—a sort of “Everyone else in the world is doing it so you must do it better”—when it comes to doping. Bribes are being made in a system that was corrupt anyway. Noble Lords will know that when they normally read a report, they go through it saying, “This is fine but that is not”. Only around one in 30 lines that I read said that someone was not breaking the rules. It was basically appalling. On the action taken, after the report was published, the only thing the IAAF could do was put a suspension in place. Why does this matter? It matters because sport matters. The Olympics, which people are now saying are tarnished or were sabotaged, may have had some of the shine rubbed off, but that is probably overstating the case. A celebration of sporting activity brings people together.
This scandal may be about athletics, or athletics-led, but if there is a culture of cheating, everything is up for grabs and the whole thing is under threat. We do not think rugby union has any major problems with drugs at the moment, but Russia could have qualified for the last World Cup. However, the whole of Russian sport has now been called into question. Indeed, when we look at the non-compliance list we see that Argentina, which reached the semi-finals of the tournament, is on it. What this means for football and the other major sports, we do not know, but there are major problems in this area.
We should remember that sport is effectively recognised as a kind of “wonder drug” in terms of healthcare. Getting the people of this nation fitter is seen as a way of helping and encouraging them to make themselves healthy and thus save money in the NHS. It does not help if the international example being set by those at the top shows that they have been systematically cheating and so have taken away from the importance of this issue. It just does not work.
What should we be doing? The independent commission was brought in by WADA from the outside to report on these matters. It may be a model that we will have to use again and again. My first real question is: are the Government of the United Kingdom prepared to support and help fund all these steps in the future? Something will have to be done in this area. When I looked at it originally, I thought that perhaps we should demand that Russia should pay for the monitoring in the future. It would be a nice idea, would it not? An independent commission, perhaps even a permanent one, is what is needed, or at least it will have to be regularly reconstituted. Also, how are we going to interact with our international partners to make sure that something good comes out of this? Those are very real questions.
We also need to look at what we doing with legislation on the home front. There is a long-running debate around criminalisation: do we criminalise those who are taking part in doping? We should remember that we have had cases of it in our own country. Have the Government looked at the various models which have been put in place elsewhere? Which ones do they think work best? The gut reaction is that “something should be done”. If, however, that is not seen to be the most efficient way forward, should it mean six months in prison as opposed to a four-year ban and a change of career? I do not know which of those would bite harder. What are we doing to support our own agencies and checking to see whether they are able to do their job in the best way possible? If we wish to enjoy the benefits of sport, it is quite clear that we cannot merely leave it to the sporting bodies themselves. They need support and structure from the outside.
The Russian example is one where the state intervenes and condones these practices, at which point everything basically goes to hell. Are we going to intervene to support these independent structures? Also, how are we going to support whistleblowers both here and abroad? How are we going to make sure that someone who is charged with making sure that people are compliant is actually doing that? On reading the report, it is quite clear that no one felt that there was anywhere they could go to report these practices, and that was a huge part of the culture. All small organisations should get involved, along with political parties, sports bodies, the local golf club—you name it—because they all have this problem to a greater or lesser extent. Where can you go and where is it safe to report these practices that is outside the structure you are part of? What are we doing in this area? These are things with which the Government can help, even if only indirectly, and they will be much more efficient if they move forward with friends. We have to co-operate on this both with those we talk to regularly and those we talk to only occasionally. Sport is a forum that has made us regularly come together in the past, and it is where people can bury their differences.
The noble Lord, Lord Bates, has talked about the Olympic truce. Let us take a little of that spirit and carry it on to make sure we maintain the momentum. Can the Government give us some assurances about what they are doing in this area? I ask that because this is what is required. The more I look at this, the more worried I am.
I finally ask: what are we going to do to initialise the problem of accepting that we have ongoing tasks? The noble Viscount may not have that information because I did not give him advance warning of that question. It is clear that things have expanded, but do we have plans to ensure that we take this on for the future? Will we be able to institute groups that will lead the athletics and sporting groups into a format where they undertake activity that goes beyond current normal talking? We clearly need that.
I could go into a great more detail about the report. The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, is shaking his head—he is quite wise. I shall end by saying simply that unless we take action now we will throw away something very good, and I do not think that any of us wants to do that.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, we might have hoped that the World Anti-Doping Agency—WADA—would have exposed the most recent scandal involving Russia. We might have expected WADA to have welcomed the in-depth news investigative journalism serving the cause of clean athletes. But the reverse is true. It was not WADA; it was the German broadcaster ADR and then the Sunday Times. It was the excellent work of Hajo Sappelt. It was not WADA which broke the BALCO story and exposed Marion Jones, but the law enforcement agencies. It was not WADA but the Sunday Times and the law enforcement agencies which exposed the former era of pervasive drugs in cycling. When they did, the response of sports administrators too often defied belief. They went straight to their default position of blaming the press—a declaration of war against the Sunday Times in athletics, while Craig Reedie continued to praise Russia in his capacity as president of WADA. Why?
The problem is a straightforward conflict of interest. WADA is equally owned by Governments and the IOC. Those IOC members involved see Russia’s electoral power in the world of sports administration wielding a significant influence. The same applies in international sports federations. Where Governments and their sports administrations are one and the same, they risk losing political support if they show determined leadership in the war against drugs wherever they are endemic.
WADA is in need of fundamental and far-reaching reform and Governments have done far too little. Why Governments? Because they are full partners in WADA but their level of representation is often well beneath the seniority in government required to manage this issue, which is now a crisis. The Government pay a significant contribution to WADA, so now is the time for my honourable friend the Minister to call for an independent audit, because it is failing to lead and failing to succeed. WADA was even subject to serious criticism by its own independent commission, led by a former WADA president. The noble Lord, Lord Addington—I am grateful to him for raising the subject—outlined the 11 countries which are currently non-compliant or on a watch list. The dark and dirty underbelly of sport is being laid bare. It is time for sponsors to act. It is time for Governments to act. It is time for sports administrators to act. Despite all the warnings, we hobble from scandal to scandal.
Dick Pound, who headed the independent commission’s first report, concluded that London was sabotaged by the drug cheats. The head of WADA, Craig Reedie, quickly and publicly disagreed with his own independent commission, further compounding the mixed messages coming from WADA. Has he forgotten that clean athletes have been denied their medals? Competing chemists’ laboratories work around the clock to boost the chances of their athletes through drug-induced cheating. Now we know that Russia’s endemic corruption sabotaged our Games. Honest would-be champions suffer when the chance to fulfil their Olympic ambitions is stolen from them; when Olympic medals are snatched from their grasp; and when they are robbed not just of Olympic glory but of all the associated rewards they deserve.
The World Anti-Doping Agency boss, David Howman, believes that one in 10 athletes is a drugs cheat—a figure less than that arrived at by the 2015 Dutch National Anti-Doping Agency report, which concluded that 14% to 39% is the best available estimate. David Howman at least had the courage to tell an Australian and New Zealand Sports Law Association conference last month:
“I want to pose the question: should doping be a criminal matter? It is in Italy, and WE think—some of US—that the real deterrent that cheating athletes fear is the fear of going to prison not the fear of being stood down from their sport for a year, two years, four years but a fear of going to prison”.
Yet days later, in the face of a growing interest in legislative proposals for criminalisation of doping in sport around the world, his boss Craig Reedie said that WADA is,
“completely opposed to the criminalisation of athletes”.
We should follow many other countries and consider the criminalisation of doping in sport. I welcome the announcement by the Minister for Sport that this is under review. I wonder whether the Minister here today can update the House on progress in that regard.
As the Russian crisis besetting athletics was breaking, WADA was quick to stand by Russia. The president wrote to Natalia Zhelanova, the Russian anti-doping commissar, stating:
“I wish to make it clear to you and to the Minister that there is no action being taken by WADA that is critical of the efforts which I know have been made, and are being made, to improve anti-doping efforts in Russia”.
WADA, he continued, were,
“pleased that these relationships have survived much of the adverse publicity caused by the ARD television programs (which are likely to continue for some time) … I value the relationships with Minister Mutko and would be grateful if you (Natalia Zhelanova) will inform him that there is no intention in WADA to do anything to affect that relationship”.
How could WADA and the Governments—its members—get the situation so horribly wrong? It is time for Governments to join a call for a full and independent review into both their own and their member state contributions to WADA, and to support the call for far-reaching and much overdue reform. This audit should, please, be led by totally independent lawyers and medics, supported by clean athletes with the skill sets needed to lead the campaign on doping in sport worldwide. It should not be led by people who rely on IOC members and International Sports Federation representatives for their electoral success—for their jobs. Such a soft approach against the country with the highest number of drug cheats in the world beggars belief in the fight on behalf of clean athletes.
Equally serious, another senior member and close friend of the president of WADA, Pat Hickey, who is on the International Olympic Committee’s executive board, went public within days of the publication of the damning revelations in the Pound Report, confident that Russia will be back for Rio. Every time that is said by a senior IOC member before action is taken, the compliance bar is being lowered. The principle of zero tolerance is fast becoming a contradiction in terms.
Those in this House who regularly speak in debates on sport look to the Government to ensure that full transparency, accountability and professional management are in place before tax and lottery money are invested. The corridors of sport, I am afraid, are riddled with conflicts of interest. We have our own example. Perhaps the Minister could inform the House what action was taken when Nicole Sapstead, the UK Anti-Doping chief executive, sent emails to the head of the British Olympic Association—I declare an interest, having chaired it in the run-up to London 2012—after an investigation by the Sunday Times revealing widespread blood doping in athletics, stating that,
“we will do everything we can to ensure the focus is on the positive news. The last thing we want is a story like this detracting from the Rio countdown”.
The role of all anti-doping agencies should be wholly, necessarily and exclusively focused on tackling drug abuse in sport. There can never be any other considerations.
It all comes back to those in charge and the urgent need for a step change in the governance of sport both nationally and internationally. Governance is critical. All office holders in international sports organisations should be paid the going rate for their jobs. Conflicts of interest must end. The test used in your Lordships’ House of whether a reasonable person would believe that a conflict existed must apply to all senior sports administrators both nationally and internationally, starting at the top. The moment you choose to be a leading sports administrator, you have to turn away from seeking to make money from sport as a businessman or woman. After all, it is very difficult to substantiate that you are going to spend every waking hour tackling doping in sport if you have a highly paid day job in sport, accountable to your shareholders.
Michael Beloff QC is advising the IAAF and my noble friend Lord Coe. In the light of the current crisis and in the interests of good governance, that advice should be made public. I ask the Minister to seek to obtain that advice and place it in the House Library.
I conclude by giving the reason why I feel so strongly about this. It is because the casualties are the clean sportsmen and sportswomen. Cheating is inimical to the very essence of sport and to its philosophy of team spirit, honesty and loyalty. Cheating, by whatever means, has no place in sport. These cheats have shredded the dreams of clean athletes with every needle they inject. They have destroyed the years of training and competition necessary for a clean athlete to reach the pinnacle of sport.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for this timely debate. I also welcome the Minister to the world of acronyms.
When I see the cases in the press about a sport that I love and a sport I participated in, part of me is hugely disappointed. However, as an ex-athlete and a fan, I am also pleased because these issues need to be raised. There have been rumours and speculation, but we cannot act on them; we need cold, hard facts about what is happening in the world of sport, because it has a much greater effect. It affects parents’ choices about which sports they allow their children to do. It affects participation, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said. It affects how people view activity. This also has a massive impact on the UK.
Personally, I have a strong view on athletes who are caught cheating. If I had a preference I would ban them from sport for life. I recognise that that is extremely difficult to do, but it is a huge privilege to compete for your country in your sport. A certain responsibility has to go with that. As an athlete, I was on the Whereabouts programme and I was tested. As a young female athlete, providing a sample is hugely daunting. The first time I was called into a test, I did not particularly know what I was about to do. You have to be stripped from your bra to your knees and you have someone watch you give a sample. That is part of your job as an athlete and part of your responsibility. I willingly did it because I really believe that sport at this level has to be clean.
I argued consistently over the years that any lottery-funded athlete should be part of the programme. Although in the early years of lottery funding Paralympic athletes were not on the programme, I am delighted that they now are. One of the misconceptions about disabled athletes is that there is a different list of testing. It is exactly the same. Very few disabled athletes take medication for their condition, but we are subject to exactly the same tests as everyone else.
I declare an interest in anti-doping. I sat on the first UCI investigation into Lance Armstrong, which seemed like a good idea at the time but it was incredibly ill fated. As a fan of cycling, I watched each of Armstrong’s wins. I was amazed. I wore his yellow band, until, at the end of 2004, I was told to take it off by someone I trust in sport. The UCI announced in October 2012 that it would establish a fully independent external commission to investigate the allegations from USADA, the US Anti-Doping Agency. John Coates, the president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport and a senior member of the IOC was asked to set up this commission. I was joined by Sir Philip Otton and Australian lawyer Malcolm Holmes. The plan was that we would have a team of forensic accountants and medical experts who would advise the commission. We were due to hold a two-week hearing. In the end it was a single day, because the UCI, even though it funded it and spent a significant amount of money, refused to hand over a single piece of paper. It quickly became obvious that it had no intention of being involved in the process. Brian Cookson, who stood as president on the platform of sorting out the sport, has since carried out a further investigation.
However, it is not just the athletes taking drugs, but the corruption and everything that goes with it. It is the bribery and the coercion. I have a certain degree of sympathy for the Russian athletes. It would not have been a choice for them; it would have been, “Do this or else”. I also did an investigation for British Athletics when Dwain Chambers came back into the sport after serving a ban period. It was a very messy period. Here was a young man who had lots of talent and who had made some really poor choices. Again, I had a huge amount of sympathy for him, but a number of people in the UK knew that he was going into a destructive and suspected environment, but they did not stop him. There was nothing we could do about that.
Not only do I take a tough stance about athletes; it is also about coaches and associated personnel, because rarely do athletes do this on their own. Taking performance-enhancing drugs is relatively easy; they are quite easy to obtain. However, it is understanding the microdosing and how to avoid detection that you need a huge amount of expertise on. It is quite expensive as well.
I was disappointed when the British Olympic Association was forced to change its rule. The BOA stood up very strongly in the world and said, “We do not want to take anyone who served a banned period to the Olympics”, but because of international rules it had to change that. I was disappointed when it went from a four-year ban to a two-year ban—luckily it is going back the other way—because we have to send out this really strong deterrent that taking performance-enhancing drugs in sport is just not the right thing to do.
We found out about the case of BALCO because there was a falling out between Victor Conte—the architect of the drugs—and one of the coaches, Trevor Graham. He coached Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery and was the one who sent the syringe to WADA, which enabled them to develop the tests. We cannot forget that Marion Jones never failed a drugs test. There are other athletes in the world who have and it has been covered up by their federation. This has to stop. We cannot overestimate the challenge that the noble Lord, Lord Coe, is going through, but I believe that you have to be on the inside. There have been rumours around the Russian athletes for a number of years, but you need to have the facts of who has taken drugs.
Just recently, a 17 year-old Chinese athlete, Qing Wenyi, died at a training camp. They believe that that was from state-sponsored drug taking. She will be one of many athletes who we will never hear about, who have no choice about this, but sport is their way to a better life. If it is a choice between taking drugs and potentially ending up in prison, the athletes will make the choice in front of them.
In paralympic sport this is not such an issue, although this week a Russian athlete, Alexander Zverev, has been banned for a nine-month period for taking cannabinoids. It is very expensive to successfully dope competitors involved in paralympic sport, and paralympic sport does not have the money to do that. However, as more money moves into paralympic sport, that may become more of an issue. The issue in paralympic sport is around cheating classification. The difficulty is that athletes are divided into different classes based on their level of impairment. Athletes will fall one side of the line or the other, and it is not as clear cut as just breaking the rules.
On 12 October this year, as reported in Inside the Games, a web-based newsletter, the IPC issued a statement about what it calls intentional manipulation and said that it,
“is in grave danger of undermining the credibility”,
of paralympic swimming. This statement refers just to swimming but I am sure there are issues in other sports. An email seen by Inside the Games, sent from the IPC chief executive Xavier Gonzalez to national paralympic committee and national federation presidents, outlines the threat posed by intentional manipulation. The email entitled, “Athlete/Support Personnel Conduct during IPC Swimming Classification” states that this is a “serious issue”. The email continues,
“we believe we have witnessed, and have heard of, a number of cases of alleged intentional misrepresentation during the classification evaluation process of athletes”.
This has a massive effect on the sport but did not warrant front page news or much reporting in the sports press. The email continues:
“Wherever IM takes place it strikes at the heart of fair play, threatens the concept of excellence in Para-sport, and goes against the requirements of the IPC Classification Code and the classification rules of IPC Swimming”.
However, there is no penalty. If an athlete gets moved, nothing happens to the country or to the athlete. For me that has serious implications for the future of paralympic sport because some countries will seek to move athletes into a classification which will better aid their performance. I believe that it is a responsibility of sport in the UK to ensure that athletes are correctly classified. We only have to look back to the 2000 Paralympics, when the Spanish basketball team pretended to have learning disabilities. It turned out that most of them were journalists. They cheated the classification with the result that a group of learning disabled athletes got thrown out of the sport. That has a huge impact on the wider sport and is very disappointing.
In this country we have UKAD, which is under the threat of a funding cut. We should ensure that it receives greater support. The noble Lord, Lord Lord Moynihan, was right to talk about WADA’s independence. At the moment it is too closely tied up and it is impossible to find a way through. We have to have an independent body. So my question to the Minister is: can the Government guarantee that appropriate funding will be made available to UKAD to ensure that it is able to do the necessary testing? Will Her Majesty’s Government consider criminalising the use of performance enhancing drugs?
I also believe strongly that athletes should be rehabilitated. We should not just penalise them. But now is the time when we have to take a much tougher stance or this will carry on and in another year, five years or 10 years we will have more front page headlines on this issue and it will never end.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Addington for introducing this debate. He referred briefly to rugby. One of the best moments in the recent Rugby World Cup was when Scotland was playing South Africa at the home of Newcastle United, St James’ Park, and Stuart Hogg, the full back, took a dive to the floor when he was brushed by a South African prop. The Welsh referee, Nigel Owens, told him that he had seen what happened. He said:
“There was nothing wrong with it. Dive like that again and come back here in two weeks and play”,
soccer. He added, “Not today. Watch it”. There is a difference in culture between sports. Perhaps professional soccer players are extraordinarily fragile in the penalty area. Is it cheating or is it all part of the game?
Rugby has its own problems. It is my experience that violence on the pitch is proportionate to the age of the players: the more veteran the player, the more likely he will commit acts on the field which would have him arrested if he committed them in the street. But, of course, they are protected by the omertà of the team. Players do not want to see policemen on the pitch. I recall one game when a second row in the scrum where I was flanker landed a punch on the opposing prop which broke his jaw. The referee got it wrong and sent our prop off instead of the second row. I put on my professional cap and said to the second row, “Frank, say nothing, don’t admit anything, don’t deny anything”. He was not prosecuted but the player with the broken jaw made an application for criminal injuries compensation. I do not know what happened to it so perhaps that was not the right thing to do.
It is this traditional silence which has protected those high-performance coaches, the so-called sports scientists and sports staff who have engaged in the distribution of prohibited substances to athletes and professional sports players and are undermining the integrity of sport. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, pointed out the pressures on the athletes themselves when they are under this influence.
In May 2006, the Spanish police launched Operation Puerto with the aim of cracking down on doping in sport. It was aimed at cycling, though few were sanctioned out of the dozens implicated. A Mr Fuentes, a former gynaecologist known as Dr Blood, was at the heart of that conspiracy. However, there is no specific crime in Spain for cheating in sport or other sporting fraud. He was in April 2013 given a one-year suspended sentence for endangering public health. Hundreds of blood samples were ordered by the court to be destroyed. Spain had won only four gold medals in 92 years of Olympic competition before the Barcelona Games in 1992. At that event, Spain won 13 gold medals. Dr Blood’s wife, Cristina Perez, an athlete who had been banned for drug offences after the 1988 Olympics, spoke about her husband’s work in the build-up to Barcelona:
“I know what happened in 1992 and I’m a Pandora’s Box that, if opened, could bring down sport. But out of respect for my companions, the people who sacrificed so much, I’m staying quiet, although I could speak out and ruin all those caught up in this little world”.
There it is: silence among the participants.
Other scandals have followed. Marina Hyde, writing in the Guardian in July 2013, put it very well. She said that cheats,
“ruin it for everyone else—participants, spectators—in many and diverse ways. They ruin it for years, for everyone. They turn expert observers into pained inquisitors; they make kids who should be dreamers into cynics; they retain the power to turn age-old human contests into an irrelevance. And ultimately, as the increasingly distrusted spectacles of cycling and sprinting are showing, they pervert the very desirability of being victorious”.
In 2011 the Australian Crime Commission began a project to consider the extent of the use of performance-enhancing and image-enhancing drugs by professional athletes in Australia, the size of the market and the extent of organised criminal involvement. It concluded in its report, published in 2013, that there was,
“a culture in some professional sports in Australia of administering untested and experimental substances to athletes in the hope they will provide an advantage in the highly competitive world of professional sport. In some instances, the substances are not yet approved for human use”.
But of course athletes accepted them—under pressure, perhaps, but they accepted them. Such drugs were also being used by sub-elite athletes competing at various levels of competition.
Now we have the report of the independent commission set up by WADA, which makes very depressing reading. The International Association of Athletics Federations, by 22 votes to one, suspended the All-Russia Athletic Federation provisionally and presumably after a hearing will proceed to full suspension. If the findings of the commission are upheld, no amount of assurances for the overhaul of sports governance in Russia or promises of good behaviour for the future should permit Russia to participate in the Rio Olympics. If that means that some Russians who are clean miss out, tough. It is only by peer pressure from such athletes that the culture of doping can be overcome. Nothing could be more disgusting than the soliciting of bribes by senior members of the federation to suppress the positive findings of drug misuse.
The investigation uncovered evidence that the IAAF itself had failed in its duty to ensure,
“the health and wellbeing of the ‘Athletics Family’”.
Instead, it found that,
“there existed a consistent disregard for ethical behaviour and a conspiracy to conduct and conceal corrupt behaviour by particular highly placed members and officials of IAAF”,
and the Russian federation, hence the arrest of the former president. We all should wish the noble Lord, Lord Coe, all the best in trying to clean up the mess. But I am not filled with any confidence by the news last weekend that the IAAF has appointed an inspection team with the terms of reference to,
“verify the reforms programme in Russia to enable the All-Russian Athletics Federation to gain reacceptance for IAAF membership”.
As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, pointed out, it is the electoral strength of that country in the governance of sport that no doubt leads to terms of reference such as those.
I am afraid we have reached the stage where the criminal law should be quite explicit about fraud, drugs and match-fixing in sport. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, did not refer to the Bill that he introduced in the previous Session, which, like the law of many of the Australian states, makes match-fixing a specific crime. But he has also drafted simple criminal offences in respect of drugs. He handed me a copy of the Bill at the Handa conference we went to recently, and I am very grateful to him. He has two new offences. The first is:
“An athlete is guilty of an offence if he or she knowingly takes a prohibited substance with the intention, or one of the intentions, of enhancing his or her performance”—
simple. Secondly, the Bill said that:
“A person belonging to the entourage of an athlete is guilty of an offence if he or she encourages or assists or hides awareness of the relevant athlete taking a prohibited substance with the intention, or one of the intentions, of enhancing such athlete’s performance”.
That is the way ahead. The noble Lord’s maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment was, in my view, far too low when compared with the 10 years that the Australian states have imposed. At the end of the day, it is the clean athletes who suffer from this invasion of their sport and I hope that we will hear from the Minister some positive steps towards dealing with this problem.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for initiating this incredibly timely and important debate. As we have heard, doping is wrong because it provides athletes with an unfair and fraudulent advantage over their competitors. It can also be harmful to individual athletes and their health. It may also involve associated criminal activity, such as the trafficking of specified substances. As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, it also undermines the spirit of the sport. It is unethical and contrary to the values of fair play and respect for one’s opponent.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, reminded us of Lance Armstrong. What I found most shocking about his cheating was the apparent ease with which it was done. Threats of libel action against the media, large sums of money and vested interests all seemed to play their part in keeping the relevant authorities silent. With the report published by the World Anti-Doping Agency on 9 November, all those ingredients appear once again in play. As was highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would the level of corruption found by the WADA have been uncovered without the original German media investigation? The WADA report said that,
“acceptance of cheating at all levels is widespread”,
in Russia and suggested that neither the Russians’ anti-doping agency nor ARAF, the Russian federation, can be considered anti-doping code-compliant.
The 2012 Olympic Games do not come through this unscathed either. The Russian Sports Minister, Vitaly Mutko, reacted to the possibility that medals won by Russian athletes in London may be taken away by saying that,
“it’s the British system of doping control that operated there”,
under the leadership of the IOC, so our good name will be tarnished. Despite their initial reluctance, as we have heard, the International Association of Athletics Federations council members voted 22 to one in favour of Russia’s athletics federation being provisionally suspended from international competition, including the Olympic Games, for its alleged involvement in widespread doping.
What is perhaps most shocking is that, despite the scale of the allegations, they have been described as only the tip of the iceberg. In backing Russia’s suspension from competition, Ed Warner, the UK Athletics chairman, echoed Dick Pound’s views that there is more to come. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, there are four, five, six or more nations with which athletics has a real problem.
The IAAF president, the noble Lord, Lord Coe, told BBC Sport:
“This is a wake-up call for all of us”,
and that he is wholly,
“focused on the changes that need to be made”.
Although the noble Lord was elected IAAF president only in August, he was vice-president for eight years, and current events make you wonder whether he was asleep on the job. I do not suppose that his being the first chair of FIFA’s ethics committee under Sepp Blatter or his employment by Nike, a company that supplies Russian athletes with their kit, will help people better to understand his judgment. Whatever view you take on these matters, no one can doubt the noble Lord’s obvious integrity, but his judgment must be beyond question as the investigations move forward. The question now is how he can best restore credibility. It is clear that no one within the organisation commands the confidence necessary to introduce transparency and accountability. The noble Lord will therefore need to ensure that at the IAAF he has a competent team of independent people around him able and willing to tackle cheating and corruption without fear or favour. Failure to act decisively will put the reputation of world athletics in grave peril.
Sadly, the implications of the WADA report may not be limited to athletics, with Pound adding that it is not the only sport with a doping problem. Baseball and, as we have heard, cycling have been beset by doping scandals in recent times, while a corruption crisis still involves football’s world governing body, FIFA. We now have people from the top of football and athletics potentially facing criminal proceedings. One action that the Government must take is to urge the National Crime Agency to investigate whether any crimes have taken place on UK soil.
This is not just about preventing doping in sport. It is clear from these revelations that a culture change is required, which is much more difficult to achieve. Our schools and education are a good starting point, and I ask the Minister whether consideration is being given to the programmes that can be undertaken, starting at the basic level in schools. At the end of the day, I wholeheartedly agree with the position of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, about WADA. It needs to be strengthened; that must be a priority and it must be a priority for this Government.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I begin, as have other noble Lords, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for calling this timely debate on an issue that strikes right at the heart of sporting integrity. Like every other sports fan, I was shocked at the conclusions of the independent commission’s report into allegations about Russian athletes. The noble Lord was withering in his comments about its contents, as was the noble Lord, Lord Collins. To find that top athletes whom many look up to are doping is difficult for most people to understand, but for it to be part of a wider-scale, state-sponsored conspiracy is even harder to comprehend.
I will pick up on a number of points made about the German documentary that led to the expose. I strongly agree and accept that the free press and the documentary makers deserve a great amount of credit for their invaluable work. In this regard, credit should also go to the Sunday Times, which has not only reported on doping but uncovered serious allegations in relation to FIFA. We do not accept or recognise any of the comments made by the Russian Sports Minister who criticised the outcome of the commission.
The report’s findings could read as a work of fiction. However, our experience from the events in cycling during the 1990s and the first decade of this century suggests that the findings in athletics are to be taken very seriously. While we have confidence in the robustness of the anti-doping system in the UK, we should never be complacent. International engagement is important in creating a global level playing field for our athletes to compete on.
It is important at this point that I set out the structure of anti-doping internationally and the level of UK involvement. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, I must apologise for the number of acronyms that I am about to unleash on the House, but this will explain the role of various bodies in being compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA. Established in 2005, UNESCO’s International Convention against Doping in Sport is the primary instrument that underpins governmental support for anti-doping in each signatory state, and is a legally binding framework for Governments to recognise. WADA was established in 1999 and is responsible for developing, implementing and monitoring compliance with the world anti-doping code, known as “the code”, and international standards.
I would like to pick up on some comments made by my noble friend Lord Moynihan on WADA. I take note of the strong criticism that he made of that organisation. He is correct in saying that the Government fund WADA, but we have confidence in the work that it does. The fact that we would not be present here today discussing this important matter had WADA not commissioned the independent report is a moot point to make, but I shall make some further points about WADA later on in my comments.
International sports federations such as the IOC and IAAF are signatories to the code and responsible for its implementation and for testing at their international competitions. In addition, national anti-doping organisations such as UK Anti-Doping, or UKAD, are responsible for educating and testing athletes and ensuring that our national governing bodies of sport are compliant with the code. In turn, they are responsible for tackling doping as a condition of membership of their international federation.
The UK’s traditional tough stance on drugs cheats is reflected in the work carried out by UKAD. In the UK, the Government have implemented the UNESCO convention by way of the national anti-doping policy, and task UKAD with delivering key government commitments pursuant to the UNESCO convention. It is pleasing to note that large-scale sporting events in the UK, from London 2012 to Glasgow 2014, and the recent Rugby World Cup, have seen low levels of positive tests. While that is encouraging, we must ensure that we are never complacent in the fight against doping. In 2017, London hosts the Athletics World Championships, and organisers are aiming to put on the cleanest championships ever. Organisers of major events can therefore be sure that the robust anti-doping systems used in the UK are a deterrent to athletes who cheat.
I am pleased to say that UKAD is widely viewed as one of the world’s leading national anti-doping organisations. It drives a robust clean sports programme, focusing on testing and sharing intelligence with law-enforcement agencies, as well as its excellent athlete education programme. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, raised the question of the funding of UKAD. It is subject to the Government’s spending review, to be announced on 25 November, but as noble Lords might expect I am unable to comment at this particular time. However, I reassure the House that the Government greatly value the work of UKAD, which has led to it being a world-leading organisation.
I am pleased to confirm that the UK, and our Crown dependencies and overseas territories, which have the UNESCO convention extended to them, are fully compliant with the convention’s commitments. In addition to national commitments, the UK is extremely proactive at international level in combating doping in sport. Of course, this is the essence of this debate. The national anti-doping policy requires UKAD to influence international policy, and conduct international advocacy for doping-free sport. The UK is a member of the bureau that seeks to implement resolutions adopted by UNESCO’s Conference of Parties. The UK is represented at the Council of Europe monitoring group meetings to assess and ensure that implementation of the convention is effective.
The UK also chairs the Council of Europe’s legal issues advisory group. The UK is represented at the ad hoc European committee for the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is known as CAHAMA. It is a forum that looks at the issues concerning relations between the Council of Europe, its member states and WADA and agrees a common European position ahead of meetings of WADA’s foundation board. It is important to note that WADA looks to pair national anti-doping organisations that it feels are underperforming or in need of support and advice with high-performing counterparts. To use a diving analogy, it is akin to a buddy system. For example, UKAD has been asked by WADA to work with its Belarusian counterpart to reach the required standard under the code to become compliant. In a similar vein, King’s College, London, the UK’s WADA-accredited laboratory, shares best practice with laboratories worldwide.
I now to turn to international forums. The UK is a member of international forums such as the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations, the International Anti-Doping Arrangement and the International Investors Group. These forums share best practice and support national anti-doping organisations.
I shall now focus on Russia. The reaction to the commission report on state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics has been swift and unequivocal. The IAAF vote to suspend Russian athletes from all competition was unanimous and reflected the worldwide reaction. It was 22 to one, I think. Even President Putin was quick to announce the need for Russia to offer,
“the most … professional cooperation with international anti-doping structures”.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to the impact of the Russian findings, and I underline, as I am sure the noble Lord will, that this is not just about Russia cleaning up its practices; it is about all countries, all sports and all athletes not only learning from the commission’s findings but realising that doping in sport, no matter how organised or innocent, will be not tolerated. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, mentioned that coaches and support staff must be properly monitored and censured just as much as sportsmen.
For the IAAF, my noble friend Lord Coe has already announced that its anti-doping systems will be delivered by an independent body. This is similar to the response of cycling, which now has an independent agency to deliver its anti-doping programme.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan raised the issue of WADA, and I shall revert to it and its tough stance on compliance reporting. In defence of WADA, I point out that it has strengthened its compliance and regulatory functions and as a result last night, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, it declared that six signatory countries were non-compliant with the world anti-doping code: Russia, Andorra, Argentina, Israel, Bolivia and Ukraine. Although this has not been confirmed by WADA, it is reported that Brazil, which is a concern, Belgium, France, Greece, Mexico and Spain have been placed on the watch list. Although this is a concern, decisive action has been taken and should be welcomed.
Criminalising doping in sport was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Thomas, my noble friend Lord Moynihan and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. My noble friend Lord Moynihan mentioned that the Minister for Sport, Tracey Crouch, is looking very seriously at criminalisation. Her investigation will include looking at the experience of other countries, including Italy and France, which already have legislation. They are a minority of countries, but the Minister for Sport will look at this very seriously to see what lessons can be learned and what might be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, raised an important point about whistleblowing and asked what greater support could be given. WADA announced in its meeting yesterday that it would enhance its whistleblowing process. This will offer greater protection to anonymous sources who wish to come forward. In the UK we also have UK Anti-Doping’s anonymous Report Doping in Sport hotline, which the noble Lord may know about.
My noble friend Lord Moynihan raised the issue of the chief executive of UKAD and commented on the Sunday Times allegations. I point out to him that an investigation is still going on and the outcome should not be prejudged.
There were a number of other questions, but I have run out of time to answer them. I will finish by saying that the UK’s traditional tough stance on doping is still very much in place, and I am proud to say that the UK’s expertise, knowledge and opinion are regularly called upon worldwide. I am equally proud to say that the UK is not complacent about anti-doping, and continually engages with the international anti-doping community to learn and improve so that we remain in the vanguard of the fight against doping in sport.
Foreign Ownership of UK Assets
Viscount Hanworth
That this House takes note of the sale of United Kingdom assets to foreign ownership and of the effects on such sales of the laws of corporate governance.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, I wish to talk of an enduring problem of the UK economy that is of increasing severity: our inability to pay our way in the world by means of our exports of goods and services. The consequence of this failure is our indebtedness to foreigners, which has resulted in their ownership of an ever-increasing proportion of our capital assets. It is essential that we should understand the causes and consequences of these circumstances. We need to dispel the complacency that has allowed us to reach this state of affairs, and to take action urgently to remedy it.
The UK has an unprecedented deficit in its trade with the rest of the world. The difference in the value of the goods and services that the UK buys from abroad and the value of the goods that it sells to the rest of the world has risen to its highest level as a share of gross domestic product since records began. Since the early 1970s our deficits have been of an increasing magnitude. The last recorded surplus was in 1984, when it was a modest 0.3% of GDP. At present our deficit is running at 6% of our GDP. The period from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s saw trade deficits that were modest by comparison with our recent deficits, yet these years were afflicted by intense anxieties over Britain’s balance of payments. It is remarkable that such anxieties have largely disappeared at a time when the problem has never been more acute.
The reason for the present lack of concern over our trade deficit is that we have found the means of temporarily averting a balance of payments crisis, but these expedients will be the cause of much economic distress in future. We have managed to achieve the necessary balance of payments by selling our assets to foreign owners. This cannot continue indefinitely since the supply of assets for sale is limited. It will eventually be exhausted and we will find ourselves in an acutely impoverished state.
Such sales of our assets are liable to be described, disingenuously and deceptively, as “direct inward foreign investment”. The present Government have declared that Britain is open for business and have congratulated themselves on their success in attracting foreign investment. The much-publicised trade missions of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to China, India and elsewhere have succeeded not so much in promoting the sale of British goods abroad as in selling the ownership of our economic enterprises. There has been an extraordinary self-deception on the part of the Government in this connection, which, unfortunately, has succeeded in deceiving many others besides.
It is appropriate at this juncture to note that Britain’s financial sector has been greatly enriched by the business of selling our assets abroad. Each sale commands a sizeable commission. One is therefore likely to find great enthusiasm for so-called inward foreign investment among those who work in the City of London. Moreover, politicians who are allied to the financial interest are unlikely to cast doubt on a strategy that favours inward investment.
Each such inward investment to the UK implies an increment in the demand for the pound on foreign exchange markets. The aggregate effect of this demand has been to raise the value of the pound to a level that has made our manufactured goods too expensive to compete successfully in foreign markets. The result has been not only a reduction in our exports but a long-term decline in our manufacturing sector.
The manufacturing sector, which accounted for 25% of gross domestic product in 1979, now accounts for less than 10%. It now contributes less to our GDP than does our financial sector. The policies that have favoured the financial sector have been to the detriment of the industrial sector and they will eventually be to the detriment of us all. A state has now been reached where the value of UK-owned foreign assets is less than the value of UK assets that are in foreign ownership. The consequence is that there is now a net flow abroad of interest payments, dividends and profits. The net leakage is clearly to our disadvantage. It is associated not only with the outright foreign ownership of UK enterprise but also with the ownership of UK franchises.
Our transport network provides a good example of a UK industry dominated by foreign-owned franchises. Three-quarters of rail franchises in the UK are now owned by foreign state-owned or state-backed rail companies. Prominent among these are the German state-owned company, Deutsche Bahn, and the rail company Abellio, which is the international arm of Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the Dutch national rail company. Foreign, state-owned rail companies are using profits earned by operating franchises in the UK to keep fares down and to support investments in the rail services of their respective countries. Our passengers and our taxpayers are subsidising a system that hands increasing profits to foreign, state-owned train operators, instead of investing them in our railways, as would be the case if they were under UK public ownership.
This phenomenon is also evident throughout our national utilities. The energy companies provide a well-known example. The majority of UK customers, whether domestic consumers or businesses, are supplied by one of four foreign-owned companies: EDF, which is Electricité de France; E.ON and RWE, which are in German ownership; and Iberdrola, a Spanish company. There are substantial repatriations of profits and dividends from the UK companies to their owners abroad.
The recent announcement of deals that have been struck by the Government with EDF and with two Chinese national nuclear corporations to build a new generation of nuclear power stations has filled many commentators with alarm. To secure EDF as a builder, the Government have guaranteed a minimum price for electricity from the Hinkley C nuclear power station of £89.50 per megawatt hour for 35 years. This is approximately double the current rate for electricity on the wholesale market. The Government have also provided a guarantee of up to £17 billion that foreign lenders to this infrastructure project will be repaid in full and on time, irrespective of the performance of the project. It is, of course, the taxpayers and the consumers who will fund this largesse.
One is startled to discover how much of Britain’s infrastructure is now in foreign ownership. This includes our seaports, our airports, our power stations, our railways and buses, our water companies and much else besides. Large swathes of our manufacturing industry are also now in foreign ownership. This includes our car industry, our steel industry, our cement manufacturing industry, a large proportion of our food processing industry and so on. Britain’s aerospace industry has been celebrated by politicians as an exemplar of economic and technological success. However, a recent study by Norman Smith and Joseph Wright on mergers and acquisitions in the aerospace supply chain, Losing Control, published by Civitas in June this year, has shown that this industry too is passing into foreign ownership. Of the 155 companies still present in 2014, only a third had avoided takeovers or mergers between 1990 and 2014. Of 101 companies that experienced a change of ownership, over half passed into foreign hands. As the report wryly remarked, a great deal of effort and energy was devoted by managements to pursuing these transactions, generating large fees and commissions that have been paid to bankers, brokers, accountants and solicitors. The report also observes that foreign enterprises have been cherry-picking smaller British aerospace companies that have been in possession of valuable intellectual capital and technical expertise. Few of these companies have survived the takeover.
The truth is that many takeovers have been inimical to the prospects of our industries. Many have been intended, primarily, for the purpose of acquiring our intellectual capital and of limiting competition. This was clearly the case in the bid by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer for AstraZeneca. The bid was also driven by prospects of cost saving and tax minimisation. It was facilitated, as many other takeovers of British firms have been, by our lax rules of corporate governance that put few impediments in the way of mergers and acquisitions.
The UK has a unique openness to foreign ownership. By contrast, virtually all other developed countries retain the power to block foreign takeovers that are deemed not to be in the national interest. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States sits in judgment on attempted takeovers that are thought to have implications for national security. In France, the Government, who do likewise, recently blocked the takeover of the engineering firm Alstom by America’s General Electric. Most recently, the French yogurt maker Danone was protected from an attempted takeover by the Swiss food group Nestlé. I can recall a headline in the financial pages of the Telegraph in 2011 on the occasion of the takeover of Cadbury by the American firm Kraft which declared, correctly, that the French would never have allowed it.
The availability of British assets to foreign takeover can be seen both as a product of an ideological predisposition and as the result of the influence of some powerful vested interests. The ideological predisposition has favoured the widespread privatisation of industries that were formerly in public ownership. The risible irony is that much of what has been privatised that was previously in public ownership has fallen into the hands of foreign nationalised industries or state-sponsored industries. We have seen that this has been the case throughout our transport network and in our electricity-generating industry. It is also true of our aerospace and defence industries. The Thales Group—or “Groupe Thales”, as it would be in French pronunciation—which has taken ownership of some of the leading UK defence contractors and of a fair proportion of our electronics industry, is a French state-backed company that is partly state-owned.
The City of London has a vested interest in trading financial assets of every description. Our financial sector is no longer devoted to the purpose of raising capital to finance industrial investment. Instead, its main activities are in financial arbitrage and trading. These activities have been stimulated by the remarkable growth of financial credit. As the neglected Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-term Decision Making has testified, the preoccupation with stock market performance has penetrated deeply into the management of UK industry. Many managers have become more interested in pursuing mergers, acquisitions and corporate sales than in pursuing industrial developments. In other words, they have been affected by short-term financial considerations, including the consideration of their own salaries and of the value of their stock options.
Our rules of corporate governance amount to a system of self-regulation by the financial sector. They create few impediments to mergers and acquisitions or to financial trading and do nothing to protect the national interest. They contrast markedly with the rules that prevail in Germany, for example, where there are statutory anti-takeover provisions and where the public and politicians are strongly opposed to hostile takeover bids. German firms that are listed on their stock market are governed both by a management board and by a supervisory board, which must by law comprise a large contingent of the firm’s employees. The supervisory boards act as a restraint on financial activities that might be harmful to the company. It would be greatly to our advantage to adopt a continental model of corporate governance and to replace our unitary boards of directors by a two-tier system.
The difficulties and the failures of our industrial sector are to a great extent due to the power and the influence of our financial sector, whose activities are inimical to a long-term industrial strategy. As I have already emphasised, the sales of our assets to overseas buyers has raised the foreign exchange value of the pound, which has made our manufactured goods uncompetitive in world markets. Ideally, I should like to see the financial sector diminished and its activities restrained. This is unlikely to happen under the present Government. Even a future Government of a different colour should not be relied upon to act effectively against the financial interests.
However, there is an obvious recourse that could be relied upon to diminish the value of the pound. The central bank, or some other agency, should be charged with purchasing foreign assets when the value of the pound exceeds competitive levels. Such a collection of nationally owned foreign assets is commonly described as a sovereign wealth fund. The money that has been devoted to quantitative easing might have been used for this purpose. Many countries have established sovereign wealth funds for the purpose of limiting the exchange values of their currencies. A leading example is China, which has fostered an export boom based on the cheapness of its goods in its overseas markets.
The idea is not new. Under the gold standard that prevailed throughout the interwar years, gold was purchased by countries whenever it was favourable for them to do so, which was when their currencies were liable to be overvalued in foreign exchange markets. Gold is a sterile metal. By contrast, the assets held within a sovereign wealth fund will generate an income, which could redress the leakage of income that is flowing abroad in the form of profits, dividends and interest payments.
Lord Desai (Lab)
My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Hanworth for introducing this topic. I am afraid that I am not at all alarmed by the proposition that he has put before us. I will come to that in a minute but perhaps I may just recall an event many years ago when Peter Shore—later Lord Shore—was at the front of the battleground at the Department for Economic Affairs. He said, “What happened to the balance of payments crisis? Why aren’t we alarmed about whether our balance of payments is in surplus or in deficit? We used to battle month after month over what was going to happen, and the pound was always under threat”. I said, “We are now in a world of flexible exchange rates and we have free capital movements, so movements on the flow account are balanced by movements on the capital account, and therefore you can stop caring about the balance of payments”.
I still believe that that is the right attitude to take. For one thing, it cannot be said that this country is particularly impoverished. We are still in the G7 and, give or take a ranking here or there, we continue to be a rich country. Currently, we happen to be one of the fastest-growing economies among the G7 and our proportion of employment in terms of labour force participation is also one of the highest in Europe. Therefore, we have practically full employment. Of course, the recession was long and the recovery took some time but, compared with the eurozone economies and even to some extent the US economy, we are not doing too badly.
Obviously our manufacturing sector started shrinking more than 25 years ago as soon as the oil shock happened. The manufacturing industries of most European countries reduced in size—it happened in the United States and the UK and so on—but I do not think that is anything to be alarmed about. There is nothing sacrosanct about manufacturing as against anything else. We need to do the things at which we are more efficient than the rest of the world and, as long as we can find things at which we are more efficient, we should go on doing them.
There is a long-standing fallacy in this country—going back to Winston Churchill, if not before—that somehow industry is more important than finance. However, few people remember that the UK had a financial revolution a century or more before it had an industrial revolution. The industrial revolution came in in the second half of the 18th century, whereas our financial revolution came about in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. We were able to fight a number of wars, with France and other countries, because the City and our public finances afforded us better financial governance than there was in Europe. I do not think there is any particular virtue in saying that the City is bad and industry is good or that somehow, William Blake notwithstanding, we should have dark, satanic mills and not banks.
The important thing is that the most interesting innovations have happened in the financial sector rather than in the manufacturing sector, at least as far as the UK is concerned. My noble friend himself pointed out that the City has gone on to be a major player in mergers and acquisitions and in a number of intermediary arbitrage activities. That is the nice thing about the City—it moves from one specialisation to another depending on where the demand is.
One paradox is that, if we are in a trade deficit, why is the pound not collapsing? It is argued that the pound is overvalued, but one would like to see more proof of why the pound is believed to be overvalued—overvalued in respect of what? We have a trade deficit and we have financial flows to balance that deficit. The pound is free to float as it likes, and I think it should stay that way, without us getting into pegging it or anything like that. I do not think our exports are low because the pound is overvalued; our exports are probably low because the countries to which we sell are in depression. The whole eurozone is in a state of very low growth. Therefore, it is no wonder our markets are not as buoyant.
For some years now we have been trying to redirect our trade away from the eurozone and into the emerging economies. The visits of the Indian Prime Minister last week and before that the Chinese President are part of the UK’s effort to redirect our trade from the stagnant eurozone to the more dynamic emerging economies, and that is quite right.
My noble friend said it is shocking that various foreigners run our trains and our energy companies. That is fine. But I remember how our car industry came close to complete collapse in the 1970s. Who rescued the car industry? The Japanese. Who is the largest single employer of manufacturing workers? It is Tata Motors, which has rescued Jaguar Land Rover from shut-down. Right now, Jaguar Land Rover is a thriving business, thanks to management from Tata. Its management is a global team, because it also takes support from German, British and American firms.
This is a globalised world. There is no reason why we should settle for fortress Britain, in which only our capital will serve our industry. We have been through that, and we lost considerably playing that game. It was precisely because we lost—we were in a dreadful situation in the 1970s; that is all of the 1970s, during both the Conservative and Labour Governments—that we got out of it and decided that there are better ways of making a living than sticking to selling the family silver.
From the point of view of economics, I fail to see the problem here. There are problems as to whether or not we should have a different model of corporate governance, but that is independent of whether foreigners own our industries. All I will say about the continental model of corporate governance is that we are living under the scandal of Volkswagen. I would like to know why corporate governance on the continent failed so abysmally in the case of Volkswagen? We have not had any scandal like that.
There is also the problem of short-termism. Short-termism is not particular to British business; it applies to any business that has equity holders. Of course, some people are now saying that preferable to relying on public equity would be to go to private equity firms. If you are owned by private equity firms, you are free of stock market pressure, and some firms have gone that way. That may be a good recommendation if you want a long-term vision in our economy.
Without being complacent about it, I believe that the UK has always been a trading nation. It has always taken the view that one must not sentimentally stick to national ownership or particular restrictions. We should allow the best companies to provide our services regardless of whether they are British or foreign, just as British companies should be all over the world doing business, as they have done for the past 300 years. We should say, “Let the best people come and provide us with our services, and let the best companies from here provide services elsewhere”. That is as long as our living standards are high and rising and as long as we have an adequate amount of employment in the economy and can make sure that our productivity stays high. I know productivity problems are not particular to the UK; they are to be found all around the western world. A rising standard of living for our people is all that an economy should deliver, regardless of who owns what.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, not just for bringing this important topic to us today but for having covered such a wide expanse in his opening speech. When I was a student at the London School of Economics—I should add hastily that I was a mature student, so the age difference between me and the noble Lord, Lord Desai, is not as great as it might appear when I say that—I used to pop in to listen to the noble Lord’s lectures. They were not part of my major—I was doing international relations—but as a Marxist, which is what he was known as at the time, he presented a clear world view that was entirely contemporary and understood what was happening in the world around us. I wish that he and I were still there, because those were much more interesting days than we find ourselves in today, where there is a much broader consensus in economic theory than there was 25 years ago. In that sense, the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, has made us think about things that in our discussions we almost take for granted and never seem to consider any more.
Let me add my few thoughts on this topic—I am not an expert by any means. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, is right to say, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, acknowledged it, that we live in a globalised world—we live in an interdependent, globalised world. The EU was quite insightful in the 1950s in seeing that four freedoms were vital to making the single market work, those being labour, goods, services and capital. The underlining issue in this debate is that of capital. I subscribe to the view that the productive use of capital is a common good that underpins all our modern economies. It is so desirable that when we see less developed parts of the world doing less well than they might do given their human capital and resources, it is a dearth of financial capital—investment in infrastructure and so on—that holds them back. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to say that national ownership matters, but rather that it depends on a case-by-case basis on what we are talking about.
For me, there is no reason why the ownership of a company should be an overarching issue, other than—I would add here advisedly—the interests of national security. I interpret national security as including, to some extent, economic security as well. The noble Viscount mentioned the Chinese investment in Hinkley Point, announced only a few weeks ago. That deal will allow for 33% of Hinkley Point to be owned by the Chinese. However, the agreement goes wider because, eventually, Chinese nuclear technology will be approved for use at Bradwell in Essex. In this area, foreign ownership matters because this is not just passive investment. If it were just passive investment and they decided to disinvest, they would sell their ownership in international markets and that would not be a cause for concern. However, there is a cause for concern because the United Kingdom will be the testing ground for Chinese nuclear technology and its regulatory approval in the West. That is a matter of concern. The Chinese have built their nuclear capability sector at breakneck speed. We do not know their sector well enough—there is little transparency in it—and we do not know that we can have complete faith in their safety standards because they are less than entirely transparent. I am not concerned about them coming in with EDF at Hinkley Point but I would be concerned about being the first country in the West to give regulatory approval when it comes to Bradwell in Essex.
On the broader question of ownership, I do not understand why United Kingdom ownership gives more back to a community or a country than foreign ownership. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, mentioned British Leyland versus Nissan, Tata and BMW. I will go further and mention British Airways and its ownership in the past few years of the International Airlines Group. British Airways is the third biggest carrier in Europe and the sixth biggest in the world, and, knowing how the international airline industry has seen consolidation, if it had not made that move I wonder where our national carrier would be. One has to look only at Lufthansa and the parlous state of Air France to know where it might be if it had not made that rather bold move. It is also important that British Airways’ International Airlines Group is registered on the London Stock Exchange. So it is not a lose-lose scenario.
In the City of London, this small island has arguably the world’s—the Americans might contest this—biggest financial sector. It has not come about by accident—as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, it has been 350 years in the making—because there are things that give the United Kingdom its special place in the financial services industry. These include the rule of law, the reputation of our judicial system, the English language, schools, the good quality of housing, overpriced though it may be, and also culture. It is the cosmopolitanism of London—with its foreign owners, foreign migrants such as myself and so on—that make the City such a success. When I speak to people in the City, I always say to them that the idea they have that they are masters of the universe is completely flawed. It is the enabling environment of London and the United Kingdom—particularly the rule of law—that makes it so attractive.
I have sympathy with the issue of hostile takeovers of our strategic industries. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, is right to raise that. We have to think about what are our strategically important companies. I would say that they are more about intellectual capital, technology and some areas of national security, where I agree with the noble Viscount. When we live in such an interdependent world, it seems rather curious that we are harking back to an era where we, as Brits, would run things better than other people.
I want to push back against the idea that the financial services sector trading in arbitrage, which was selected for particular condemnation by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, is entirely worthless. The extent of our regulation has clearly been insufficient, and I would remind him of who was in government when most of that disaster happened. But a humbling experience for us to reflect on is the daily diet of scandals that are still happening in our financial services industry. The Financial Times today has a story about Barclays and algorithmic trading. We have seen LIBOR, forex and all the other scandals. But again I would say to the noble Viscount that this is not just about United Kingdom financial services companies. Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and a whole lot of others are involved: foreign owners have been right in there with their fingers in the till while British companies may have been as well. I myself worry when our big flagship companies such as HSBC and others think that they might relocate abroad because there may be an environment which is more conducive than having their headquarters here. I am extremely glad that the Government are looking at what needs to be done to keep our flagship companies here.
I also want to touch on the decline of manufacturing, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who said a great deal of what could be said in this debate about how perhaps it is the strength of the pound that is the issue, or the fact that our technology is not good enough so that people do not want to buy our goods. I suggest that the problem we have in the UK is that of a very low savings rate. If you want more investment in the UK, you have to change the culture. We have such a low savings rate because we invest so much of our personal wealth in bricks and mortar, so we have a distorted economy. That is probably something that we need to change.
In conclusion, the world is changing and the future lies in technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and innovations in healthcare, energy and so on. What we should do is not hark back to an era of golden ownership by UK plc, but invest more and more in education, which is the key; in innovation, which is the future; and, where possible, of course, in good ownership of our assets.
Lord Haskel (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend is concerned about what is happening as the Government withdraw from investing in our essential services and infrastructure, leaving foreign investors and foreign Governments to take their place. What happens when our financial system leaves foreign investors free to acquire our companies? He is concerned about the effect on the balance of trade, on our exchange rate, the security of our strategic services and products, and the development of our own economy. I think he is right to be concerned. He is right because it has got out of balance. I say to my noble friend Lord Desai that it is affecting our economy.
As my noble friend said, our strategic infrastructure is foreign-owned. Ten of the regional water companies in England and Wales are foreign-owned, as are four of the six big energy companies, including much of our nuclear industry. As he told us, so are many British sea ports, airports and, in particular, railway franchises, along with many of our financial institutions, particularly the banks. Some of these strategic utilities are virtual monopolies, with our consumer interests protected only by regulators. Surely foreign ownership must make this a bit more difficult.
Brands are an important national asset. Many have a national identity. Yes, many of our best-known brands are also foreign-owned. In some ways this is fortunate, of course, particularly in the car industry, where most of our well-known brands have survived thanks to Tata Motors of India, and BMW and VW of Germany. Nielsen Research reported last year that of the 150 biggest grocery brands in the UK, only 44 are home owned. As my noble friend said, there was a time when we owned other people’s family silver. Net income from our foreign direct investments used to be 3% or 4% of our gross domestic product. It now looks as though the outflow from foreign-owned utilities and businesses is just about equal to the inflow.
Why is there so much foreign ownership here? The answer lies partly in the Government’s preoccupation with our deficit and the resulting inability to invest in our own strategic infrastructure. The Government of Britain can borrow for decades ahead at low or even negative interest rates to build our own infrastructure and invest in long-term energy projects on extremely favourable terms. But this has been sacrificed in favour of the Government’s economic policy, leaving the deficit to be carried by private sector debt and inward investment.
With a high proportion of publicly listed companies, it is easy to buy British companies. John Kay, in his report in 2012 and recent book, Other People’s Money, explains why—how most shareholders are short-term and ready to sell out at a profit; and how most share trading is high-frequency and automatic, or on the own account of the investment banks. They are all traders whose purpose is to drive their short-term expectations into the boardroom so that there are high returns for the shareholders—the culture that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, spoke about.
John Kay explains that our financial system tends not to reward management for investing. Management is rewarded for the high share price. There is a good example of this going on right now as we do our weekly shopping. Research has shown that a typical shopping basket in one of the big four supermarket chains can be undercut by up to 20% by the German retailers, Aldi and Lidl. Why? Because they are privately owned and can price more keenly.
Another current example is our aerospace industry—the kind of high-tech industry that the noble Baroness spoke about. It is a vital export business. A Civitas report, mentioned by my noble friend, tells us that the number of companies in this industry whose owners are based abroad has jumped from 14% to 41%. As its report points out, British expertise is being lost overseas and this is reducing the chance of British companies growing into world-class players. They are cherry picked before they have the chance to reach their full potential. Surely this must be damaging to our economy.
As an excellent economist, my noble friend Lord Desai, in the abstract, thinks that this does not matter. It is just the globalised market working. To people working in industry and business, it does because ownership explains why the performance and productivity of many foreign-owned companies in Britain are often much higher than the performance of many British-owned counterparts. Their longer-term strategies have brought a higher order of management skills, more thorough training and better pay for employees than many of their British equivalents. They have introduced know-how and technology that would not have been available to us otherwise. Without them there would have been no volume motor manufacturing industry here.
Then there is the question of ownership of our strategic services and infrastructure. Ownership does matter. The noble Baroness spoke of Hinkley Point. It matters so much that the Chinese participation in Hinkley Point is conditional on the Chinese state being the majority shareholder in subsequent nuclear power plants. Do the Government not recognise this when they see it? No, they are blinded by their perceived need for cash, even when there is a strategic argument for blocking a deal.
My noble friend mentioned the proposed takeover of AstraZeneca by Pfizer, mainly for tax advantage. It was stopped only because of the efforts of the Dutch and Swedish parts of AstraZeneca.
What is the answer? While welcoming foreign investment, how can we achieve a better balance and feel more secure? The real solution of restructuring the finance industry is, of course, too difficult because it will disturb too many vested interests—the influence of the financial industry’s money on politics is too well entrenched. Because the finance sector is much used as an instrument of economic policy its interests and opinions take precedence in economic decisions. This has to change. I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Desai. It has become too unbalanced, and equal regard must be given to the interests and opinions of other sectors—of business, of industry. This will help to encourage UK ownership of our strategic assets and their long-term development. Many regulatory agencies seek to pursue the public interest, but their work is limited by a too-prescriptive rulebook. This has to be reviewed, bearing in mind foreign ownership.
The answer also lies in more enlightened business governance. For 20 years, Tomorrow’s Company has promoted the principle of stewardship. These ideas are slowly becoming more accepted. By coincidence, I hosted Tomorrow’s Company’s annual reception here in the Cholmondeley Room yesterday. Several noble Lords were present. We heard how many of our more successful and more progressive businesses are adopting the stewardship form of leadership and governance. I put it to the Minister that if foreign investors were urged, perhaps by regulators, to adopt this form of governance, then we may not only benefit from their management performance, their technology and productivity; we would also feel more secure with the clear purpose, values and collaboration that stewardship brings, and the long-term attitude towards investment and risk. You never know: this culture may bring more British investors and, yes, a Labour Government back into the market.
Lord Monks (Lab)
My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Hanworth for initiating a debate on a very important subject. It deserves a more prominent slot than we have given it. It is a subject to which not enough attention and debate is given. With the different views already expressed, noble Lords have heard some things that are rather close to the heart of the way this country earns its living and whether it is on the right path.
I used to be one of those who did not really mind about foreign ownership. We did not need to bother about it too much. We owned a lot of assets abroad. We were doing quite well out of remittances from those. Companies that were overseas-owned were in many cases rather successful in the UK, providing a lot of employment. As my noble friend Lord Haskel just reminded us, they were in many ways leading on innovation, technology and productivity. The trends have now accelerated. I am much more worried about it than I ever was before. As my noble friend Lord Hanworth pointed out very well, the stark fact is that British companies are being sold off at a higher rate than we acquire assets elsewhere. Worse, there is little sign that the proceeds of this Great British sell-off are going into British business, to grow great new businesses that slot into the spaces that others have departed from. Therefore, this is an extremely important debate. The country has turned a blind eye to it and adopted a rather laissez-faire approach. In some ways that has suppressed creative thought on the issues. What do I mean by that?
It is interesting to note that last week and previously, this House has spent a considerable amount of time debating national sovereignty. Noble Lords, particularly on the other side of the House, have been “banging on”—to pinch a phrase from the Prime Minister—about that in the context of the EU Referendum Bill for a couple of weeks, and we will spend a lot more time on it in the next 12 months. However, they are talking about sovereignty only in the context of parliamentary sovereignty. They are not debating the business sovereignty that we are talking about today. They are not debating the fact that British businesses are increasingly foreign owned, including those occupying the commanding heights of utilities and key sectors. I am always interested to see whether any of the Europhobes or Eurosceptics say anything about this great sell-off when they go on about sovereignty. We obviously mean different things when we have this discussion.
I believe that EU membership enhances sovereignty, extends influence and boosts our reach on global developments such as trade and the environment. But these are all at risk if our economy becomes more and more anorexic. We have already lost a lot of ground. You cannot say that it is the EU’s fault or it is due to Europe’s sclerosis. It is our fault. Our system is out of step with those of many other countries. Some great and successful British companies—not the flops—have simply vanished into the entrails of foreign companies. However, the car industry has been transformed by foreign ownership, for which I am extremely grateful. By the way, sometimes even smaller companies, such as Pilkington and British Oxygen, have been acquired by foreign owners. I do not recall hearing any murmurs—not even a squeak—from the nationalists about what was going on when Pilkington was bought by the Japanese and British Oxygen by the Germans.
I stress that I am not an economic nationalist or a protectionist. I am grateful to the firms that have come in, particularly the car firms, and many others, for what they have done for the UK. Without that foreign ownership we would not have the industries we have. None the less, why is it that we rely on foreign ownership to control so many of our major industries? Why are there so few UK world-class multinationals, particularly manufacturing multinationals? I say to the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that from the privileged position of the south-east of England it is a lot easier to make the case he did than it would be in the north, where it is much more evident that the great companies have retreated or disappeared and foreign investment has not filled all the gaps, although it has filled some. Some great companies, such as Rolls-Royce and GKN, are obviously exceptions to this but they are not the rule. However, you can see how fragile the situation can become for a great company such as Rolls-Royce when a few things start to go wrong. It is not just Volkswagen that has ethical dilemmas and problems at the moment. We know that some of our companies have problems. The banks have been mentioned and Rolls-Royce is struggling a bit at present.
All the evidence is that, however benevolent foreign-owned companies are, however much they intend to be good corporate citizens, inevitably, the profits tend to fly overseas to where the strategic decisions are taken. Understandably, those who control the companies are biased in favour of their own country, city or region, just like we used to be. Now, we lack companies that can do that on any scale outside those in London and the south-east.
Why are we in this position? I tend to agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth—that a lot of it has to do with the powerful financial services sector, which seems to know a lot more about value extraction than value creation. It is primarily interested in promoting deals—takeovers, flotations, privatisations, restructurings and so on—to earn commissions and fat fees, and the volume of transactions is absolutely everything. The objectives of these deals should be encouraged to be more market share-boosting, rather than for short-term shareholder value extraction. This is deeply inconvenient to many in the City, but those people should reflect on the fact that many acquisitions actually result in a reduction of shareholder value.
Short-term shareholder value has become something of a curse. I note with interest that the boss of General Electric, who invented the term in the 1980s, has repented and recanted and said that it cannot be the sole goal of companies. The financial services world needs to get some new criteria to judge businesses by. I am a strong advocate of market share being one of the features. The pressure to deliver short-term returns provokes risky strategies, almost all linked to deals on acquisitions or restructurings rather than launching fresh major innovations and investments. Linking executive bonuses to short-term shareholder results just intensifies the pressures.
It is a very hard world for British companies, given this financial culture to grow, be successful and thrive. Some have stayed private and have managed to do so: Dyson and JCB are fine examples. Others trust in private equity. Well, good luck to them, I hope it works for them. Others have become and remain plcs, but in that sector you have to be very good to avoid being vulnerable to the prowlers and takeover merchants. Very often, those are people in the City trying to promote somebody to come in and take you over.
Some in government and business have recognised this problem. I pay tribute to Vincent Cable and Paul Polman of Unilever. But most shy away from an issue that is marked “too difficult”. Along with Civitas, I think we should be looking at American anti-takeover statutes and that little poison pill that can prevent a hostile takeover in certain states. We should be looking more at German cross-ownership. I know it used to be called a cartel and perhaps there is a degree of that; none the less, it means that great companies survive bad times. I will say this about Volkswagen: it will survive this very bad time. I was more worried that BP might not survive its very bad time in the Gulf of Mexico in the context of our financial markets. I am also interested in the French and Nordic multiple or weighted voting systems to discourage hostile takeovers. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, I am rather a fan of two-tier board structures, with stakeholders involved in the supervisory board.
We are alone in extending the idea of a free market in goods and services—for many people, an act of faith since Cobden and Bright—to a free market in the ownership of companies. We are also alone in confusing foreign investment in new plant, such as by Nissan, with hostile takeovers, such as by Pfizer. We know that companies such as Pfizer are very likely to run down the British arm to reduce competition and costs and to extract—that word again—intellectual capital.
This is not an issue that is particularly easy to resolve. I have no simple solutions but, for a start, an anti-hostile takeover law could be extremely useful in trying to shift the cultures in the UK towards longer-term, more sustainable success. After all, that is the kind of company that Tata and the best companies coming into this country are—not short-termist but long-term players. We want more companies of our own like that, so that we are not completely dependent—to the extent that we could become dependent—on foreign ownership. There is nothing wrong with foreign ownership but it does need a sense of proportion.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, if I am allowed to say so, how good it is to have the experience, wisdom and common sense of the noble Lord, Lord Monks, at our disposal. I enjoyed every word of that speech and found myself relating to it very closely. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for having introduced this debate today and shared with the House a great deal of the anxiety that is out there among thinking people in our society.
I have had a long association with LSE myself and have always found it enjoyable that we have in our family the noble Lord, Lord Desai. There is never a dull moment; one is never quite sure where he will be coming from intellectually and analytically. I hope he will not think I am pushing it too far if I recall here something he once said to me in a cheerful, exuberant way. He said, “Of course, I am the last Marxist at LSE”. I would say now that he was the first marketeer at LSE and it is very interesting how people make this transition. He is not alone and I suggest to him that it is something about absolutism. I of course come unashamedly from the nonconformist, Fabian tradition, which is all about search. Perhaps I may remind him that the motto of LSE is “Rerum cognoscere causas”—not “Here are all the answers” but “We are looking for what is causing a situation”.
I find it very interesting that there is no shortage of people wanting to come and make their business here or to invest here. But I ask myself, as indeed our noble friend Lord Monks was asking: what lessons have we learnt from how we came here? Some of the lessons do not perhaps lie in the immediate sphere of economics at all. They lie very much in the realm of education, as has been mentioned. There has been a total failure of creativity in Britain, apart from in the arts. In the arts, we lead the world—nobody rivals the United Kingdom in them. But somehow, in the realm of applied knowledge, there has been, as I say, a failure of creativity and the imagination. The failure is not in imagination or creativity but when something goes so far, there is no one who then seizes it and says, “Right, this is where we’re going with it”. We have to get that back.
It is about character building and the rest and, if I am, as an older man, allowed to say so, I am very fearful about that. We have got into a trap of taking a completely quantitative approach to education by measuring it all the time, as distinct from asking what it is inspiring and achieving. Originality is not being given enough attention. I am rather worried. I take my family—my children and grandchildren—very seriously. When I see our country basing itself on a future of energy largely generated by nuclear power, I say to myself, “Am I confident about this future?”.
I have nothing but respect for the Chinese. I first went to China in 1956, spent five weeks there and came back deeply impressed. That was before it had broken with Russia. I found myself—perhaps I eagerly sought to be there as a young man—on “In Town Tonight” and was probed about my reactions to China. I said, “It is not communism that worries me about China, it is the nationalism. That country is thinking long, and it is thinking about Chinese influence and predominance in the world”. My goodness, I think very often of the impressions I formed then.
It seems to me that, with all the uncertainties of the politics of the Far East and the Pacific, to have our steel industry to a very large extent dependent on the Far East is—I put it no stronger than this—a rather intriguing situation, and one about which I do not think one can sleep easily at night. I am sure they will make a great success of it in the short term, but who knows what will happen in the long term and where the power lies?
When I was a young MP, I used to see that in my constituency of Portsmouth, because we had been highly dependent on the Navy. Ministry of Defence employment was reducing and we needed another source of industry. Because there had been very high skills in the dockyard, all sorts of industry came along. I saw from practical experience, when times got tough, when the going got hard, which places that industry disappeared from most quickly. We were ancillary, something they had gone for and taken over. They were not rooted in the area.
We have to take that seriously in this situation as well. It is the same with the steel industry. Let me be candid with the House: I have a capitalist wing of my family. A branch of my family dealt in steel—it was not very big, but it was big in steel. Members of my family were terribly interested in developing new types of steel. They were engineers, and they used to travel around the world getting and discussing their orders. They sometimes got pretty sick of doing it, too. What was true about them was that they were part of Sheffield. They had been involved in libraries, wings of hospitals and education, not just to get an advertisement up but because they cared. It was a community.
The other major thing that I wanted to say in this debate—I thank my noble friend for having introduced it—is that what has gone wrong in Britain is that we have allowed ourselves to go down a certain road. I say in all seriousness to my good friend, my noble friend Lord Desai, that he should be careful in separating the economy from the people. I became a member of the party that I am in because I believed that the economy and the people were one and the same thing. We looked at the health of the economy in the long run and at the health and well-being of the people in the long run, and we had a commitment and attachment to the people, which was fundamental. I do not think we have that in the direction we have taken. When it comes to the situation in which British managers and workers on a railway being run outstandingly well want to bid because they are told that the line must be privatised but are told that they cannot because they are British—but goodness knows who from abroad is allowed to bid and come in—the situation has gone dangerously barmy, and it is time that we redressed the balance.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. I also earn a living in the corporate finance industry. I start by thanking the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for introducing this interesting debate and for his, as always, extremely thought-provoking contribution. It has been a great pleasure to listen to such a fantastic debate, and it reminds me—a relative newcomer—of the sheer quality present in this House. It also reminds me that I must make sure that I am not a disappointment to my mother when I respond to such high-quality contributions.
I should like to raise a series of issues that touch across the issue of ownership and its consequences and address a complex series of opportunities and challenges that come from the level of foreign ownership—matters that we should be very alive to. It is always difficult to come to a completely full conclusion on these matters. My noble friend Lord Monks raised the issue of potentially restricting hostile takeovers. Of course, one of the great corporate achievements in the United Kingdom was Vodafone’s takeover of Mannesmann, which was a hostile takeover. Many of the problems associated with foreign ownership of companies come from agreed takeovers, so it is very hard to find inherently the right instruments. Of course, we believe in open markets and trade and we understand the benefits of investment and know-how that can come in, and of new business processes and products. We also understand the profile of foreign investment, which is that it is principally about large companies—1% of companies, around 30% of value added. That is also why there is a central importance in our deliberations and in our work to improve the condition of the business environment for small businesses, where foreign ownership is not highly present.
It was a matter of some comment around the general election—I cite an article in the Wall Street Journal—that Britain was becoming very resistant to foreign deals. In fact, it said that barriers were rising, pointing to the climate over a few particular deals, and over the way in which the chief executive of Pfizer, in relation to the AstraZeneca deal, was forced to write to the Prime Minister with a “string of commitments”. It also identified that in March the Department of Energy and Climate Change,
“moved to block Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman from owning stakes in 12 North Sea gas fields”,
through his investment vehicle. It then said that,
“the boldest move by the UK government against a foreign takeover came just weeks before”,
the general election, when a,
“UK official confirmed that the government had told BP that it would block any sale of the oil company to a foreign company”.
So the pattern is not absolutely clear.
It does come as some contrast to how the Government have positively encouraged the Chinese investment in Hinkley Point. These issues were ably raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, and by my noble friends Lord Haskel and Lord Judd. There are considerable concerns about the design, the fact that we are going to be the pilot for it and the extraordinarily long-term deal at a very high price. It stands in great contrast to the concern over other matters that this one has gone through in the way and shape that it has.
This raises the central importance of regulation. Regulation is key to these things, and not just to how we deal with the utilities and the protection of service standards and security. It has a central role in how we ensure that these markets, takeovers and other things, and the condition of business itself, are dealt with properly. My noble friend Lord Desai mentioned VW and said that it was a failure of corporate governance. Actually, it was a failure of regulation. It was another example of why trust is an inadequate safety net for business practice. We have to make sure that markets are regulated properly and sensibly, and foreign ownership only increases that challenge.
The Government have a very good record with UK transparency laws. The register of people who exercise significant control, which was introduced by the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act, will be implemented this year and will be an important addition to how we manage foreign businesses on our shores.
The method of ownership matters. My noble friend Lord Haskel made a very important point about how it has affected our supermarket sector. It has affected other retailers. Zara has exactly the same condition. All shareholders are not the same. There are differences. Whether companies are private equity or listed, and whether a company has particular return on capital requirements, ownership matters. Perhaps the greatest illustration was during the course of the financial crisis when we saw the impact of deglobalisation—the return of capital and investments to national headquarters and a choking of investment into our country which had tremendous consequences and had to be managed with a great deal of skill.
My noble friend Lord Haskel made a very important point which I am very keen to re-emphasise. Foreign direct investment has huge benefits and is and always was key to our productivity strategy, but, given that foreign-owned company outflows broadly equate to FDI inflows, with all the consequences for trade deficits so ably illustrated by my noble friend Lord Hanworth, it cannot be a useful tool to assist the productivity challenge at this stage. We have to have a more sophisticated approach to foreign direct investment.
One of my great concerns is about how it has completely transformed some of our sectors and our contribution to the long-term sustainability and strategic capability in sectors. Of course, we have some which are uniquely attractive and a number of companies would wish to acquire them. To give some sense of perspective, I believe that at the moment there are no major British companies in IT hardware, electronic and electrical equipment, semiconductors, office accounting and computing equipment, radio, TV and telecommunications equipment, fine chemicals, automotive, computer software, except for standard software, and investment banking and international management consulting, and there are worrying issues for larger UK-quoted companies in aerospace and bioscience.
British-owned enterprises are in retail, leisure and general services and are insufficient in high knowledge and technology, with the strong exception of the Cambridge Science Park—I wish we spoke a lot more about that rather than about the somewhat overblown Tech City. The list of companies I have described has been described rather well as,
“the knowledge and technology-based sinews of the modern economy”.
We lose long-term capability and adaptability for the future if we do not have the right contribution there. It is tragic to see what happened to Logica when it was acquired. It was a fantastic company with huge ambitions and was sold short by the City. It is very important to see companies such as British Airways being prepared to go out to the wider markets.
Indeed, I fear that the consequences are very clear to see. Foreign ownership of patents in this country is 40%. The European average is 14%, in America it is 11% and in Japan it is 4%. We have huge capacity for our greatest inventions being applied in other places and that knowledge being extracted and headquartered in other areas. That is quite important for us to understand.
I share the concerns about the finance industry and some of the issues about short-termism and trading, as well as my broader concerns about the pensions industry. My noble friend Lord Haskel made the case for how corporate governance should be considered in the light of foreign ownership. Corporate governance is a central matter that we have to deal with. Foreign ownership is a greater challenge with regard to how companies are run, managed and held accountable.
In a study on wages, productivity and foreign ownership in UK manufacturing, the Centre for Research on Globalisation and Labour Markets at the University of Nottingham identified that in foreign-owned companies labour productivity was 10% higher, total factor productivity was 5% higher and the wage advantage was 5%. At the very top of the scale were US-owned companies, not Japanese, to whom we owe a very great debt for transforming our motor industry. So there is a huge challenge for boards of management, especially remuneration committees, and institutional shareholders, since some of these companies show greater strength because of their investment and training, not a short-term finance director-led approach to managing companies.
In many ways there is almost a tragic element here. Without foreign investment, would there be any significant British presence in major advanced industries, such as motor manufacturing and indeed in investment banking? When we talk about that great institution, the City, we should remember that there is, I think, only one investment bank that is British-owned any more. These are matters that we cannot take lightly, and we have to think about them and plan for them.
I make the point again that there are great advantages and contributions from foreign ownership. I do not take the view that the sky will fall in and that these things are without redemption, but I worry that there is a light travelling towards us and it may not be a bicycle. It is important that we address the known knowns and the consequences with a stronger industrial policy; that we address the unknown knowns with a greater study of foreign direct investment and ministerial willingness to be much more careful and forensic in their examination of it, rather than just pursuing an overall headline target figure; and that we address the unknown unknowns by ensuring that we pay greater attention to maximising our position and to considering our strategically important sectors.
I shall finish with some challenges to the Minister, to see whether he will agree with me that we need a more precise targeting of particular kinds of foreign direct investment and better regulatory intervention to help to maximise local multiplier effects, encourage positive technology spillovers, minimise the displacement of local businesses and encourage opportunities for small businesses, so that the Government are better informed about the corporate objectives, management style and track records of multinational corporations that wish to presence themselves in this country and can ensure that, given the problems that we have in the sectors that I would say are at risk, there is a strong government focus around science, engineering and technology, and protecting and building our IP.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate with incredibly varied speeches from many different areas opposite me; I am saddened only because some noble friends were unable to be here for this debate. It has been of great interest and some fascinating speeches have been made.
It is right that we continue to consider how best we can help UK companies to support growth in the UK and remain competitive, both within Europe and globally. I will set out today how the UK achieves this through a flexible framework of regulation that supports growth by attracting important overseas investment while ensuring that legitimate public interests are protected.
As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said, the UK has always been a trading nation. Throughout history, trade has brought great prosperity to the United Kingdom. The UK is negotiating ambitious trade agreements with our established markets, such as the United States; emerging markets, such as Vietnam; and the world’s poorest markets, as a way of supporting their economic development. My noble friend Lord Maude, as the Government’s lead on trade policy, works hard to ensure that the European Commission is pursuing the right agenda—both the right negotiations and the UK interests within the negotiations. He particularly champions increased pace in EU trade negotiations. Completing all ongoing EU trade negotiations could add more than £20 billion to the economy each year. Every delay has a cost. Concluding trade negotiations allows our goods to enter markets at reduced or zero tariffs, reduces the requirements for multiple testing, protects UK firms’ intellectual property in markets, opens up procurement and services markets and protects our investments overseas.
I now turn to the benefits of the United Kingdom’s strong track record on inward investment. High-quality foreign investments are very important for the United Kingdom economy. Foreign-owned firms now account for nearly 40% of total output in the UK, as mentioned by noble Lords. Around a quarter of United Kingdom private sector employment is with foreign-owned firms. The United Kingdom is the number one destination for foreign direct investment in Europe. The total value of UK inward foreign direct investment stock reached a record £1 trillion as of the end of 2014, the highest in Europe and third in the world, behind only the USA and China.
Over the last five years, UK Trade & Investment recorded more than 8,000 successful inward investment projects in the United Kingdom, which have brought with them nearly 600,000 new and safeguarded jobs. In 2014-15 alone, UKTI recorded a total of just fewer than 2,000 inward investment projects, 12% more than in the previous year. These investment projects are estimated to have brought with them almost 108,000 new and safeguarded jobs over the last year.
Inward investment plays an important role in supporting growth across all parts of the United Kingdom, and last year saw strong investment and jobs growth in most regions. During 2014-15, England, excluding London, received the highest number of FDI projects, followed by London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These results confirm that we have the right approach. International companies see the strength of the United Kingdom as a place to do business and, in many cases, the place to locate their international or European headquarters. However, we need to continue working hard to make the United Kingdom the best place in the world for starting and growing business and the Government are committed to creating the conditions necessary to grow the economy and allow business to expand, thrive and create lasting jobs in the United Kingdom.
Given the significant benefits of foreign investment and open markets to the United Kingdom economy, the United Kingdom’s corporate governance framework does not seek to constrain investment from overseas in UK companies. Nor does the framework seek to stop UK investors investing overseas. The UK has been a leading influence internationally in the development of company law and corporate governance over 150 years and the UK’s corporate law and governance framework continues to be recognised as world-leading. This legal and regulatory framework is ultimately about enabling business to succeed: it provides the certainty needed to facilitate trade and attract investment in the United Kingdom.
The UK takeover regime is subject to the EU takeover bids directive, which sets out common minimum standards across the EU for the conduct of takeover bids for companies whose shares are admitted to trading on a regulated market. There is some permitted variation in how the directive is implemented in different member states, reflecting the wide variety of corporate governance and shareholder models and, indeed, patterns of shareholding across different member states. These factors influence the landscape for mergers and acquisitions.
The European Commission published a review of the application of the directive by EU member states in June 2012. The review concluded that, generally, the regime created by the directive is working satisfactorily. Currently, there are no plans for significant changes to the directive itself. The European Commission review also included a study comparing the EU framework with a number of other major jurisdictions. It showed that takeover bid legislation in the other countries is based on principles similar to those in the EU directive.
The benefits to the UK economy of being open to inward investment are clear. It is therefore important that the United Kingdom creates an environment where investors can invest with confidence. A cornerstone of this is ensuring that mergers are, in the most part, assessed not by politicians but by an independent authority with access to high-quality evidence. In the main, consideration of mergers and takeovers in the UK is handled by the independent Competition and Markets Authority or the European Commission. They will look to see whether any competition concerns arise from a proposed or completed merger or takeover.
Member states’ systems are distinct and operate in different ways but the underpinning EU rules are the same. If a takeover or merger gives rise to legitimate matters of public interest other than competition, UK Ministers, like their European counterparts, have formal powers to intervene. The Government use these powers in exceptional cases to ensure that UK interests are protected; for example, where there may be national security issues. The grounds for using these powers are constrained by EU law to avoid damaging the transparency and predictability of the regime to the detriment of investor confidence and the economy as a whole.
As I have already set out, the UK’s approach to inward investment gives us a competitive advantage over other, more interventionist, regimes. However, there is more to do. We need to reduce regulatory burdens and empower our businesses to compete more effectively by accelerating the integration of the single market, especially in the services and digital sectors. We continue to focus on the importance of freeing businesses from the constraints of overly burdensome EU rules. We want regulation which achieves its objectives more efficiently and proportionately, without imposing unnecessary costs; in some cases this means exempting microenterprises or start-ups.
The noble Viscount, in his introductory speech, commented on the role of manufacturing in the UK economy. We must remember the contribution that manufacturing makes to the UK economy—now £171 billion—which is significant and increasing over the long term. We manufactured a greater volume of goods in 2014 than in any year since 2008, the start of the global downturn/recession.
The Government are also setting the economic conditions to enable business to invest in the technology and skills it needs to compete and to deliver productivity growth. The productivity plan sets out the Government’s approach to delivering productivity growth, and the approach to working with industry focuses on: supporting businesses to invest, grow and prosper in the UK; promoting the UK as a world leader in disruptive and emerging technologies; and making Britain the best place in the world to start up and grow a business. Driving innovation, rolling out further deregulation, promoting competition, boosting skills and strengthening exports will be central to meeting these objectives.
The noble Viscount also commented that other countries are able to intervene in mergers and takeovers that are not generally in their own national interests. Consideration of mergers and takeovers in the United Kingdom is handled by the independent Competition and Markets Authority or the European Commission, as I mentioned earlier. If a takeover or merger gives rise to legitimate matters of public interest other than competition, UK Ministers have the formal powers to intervene. It is not the case that other EU member states have greater powers to block mergers and takeovers on public interest grounds.
The noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Monks, said that the Government should mandate that employee representatives should be on company boards—basically looking at a two-tier board system. As noble Lords will know, under the current law there is nothing to stop companies having employees on boards, and the Government do not believe that it would be appropriate to mandate this arrangement. It should be a matter for companies to decide. Under law, the unitary board system means that all directors, including those representing employers, have the same duties and responsibilities, and we do not see that there is a case for moving to two-tier boards. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, mentioned, the current governance issue at Volkswagen illustrates that the two-tier system is no guarantee of good governance. The Government believe that effective engagement with employees is a vital part of good corporate governance.
Noble Lords went on to discuss the current account and the balance of payments. The recent weaknesses in the current account deficit have been driven by a fall in income earned by UK residents on their foreign direct investments abroad. Relative weaknesses in economic activity among the UK’s trading partners, especially in the euro area, have depressed returns on the UK’s foreign assets. The current account deficit narrowed in Q2 to minus 3.6% of gross domestic product from minus 5.2% in the previous quarter. This has been the smallest quarterly current account deficit over the last few years.
The noble Viscount also mentioned the Kay review. This found issues relating to short-termism in UK companies, including the tendency to pursue short-term takeovers, which undermine UK companies. Her Majesty’s Government’s response to the Kay review acknowledged that short-termism among equity investments has affected long-term investment by UK companies. We have made considerable progress not through regulation but by working with companies and investors to encourage engagement between them with a focus on long-term company strategy. Good progress has been made with, for example, the establishment of the Investor Forum, as recommended by Professor Kay, to promote such engagement. Building on this progress as part of the Government’s productivity plan, leading investors are now developing action plans for long-term investment.
The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said that foreign investors should adopt a stewardship approach. I agree, but it is important to note that United Kingdom asset managers invest on behalf of savers from all over the world. Many of our asset management firms have led the way on adopting a long-term stewardship approach, responding to the challenge set out in the UK stewardship code, overseen by the Financial Reporting Council. They have also set up the Investor Forum in response to the Kay review, as I have already mentioned. The Government believe that these investors have an important role in ensuring that companies focus on long-term investment and not just short-term market value.
A number of noble Lords mentioned sovereign wealth funds. In the summer Budget 2015, the Chancellor announced that he would bring forward a proposal to establish a sovereign wealth fund from shale gas revenues to ensure that local communities share in the economic benefits of shale gas developments in their area. More details will be set out in the Autumn Statement.
The noble Viscount commented that the Government are focusing on foreign investment and congratulating themselves on their performance. Foreign-owned firms account for nearly 40% of total output in the United Kingdom. Over the last five years, foreign direct investment has created or safeguarded nearly 600,000 jobs in the United Kingdom.
There was also the comment that foreign-owned firms have higher productivity. This is an issue that everybody is aware of, the object being to improve the financial situation so that productivity can increase. Yes, foreign-owned firms do have better productivity, and that is one of the main benefits of foreign investment. Incoming knowledge, technologies and innovation can spill over to other companies and supply chains, contributing to overall UK productivity growth.
The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said that growth has become unbalanced, with too much emphasis on the financial sector. The Government have a comprehensive plan to rebalance the economy and strengthen every part of the United Kingdom, and to create a northern powerhouse by bringing together the great cities and counties of the north of England. That is alongside plans to support other vital economies in the UK, such as the Midlands and the south-west.
According to the latest data, output per head grew faster in the north than in the south in 2013. The north-east, north-west, West Midlands and Wales all grew faster per head than London and the UK average. Her Majesty’s Government will go further by supporting the resurgence of strong city regions through devolution, enabling cities to work together to take responsibility for their own economic success.
The noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Mendelsohn, also mentioned the Pfizer interest in AstraZeneca as being an example of corporate investment short-termism. I do not believe that this is the case. On the contrary, AstraZeneca’s directors resisted, arguing that it was not in the long-term interests of shareholders. The majority of investors accepted this view and, as a result, the bid was rejected by shareholders.
A flexible, open marketplace that supports and encourages investors, including foreign direct investment, helps to deliver a successful UK economy. The UK Government’s flexible framework of regulation, which supports growth by attracting important overseas investment while ensuring that legitimate public interests are protected, plays a key role in ensuring that we are a productive and growing nation.
Viscount Hanworth
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate in which we have heard a diversity of opinions. I wish to thank all speakers for their various contributions. I must also thank the Minister for his judicious summary. On Tuesday, he was kind enough to tell me of the nature of his brief, which informed him that there were no problems whatsoever with inward financial investment. In return, I promised not to take him to account for being so seriously misinformed.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble Viscount has mentioned something that was said outside this Chamber. I feel that that is a little unfair.
Viscount Hanworth
I believe that the Minister also said the same thing in the Chamber. Be that as it may, I thank him for his response.
The Minister who bears responsibility for these matters at present is the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill. I trust that this debate will be brought to his attention.
International Development Policies
(9 years ago)
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The Earl of Sandwich
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to make their international development policies more effective.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to introduce this new debate and to welcome friends old and new, especially the noble Lord, Lord Barker of Battle, from whom we will hear soon.
Today, I offer a survey of aid scrutiny, and will expect others to provide the academic analysis. My background is with aid NGOs, namely Christian Aid, Save the Children and CARE, all organisations with long experience in this field that have engendered in me a strong sense of aid effectiveness and public accountability.
As we all know, the UK has a good track record, and our Prime Minister took a lead in launching the sustainable development goals in New York over a year ago. But for us to be sure of meeting these goals, we also need to lead the world in aid effectiveness. I know that impact is the flavour of the month and that every organisation these days is concerned with outcomes, but with the Treasury coming down heavily on other departments, it is even more urgent that we in the UK sign up to an open and fully accountable aid programme. In the past year, this House has debated at length the amount of aid that we can afford, which is now ring-fenced under the Act. We now need to move on to proper methods of scrutiny and of streamlining our aid programme.
Our key watchdog, although not the only one, has the snappy title of ICAI, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. It was a creation of the coalition Government and it has already been tested over the last Parliament. It reports to a sub-committee of the Commons International Development Committee. With 46 substantial reports behind it already and new commissioners in place, I know that ICAI intends to look at the longer-term impact of ODA. This is critical: how can one measure an aid programme year by year and report to the public on its impact only in annual reviews? There have to be appraisals over a much longer term. Three to five years is the average length of a DfID programme, and even this is hardly sufficient to measure its impact on health, education or other needs of society.
Nepal’s multi-stakeholder forestry programme provides an example. This impressive programme is a model of forestry, ticking two SDG boxes. It is already helping half a million poor people through community groups to adapt to climate change over the next 30 years, preventing landslides, flooding and erosion and improving livelihoods. DfID has a five-year investment of £20 million which ends next year, but this programme is not new; it has a long history. I well remember visiting it several years ago with an IPU delegation—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, will remember it—and the same optimistic things were said about it then. I then heard that the programme was suspended, beset with political hold-ups, management problems and land disputes. The Swiss intervened, and then the Finns came in. Such setbacks occur all the time in developing countries. ICAI now says that the programme is back on track, but you cannot always believe either our own or Nepalese propaganda. We may not learn the truth for another 10 years.
There have been failures. Two years ago, ICAI uncovered a waste of aid money on a substantial scale in Africa. TradeMark Southern Africa failed to meet its targets and was closed down by DfID. Perhaps the Minister could say whether there are similar concerns in relation to its sister programmes, MRGP, which links north-south trade to ports in Mozambique, and the TMEA programme in east Africa.
The largest aid programme in the EU, EULEX in Kosovo, has done excellent work, but it has been criticised and drastically scaled down. I am not biased against large programmes if they work. The overhaul of customs and excise by DfID in Mozambique, for example, was very successful. One reason that we have invested heavily in Mozambique, against a difficult political background—as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will testify from his visit—is that an active civil society there has acted as aid watchdogs. Good practice can often be scaled up from smaller enterprise and local initiatives.
I believe that there is a genuine desire in DfID to shift its emphasis towards human rights and poverty reduction. It is just a case of how you do it. We are reassured that even the CDC private sector is now being adapted to that end, and I genuinely hope that it will succeed.
I commend DfID on its parliamentary work abroad, because ICAI is right that other organisations should deal with elections. Strengthening national parliaments and equipping them to serve their nations should be a priority for us here in this country. I remember visiting the Kenya Parliament with the CPA some years ago and finding that, even in such an advanced environment with hundreds of MPs, there were only a handful of staff. The situation has now changed there, but not in many other developing countries.
There are other Select Committees that have to follow DfID: the environment committee, the Public Accounts Committee, the Health Committee, the Education Committee, the arts committee and any department that has an interest in international development. The NAO, the National Audit Office, also keeps an eye on DfID and occasionally criticises its financial performance.
I also include our own committees, remembering in particular our expert Economic Affairs Committee report on aid three years ago. Two years ago our EU External Affairs sub-committee, to which I belong, was critical of the EU’s water, sanitation and hygiene—or WASH—programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. The European Court of Auditors reported that half of 21 WASH projects in Africa were defective and had wasted EU money. The Development Commissioner subsequently denied this and said that the projects selected were random and that DfID had done another survey of 24 successful projects, but none of us was convinced. The scale of EU aid, whether through the EDF or ECHO, is such that our own committees and watchdogs will never be able to catch up with fraud, corruption, waste and all the other afflictions of aid.
However, it is not only the EU. DfID often has to operate in dangerous or remote environments, and humanitarian or conflict prevention programmes in countries such as South Sudan are dangerous. Aid and, indeed, aid workers may be hijacked or have to stop at short notice, with little chance of recovery. This is why ICAI gave the justice and security sector an amber rating last March.
At this point I commend our Liaison Committee for deciding to appoint an International Relations Committee next year after many years of lobbying. No fewer than 25 all-party groups look at DfID’s performance from time to time, including several country and regional all-party groups that occasionally report in some detail. DfID has a multiplicity of internal checks and balances. The acronyms and organograms are bewildering. Much of it is designed by the ARIES management system and database. There is the log frame, the business case, the risk rating, the calculation sheet to give the overall output score, and so on. I sympathise with the staff of DfID who have to cope with all this scrutiny, but what is the result and what are the prospects of a more effective aid programme? In general, I say that they are good and that ICAI is going to be a valuable ally for all concerned, including the general public.
One critical issue is always the capacity of local partners, whether government or civil society. DfID would like to work through more CSOs, organisations which are seen as effective when government is inefficient, corrupt or clearly not working to plan. However, CSOs are also expected to complete forms and are subject to regular scrutiny. I know DfID is currently conducting a civil society partnership review that includes so-called southern CSOs, but I expect there will be more emphasis on the international NGOs and that southern NGOs will get left out. I hope the noble Baroness will put us right on that.
There is always a tension between aid effectiveness and the confrontation of real poverty. Where infrastructure and services are most lacking, aid agencies inevitably fear to tread—yet that is where they are needed most.
Another topical question concerns the poaching of ODA by other departments, notably the FCO and the MoD. We in the aid business should defend our department, but soldiers build refugee camps and DfID is even resettling refugees. There will always be foreign policy issues common to two or three departments and hence some overlap in funding.
Finally, what of quality? Having looked at the private sector and value for money, the latest theme music from the Government is results and the importance of DfID’s results framework. I here only repeat ICAI’s word of warning in June, which brings me back to the beginning:
“Some of DFID’s tools … have had the unintended effect of focussing … on quantity … over quality … on short-term … achievements rather than long-term, sustainable impact”.
I am grateful to all noble Lords who are taking part in this debate.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl on leading this important debate in such a comprehensive manner and join him in eager anticipation of the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Barker of Battle. I declare an interest as chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union Media Trust.
I have two practical points to make. First, all the most important things we want to secure for the developing world—sustainable economic growth, improved healthcare, tackling violence, access to sanitation and water, women’s rights and good education—rely on one crucial foundation stone. In the words of the UN high-level panel report on the post-2015 development framework, it is,
“good governance and effective institutions”.
Without that, we do not have sustainable development.
How can we secure these goods? The central truth is that they can exist only if citizens have access to information from a free and independent media which provide them with information and are prepared to hold government to account. Media freedom therefore needs to be an absolute priority if we are to make our international development policies more effective. Simply put, it is essential because without it, nothing much else works. A very important UNESCO report a few years ago underlined this point by concluding that,
“supporting freedom of expression is … a means to promote human development … and ultimately as a way to contribute to poverty reduction”.
The data clearly show how no country concurrently has a free press and a high percentage of its population living below the poverty line, while societies where the media are fettered are less able to deal with malnutrition, infant mortality and HIV, the scourges of so much of the developing world, because the media are unable to impart information. If you look at some of the countries near the bottom of the world press freedom indices, such as Eritrea, Tajikistan, the DRC and Burundi, you will also find the highest malnutrition rates. To make our policies more effective, we have to place a high priority on promoting press freedom, on training journalists and improving their safety, and on encouraging the removal of laws that stifle free expression.
The second area I want to mention briefly is the continuing horror of the criminalisation of homosexuality across much of the Commonwealth and the developing world, which is important primarily, of course, as a matter of human freedom and dignity but also, in the context of this debate, because of the vital interrelationship between LGBT rights, economic development and poverty reduction. A recent study supported by USAID, undertaken by Professor M V Lee Badgett, analysed the impact of the social inclusion of LGBT people on economic development in 39 countries. The analysis found that their exclusion had,
“a harmful effect on a country’s level of economic development”.
Looking in detail at the issue in India, where homosexuality is criminalised and there is resulting huge stigma, the study found lower productivity and output, inefficient investment in human capital and lost output as a result of health disparities linked to exclusion and violence caused by discrimination. In short, sustained discrimination against LGBT people is bad for business and therefore bad for development. As the Center for Talent Innovation reiterated in a 2013 report:
“For organizations to thrive, they must foster an environment that enables their LGBT employees to thrive”.
That is why continued pressure from the Government to end the outrage of the criminalisation of homosexuality across so much of the developing world, and the Commonwealth in particular, is not just right morally, but economically too.
In conclusion, if the aim of our international development policy is to encourage sustainable economic growth, I hope my noble friend will make these two issues—encouraging media freedom and tackling LGBT discrimination—key priorities for practical action, starting with a firm lead from the UK Government on both at CHOGM later this month.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, yet again we express our appreciation to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for providing the opportunity for a debate on this important subject. As a former Minister for Overseas Development myself, perhaps I may say how good it is to see the noble Baroness in her place, and how much I wish her well in her immense responsibilities. It is one thing having 0.7% of GDP to spend, but spending it well and effectively is a huge challenge. Of course, it need not be only 0.7% because one has always to measure oneself against the size of the challenge.
I have just a couple of points that I should like to raise. First, with all the pressure to demonstrate results, there can be a contradiction between long-term development and immediate results. I wonder how carefully that is being watched in the evaluation. Long-term development must not be distorted.
My other, very specific, point in this context is that in military operations—I am not one of those purists who say there is no role to be played by official aid—the military will inevitably have, for example in Afghanistan, huge pressures to demonstrate results and concrete evidence of change to the local population before the extremists come back. However, that may not always be what is really needed in terms of long-term development. I know there was active interface between the two departments at one stage on this issue, and I wonder how it has been resolved and how it is progressing.
Another issue I want to raise briefly is how successful the Ministry is being in growing tax bases. Of course, tax is terribly important to the revenue of Governments in their ongoing programmes. How is that going in our own Overseas Territories and in the Crown dependencies? How many of them have produced public registers of beneficial ownership? By the same token, it would be good to hear something about the progress being made in this country in demanding responsible tax policies in the countries in which we are working by companies that get contracts from us—and indeed from other companies in the world.
What is DfID learning from its work and how far is that enabling it to discover the spheres of the private sector in which it can be most effective? Finally, obviously, as always, the big issue is strengthening governance and furthering human rights as an essential part of that. I wish we could slip away from talking about our impact and talk about our contribution, which seems much more in the spirit of self-generating growth.
Lord Chidgey (LD)
My Lords, visiting developing countries with long and not necessarily benign relationships with the UK and working with their parliamentarians often brings a reassuring aspect: the receipt of sometimes lavish praise from counterparts for UK policies and activities in the arena of ODA—recognition that the UK is a world leader in international development policy.
So it is a pleasure to acknowledge that this debate starts from a high point. Nevertheless, we and the Government can always aspire to do better: first, on the UK’s role in establishing the global or sustainable development goals; secondly, on the importance of engaging Parliaments in the process, as alluded to in SDG 16; and finally, from my point of view, on the critical assessment of DfID’s approach to delivering development impact, fundamental to making policies more effective.
Much of 2015 has, in international development terms, been taken up with establishing universal agreement on what has become the 17 sustainable development goals. The APPG for Sustainable Development, of which I am a vice-chair, with the support of the NGO, Bond, stresses that we need our Government to push for strong, ambitious, integrated outcomes, with firm commitments to tackling inequalities and environmental sustainability. We need strong mechanisms to implement and monitor the new goals and targets at national and international levels, including for financing and implementation. To quote Hillary Clinton:
“What gets measured gets done”.
We need a commitment to a cross-party approach to implementing the SDG framework in the United Kingdom and internationally. In this regard, we need to ensure that both civil society and Parliament remain closely engaged in implementation of the framework at all levels, nationally, regionally and globally.
The UK Parliament’s commitment to allocate 0.7% of GNI to ODA sets an example that others are urged to follow. Nevertheless, Parliaments have too often been sidelined in discussions on ODA, resulting in low accountability for aid budgeting and delivery. Parliaments must become leaders in accountability at all levels to ensure that Governments continue to push to meet future objectives and international commitments, including international human rights standards. Development partners must be prepared to support into the future the role of Parliament in the law-making and oversight functions of parliamentarians and staff. Projects need to be developed to ensure Parliament’s key components have the capacity to deliver on the SDG objectives.
This brings me to the last of the three aspects I want to touch on: DfID’s approach to delivering development impact. In this regard, I refer again to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, in this case its Report 45, which proves to be an invaluable guide. It concluded that there are core elements for achieving a more consistent, deeper and sustainable impact—for example, the importance of investing in long-term impact rather than short-term results. There is a need to recognise that, with an average programme length of three years, transformational impact may be possible only over several programme cycles. Here I echo and support the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. This needs to be recognised explicitly in programme design. With three-quarters of DfID’s priority countries being conflict and fragile states, more modest objectives and longer-term programmes are needed to establish pathways out of fragility.
There is a strong argument that development programmes are most effective and deliver greatest impact where they adopt a flexible approach to delivery. A fundamental truth in effective development policy is that programme designs are best guesses and most effective when they take a problem-solving approach. These are only a few points drawn from a comprehensive study, which I nevertheless hope the Minister will reflect on in her reply.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on initiating this important debate. My NGO, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust—HART—provides aid for valiant partners in challenging conflict or post-conflict situations who demonstrate high standards of narrative and financial accountability. But given DfID’s current policy, they are unable even to apply for DfID funding.
I give two examples, from Burma and South Sudan. In Burma, HART supports Shan Women’s Action Network—SWAN—which provides aid to people in great need inside Shan State and in Thailand. SWAN previously received funding from DfID, but when we visited recently it was very distressed by DfID’s change of policy, which now makes it impossible for it to obtain funding. It says:
“DfID funding is being redirected via the IRC as their single fund manager for all programmes operating out of Thailand. This is unacceptable to SWAN and we are having to look for alternative funders”.
DfID explained its changing funding strategy:
“There will be a change in the fund management arrangement where DfID Burma is consolidating various Thailand programmes under a single Fund manager agent. We took this action in response to the Mid-Term review recommendation to improve on DfID’s accountability and efficiency in running this border programme”.
But SWAN has deep concerns about working with IRC:
“SWAN has accepted funds through IRC in the past but found the reporting requirements extremely demanding—very large amounts of paperwork that was often repetitive and unnecessary, meaning SWAN staff members had to spend a large portion of their time fulfilling reporting requirements, rather than on project management and evaluation. IRC also took a large amount of admin costs, much higher than other organisations. SWAN felt that the large amounts of money allocated to admin costs would be better spent on project activities that directly benefit needy people in the community”.
Therefore, SWAN will not take the funding if the project has to go through IRC. It will need to find new funding sources, as the DfID project ends this November. This is very serious. SWAN’s work is immensely important and DFID’s change of policy will have drastic effects on its ability to continue key programmes.
In South Sudan, HART supports the provision of aid in war-devastated Bahr el Ghazal, through our partner, the Anglican Bishop Moses Deng. This area has received massive influxes of refugees from Sudan—fleeing fighting in Abyei and the Nuba mountains—and, more recently, from the civil war in South Sudan. Bishop Moses sent an SOS to HART: a desperate plea for money for food. I responded with a heavy heart, wishing I were Bill Gates, saying that we are so small that the maximum we could send was a pathetic £10,000. We visited a few months later and the bishop said:
“Thank you for the £10,000. It bought a lot of sorghum and saved many lives. Then our own sorghum harvest ripened early and we were able to share that with the IDPs. I didn’t need to spend all your money. Would you like me to return it? But with your permission, I would like to use it to buy tools and seeds”,
for the IDPs. It is obvious what we said. However, when we visited those IDPs we found conditions of absolute destitution and not another NGO on the horizon. I asked the bishop whether he could apply to DfID for funding, given the reports of all the money DfID is making available to South Sudan. He replied:
“That’s impossible. We don’t have the resources to apply”.
He said that some larger NGOs came later, but by the time they carried out their assessments, and assessed their assessments, it was too late; but HART’s money saved many lives. There must be something seriously wrong with DfID’s system if a person of such standing and integrity faced with acute humanitarian crises cannot even begin to apply for life-saving funds.
I appreciate that the Minister will not be able to respond to specific cases today, but I passionately hope that these examples demonstrate serious problems requiring urgent consideration if DfID’s massive funding programmes are to reach people in such need of aid, through personnel who have the integrity and competence to justify the funds they deserve to receive.
Lord Barker of Battle (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I feel deeply honoured and very fortunate to be a new Member of your Lordships’ House and to contribute to this important debate called by the noble Earl. But let me start with an apology. I had not meant to make my maiden speech quite so soon. It had been my intention to spend a little more time since my introduction absorbing the ways and customs, and even idiosyncrasies, of this august Chamber, which is so very different from the House of Commons. However, I could not resist the opportunity to speak in this very important debate. I will return to the reason why shortly.
First, I hope that noble Lords will indulge me by allowing me to put on record my sincere thanks to all those colleagues across the House, friends old and new, who have made me so welcome, but particularly my mentor, my noble friend Lady Jenkin, and my terrific sponsors, my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood, who made such a powerful and important contribution just now, and the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, to both of whom I am very grateful. I must also record my thanks to the incomparable doorkeepers and to the House staff as well as to—I am slightly surprised to find myself saying—the Government Whips Office, who have all been so welcoming and so professional. I must also thank my former constituents—the electors of Bexhill and Battle in the county of East Sussex—who, at three successive elections, returned me as their Member of Parliament. Without them, I would not have had the career at Westminster and in government which has ultimately led me here.
The reason I was so keen to speak in this debate is not just because I am immensely proud of the United Kingdom’s record on international development, although I am very proud of it, nor because I applaud the Prime Minister’s unshakeable resolve to stand by our commitment to meet the UN target of spending 0.7% of GNI on official development assistance. Meeting it in the last Parliament during a period of retrenchment in public spending not seen since the war, and now sticking to it as our economy expands faster than any other in the G7, required real political courage. However, as a Minister I had seen at first hand how much this is appreciated right around the globe and the very real impact it is making on the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. This is the politics which transcends party boundaries and of which we can all be very proud.
I also believe that it will be one of the most enduring elements of the legacy of the Cameron Administration. But that is not why I was so keen to speak in this debate. Nor was it because I think that the implementation and effectiveness of DfID policy continue to be critically important. I know that there are very real challenges in managing such a fast-growing budget and delivering the outcomes we all wish to see: to be consistently efficient and effective in delivering them to a high standard. However, the renewed commitment and resolve that I see in the ministerial team is more than equal to that challenge, as are the thousands of dedicated DfID officials who dedicate their careers to the task.
Of all the elements of DfID policy, I particularly wanted to welcome the Energy Africa initiative. I draw your Lordships’ attention to the forthcoming register of interests which will include my interests in Equinox Energy Capital, which is actively seeking opportunities to invest in the African clean energy sector, and Powerhive, which is already building microgrids in Kenya to bring solar electricity to the off-grid rural poor. It is with the benefit of this new commercial perspective that I welcome the way that UK policy is focusing on energy in Africa, where two out of three people—about 600 million individuals—still have no access to electricity at home, 150 years after Edison invented the lightbulb. We also know that without reliable, affordable electricity, social and economic development is dramatically stilted, and with it the growth of opportunity and the economy.
However, the dramatically falling cost of clean energy technology, especially solar technology, is changing the game. I know from personal experience, both in government and now in the private sector, that billions of pounds of new investment is looking to drive the African energy economy forward. Much of this investment is from the private sector, without subsidy or support from development spending. So it should be. There is huge scope for private investors to drive the African energy economy if the right conditions and regulatory environment are in place. But I also see market failure from the private sector. On the current trajectory, universal electricity access will not be achieved until 2080. That cannot be allowed to stand. So the genuinely impressive new approach from DfID, led by Grant Shapps, is not just innovative, it is vital, and I look forward to watching the progress of the Energy Africa initiative in its 14 priority countries, working in partnership with other Governments to mobilise both public and private capital.
My admiration for this new initiative is still not the real reason I wanted to speak in this debate. The genuine reason was that I wanted to be able to pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister sitting in front of the Dispatch Box. For two and a half years we worked together as fellow Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and from the day she arrived in Whitehall Place, I could not have asked for a more collegiate, thoughtful, caring and supportive colleague—or a more effective, impactful and respected Minister. But I knew that as much as she was committed to the brief at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, it was international development that was her passion and where her manifold talents could be used to the full. So I was delighted by the PM’s decision in May to promote my noble friend to DfID, and am truly grateful to be able to contribute to this debate from the Benches behind her this evening.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Barker on an excellent maiden speech. He has made a significant contribution to the other House and brings to this debate his considerable experience from his role as Minister for Energy and Climate Change. We all look forward to hearing his further contributions in your Lordships’ House.
I thank the noble Earl for introducing this debate. Our international development commitments stand among the most important areas of government policy because we have a moral duty to help others around the world. We should be particularly proud that the requirement for 0.7% of GNI to be spent on international development is now enshrined in law, which sets an example to other countries. However, we need to ensure that the money is spent properly and that our funding is used to greatest effect. This means developing the right policies, with transparent, accountable review mechanisms, and ensuring that they have the desired impact on the ground. The Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, has made reforms since taking the helm three years ago to strengthen internal auditing, enabling the passage of money to be followed more closely.
Without doubt, our policies have contributed enormously to the halving of extreme poverty achieved internationally under the framework of the millennium development goals, and the UK has played a leading role in developing the new sustainable development goals adopted at the UN in September, with their aspirational 17 goals and 169 targets addressing the commitment to leave no one behind and applying to all countries of the world. I was particularly heartened that the UK was instrumental in pushing for a stand-alone goal on gender equality as women are always the poorest of the poor.
There are two areas I would particularly like to raise in this debate. In the end we want all countries to become self-sustaining and thus we must encourage change within the developing countries themselves, at both national and grass-roots levels. At national levels, functioning institutions need to be in place to deliver services such as healthcare, education and justice, and British aid funds many such projects. At the grass roots the smaller organisations can generally be the most effective, gaining the trust of a community and its leaders. Many of these smaller organisations find it very difficult to obtain funding, as we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, because applying for grants is so complicated. It takes expertise and they do not have the capacities. I have even heard that funds such as the Tawanmandi fund in Afghanistan, set up for just such a purpose, is very difficult and complicated to apply for.
We need to ensure that some of our money goes to these smaller organisations. However, there is a reticence over funding them because they are harder to monitor. Some of our bigger NGOs work through local partners but I met an NGO in Iraq in May this year which acted as a platform, applying for grants and managing and directing them down to a number of grass-roots organisations. Would my noble friend the Minister consider this approach to ensure that some of our aid reaches those communities where it is so badly needed?
In the longer term, as I have said, we must help developing countries to become self-sustaining. I have just returned from a visit to the DRC, a country enormously fertile and rich in natural resources but where the majority of the people live in abject poverty. Endemic corruption means that the country’s assets benefit only a few, with the proceeds being siphoned out of the country instead of benefiting the majority. The DRC is not the only country in Africa where this happens so the challenge is also how to stop it happening. Is there more that HMG could do to stop this, as much of the money coming out is brought to the West? I hope that HMG will continue to assess the most effective ways of benefiting those in developing countries and encouraging other Governments similarly to meet their aid commitments, so that together we can ensure that the SDGs will transform our world by 2030 for the benefit of all.
Lord Desai (Lab)
My Lords, let me see whether I can do it in two minutes. Over the 60 years that I have studied this problem, our idea of what causes development has got more rather than less complicated. The goals that we set for our aid agencies have become baroquely rich, and there are so many that it is not possible for any development agency to satisfy the many people who judge it.
A few years ago, I suggested when speaking in a DfID debate that the one thing we should do with the global aid budget was count how many poor there are and do a direct cash transfer of the entire development budget to the poor. At that time, it came out to be around $50 per poor person. I think there are now fewer poor, so we may be able to get more. If you want to get rid of poverty, the only thing to do is to transfer cash directly to the poor. If you cannot do that, I would suggest just one more thing that may relieve it. The only criteria of development is: what is the future of the girl child? If you can do better for the girl child in every society when you intervene, that would define your success.
Viscount Craigavon (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for this debate, which has caused me to become particularly aware of the invaluable work of ICAI, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. I have also benefited in this specialised area, as others may have, from the considerable work done by the Commons International Development Committee, formerly most ably chaired by our newly introduced Peer today, the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie. It would be too easy just to highlight and borrow from its few criticisms of the department but I should say first that I strongly support the work of DfID, and generally of international development, while being slightly concerned about the strains imposed on its systems in having to meet the 0.7% target.
The recent increases required to meet that target seem to have added enormously to the complexity and unmanageability of the department. I will come in a moment to the excellent work that it has done in the field of my particular interest, which is reproductive health and population. In general, I understand the downside of the overreliance on supporting multilateral organisations, especially when that leads to less support being given to smaller, more specialist suppliers, which are able to be more flexible, focused and adaptable. I support ICAI in a comment from its recent report that the department should be trying to achieve,
“positive, long-term, transformative change for poor people, who are the intended beneficiaries of UK aid”.
That leads to emphasising the longer-term aspect of aid, which will also produce sustainable results.
My particular interest in reproductive health and population is an example of just such longer-term and sustainable aims. The department has given strong support to the inclusion of sexual and reproductive health and rights—SRHR—throughout the 2015 negotiations on sustainable development goals. The two targets mentioning SRHR and services have been a major achievement for the persistence of the department. Given the UK’s global leadership and technical expertise in promoting and supporting SRHR, I hope DfID will continue to prioritise these critical and often marginalised subjects.
Improvement of health services generally in developing countries also needs support to those services. The International Development Committee’s assessment of the department’s performance in 2013-14 concludes:
“We are concerned by the reduction in spending in some areas vital to achieving key MDGs such as reproductive health and recommend that DFID significantly increase spending in this area”.
In a legacy report, it also recommends that work and spending in this important area be significantly increased, and urges its successor committee to press DfID on the issue.
The summary of the committee’s initial report states that,
“spending by DFID’s priority country teams has declined relatively, as has spending on programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and on key MDG targets such as reproductive health … We recommend that DFID increase the share of expenditure going to bilateral programmes, to sub-Saharan Africa and significantly increase spending on reproductive health”.
Mention of sub-Saharan Africa brings to mind the reports last year endorsed by the United Nations Population Fund, which stated that that part of the world is most likely to be the last to stabilise its population. Its growth is largely because birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been decreasing as fast as expected. It is just that area where aid money is being reduced, and the concern is that aid allocation is increasingly being driven elsewhere by UK economic concerns at the expense of meeting the unmet need for reproductive services, as well as of delivering long-term poverty reduction and development. I hope that the department will continue to take the lead in highlighting this priority area.
Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Earl on securing this debate and the noble Lord, Lord Barker, on his excellent maiden speech.
Page 156 of DfID’s latest annual report reveals that in recent years, the UK Overseas Territory of St Helena and Dependencies received more DfID assistance than either Uganda or Sierra Leone. The figures are due to the project to build an airport on that island in the South Atlantic. The airport itself will probably be ready in the first quarter of next year and is expected to come in on budget at £210 million. Weekly flights are currently scheduled to begin on 21 May: initially, a Comair flight from Johannesburg with a capacity of 120 or so passengers. Once a month, this service will fly on to Ascension before returning to St Helena the following day to pick up passengers returning to Johannesburg and beyond. Another airline, Atlantic Star/TUI-fly, is keen to begin charter flights from London Gatwick, refuelling in the Gambia.
Several concerns are being raised by the islanders. First, will there be enough tourism accommodation of adequate standard to cope with the influx of tourists? Currently, there are just 45 serviced en-suite accommodation bedrooms available. The recent worldwide surge in interest in St Helena, as manifested in the travel press and national newspapers, suggests that with just one flight a week the island’s accommodation will be fully taken up at an early stage. A new hotel in Main Street, Jamestown, has been delayed. Shelco’s long-standing intention to build a five-star plus complex, Wirebird Hills, has changed to a phased development, with the first phase scaled down due to a reduction in the projected tourist numbers in the first few years. Once a month, when the plane links with Ascension, will there be sufficient accommodation overnight for the new visitors arriving, as well as those who will be returning to Johannesburg the following day?
Secondly, will internet access be adequate to cope with the expectations and needs of visitors? Two Atlantic super-fast broadband cables are currently being laid into which, with adequate financial assistance, St Helena could link. Thirdly, are enough private sector businesses being set up to cope with the demand for restaurant food, island tours and fishing and diving expeditions? Will the island be able to produce enough fruit, vegetables and eggs to meet the demand? Fourthly, what plans are there for bulk freight for the island once the Royal Mail ship “RMS St Helena” is retired from service?
The UK taxpayer was right to invest in this overseas territory—what Harry Ritchie called in his book one of “the last pink bits” of the Empire. However, having spent more than £200 million, how will the Government measure the success of the project? St Helena has many attractions. Napoleon was exiled there, and died there. His home, Longwood House, was given to the French nation by Queen Victoria. More than 1,100 ships were wrecked approaching the island, running aground on the lava plateau just beneath the surface of the sea around this former active volcano. Divers will find the strikingly clear waters of the South Atlantic a paradise, as will sports fishermen and water sports enthusiasts. Beautiful seabirds in large flocks surround the island. Delicate indigenous flora and fauna inhabit the island, including the St Helena wirebird, a type of plover. Historic buildings can be explored, including High Knoll Fort, and farms from the era when sailing ships called in to replenish stocks of fresh fruit, vegetables and water. And of course there is Jonathan, the giant tortoise, which is believed to be the oldest living being on the planet. More than 200 years old, Jonathan may have met Napoleon. He is British and lives in the grounds of the governor’s residence, Plantation House. Visitors to the island will want to meet him—and his five girlfriends.
At the end of the day, the key may be to entice enough people who know St Helena back to the island to invest their future in making a success of this DfID project—including some of the estimated 20,000 saints who live in the Falklands, on Ascension, in the UK and elsewhere.
Baroness Flather (CB)
My Lords, I was enormously impressed by the noble Earl’s knowledge of all the ways in which projects are being looked at, but a little depressed at the same time, because it seems that we have too much looking at and not enough doing.
One of the most important things has been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon. We live in a world in which no value is given to women in many developing countries. In fact, an animal that has been bought has greater value than the woman. We cannot have any kind of fair world without bringing women into the success that we expect from men. The problem is that if women are not in the economic world, it affects the whole country and the whole world—not just the women. It does not allow that country to progress. Wherever women are doing better, you will find that the country is doing better. This factor must be always looked at.
I have been to many conferences and, unless they are women’s conferences, the “woman” word is not mentioned at all. Women are half the population, and they say that they do three-quarters of the work in the world. They earn practically nothing, just 10% of the wages, and they apparently own 1% of property. It is time for us to realise that unless we bring in the neglected other half of the population, things are not going to change in developing countries. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, mentioned the girl child. The mother is equally important. If you help the mother, she will look after the girl child and the boy child. It is extremely important to start thinking along those lines.
I am so glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, will speak after me. She coined the phrase “children by choice”. We are still using that phrase. In 1950, the population of the world was 2.7 billion; 65 years later, it is more than 7 billion. Yet, when people talk about climate change, they do not mention the population increase. In fact, population, having too many children and family planning are not considered proper subjects to speak about. They are the most important subjects for all our futures. Improving the condition of women is also the most important matter for all our futures. Without improving women’s lives and giving them the opportunity to join the economic life of a country, there is no future for that country. No matter what you do, if half the population is the poorest of the poor and has no impact on the life of the country, that country is not going to progress. Half the population are not even being looked at or considered.
We have a big problem with water stress. Why is that? Is it because of climate change? Yes, it is. What is the cause of climate change? It is obviously not population—except that it is, and we need to think about that. Every woman should have access to family planning, because when women have fewer children those children benefit, the women benefit, the families benefit and the country benefits.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for initiating this debate. I fully endorse all of his contribution on ICAI. I shall not repeat it. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Barker of Battle, on his maiden speech. We look forward to his future contributions. I should perhaps declare my interest as president of the Chalker Foundation for Africa, but that gives me no money. I give it money, so that is how we proceed.
In this debate, the issues to be addressed to make Britain’s efforts more efficient and effective cover a wide range. I hope that the reviews now under way in DfID, of which there are many, will be published in full when they are concluded. I shall mention two specific matters where there may be possible benefits from a change in current DfID practices. Before I come to those issues, I pay tribute to the recent work of CDC. The Harvard Business School working party evaluation of its impact on four measures of business success—employment, revenues, profits and taxes paid—shows clearly that fund investing has allowed CDC to reach a broader range of businesses, especially small business, in the developing world in a wider range of geographies than it could have done on its own. By allowing CDC to build local capacity through supporting first-time teams, several funds have gone on to raise successor funds and create successful track records in the developing world by attracting commercial capital into those emerging markets. That is vital. Will my noble friend confirm that DfID will do all it can to continue and enhance fund investing through CDC and others, especially in power generation and infrastructure projects?
A further word on infrastructure: Britain has the best professional engineering fraternity in the world. I hope that DfID will use its budget and its positive energy to re-establish engineering advisers from the private sector to plan and oversee the urgently needed projects in productive infrastructure growth.
Can the Minister reassure me that worthwhile projects for development put to DfID for funding of values of less than £50 million will be seriously considered and funded if they meet the return criteria on which they should be judged? Perhaps she could publish the exact criteria by which her department judges these projects, for I hear that many smaller projects worth less than that amount are not now acceptable to the department.
My other point concerns the other end of the financial scale. As patron of Wulugu, a small local charity working in Ghana building schools, especially for girl children, I am concerned to find that it and many other small charities like it are not given support to increase the education of girl children. It is also now helping mothers who never had the chance to learn to read or write. Build Africa is another example of similar good school-building work in east Africa. It is by funding small local charities that we gain innumerable benefits for training volunteers. Large worthwhile charities can raise their own money, but the smaller ones have enormous problems not only in raising the money but in getting the sort of support on the ground that I believe DfID should be giving. I thank your Lordships for listening to my points about large and really small beneficiaries of DfID funds.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for initiating this debate and join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Barker of Battle, on his maiden speech today.
In parenthesis, because this has been a theme that has emerged in the course of the debate, all experience shows that if you tackle poverty then population falls naturally. If you launch population control programmes, you may end up with coercive policies such as those in China, where there are now 40 million more men than women and where we have seen gendercide—policies aided and abetted by the West and development programmes.
However, I shall focus my remarks on an issue that I raised two weeks ago with the Minister when she was good enough to meet a small delegation of Fiona Bruce MP and myself. We expressed particular concern that British aid is not being used effectively to combat the rise of radical Islamist agendas and that, like our refugee policy, this is not being targeted to reach persecuted minorities, such as Yazidis and Christians, who are suffering genocide and crimes against humanity. All around the world, as we are all too acutely aware, an ideological hatred of difference is driving a systematic campaign of persecution, deportation and exodus, degrading treatment including sexual violence, enslavement, barbaric executions, and attempts to destroy history and culture that is not its own.
I ask your Lordships to think of some of the countries that receive UK aid. The biggest recipient is Pakistan. This year it will receive £405 million, making £1.17 billion since 2011. How do we ensure that funding for education is spent on the right things? Here the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, and I would agree: think of young Malala, targeted simply because, as a girl, she wanted an education. Think about how the funding is being spent on promoting intolerance in the curriculum. The Minister will recall some of the examples I gave her, not least in some textbooks that give children choices about which would be the best way to execute homosexuals. This is feeding the minds of young people.
How do we ensure that Pakistan’s beleaguered minorities receive help? Last week I chaired two days of evidence sessions here in Parliament, where we heard how exactly a year ago a mob of 1,200 people forced two children to watch as their Christian parents were burned alive. Pakistan has imposed the death penalty on a mother of five, Asia Bibi, for so-called blasphemy. It still has to bring to justice the murderers of Shahbaz Bhatti, the country’s Minister for Minorities who was assassinated; only last night we heard from his brother, Dr Paul Bhatti, who was here in the Palace talking about some of the other excesses committed not just against Christians but against Shias, Hindus and Ahmadis. This is a country where churchgoers have been murdered in their pews. How is our aid programme making a difference there?
Or take Eritrea, which is in receipt of a $300-million aid programme handed over to the Afwerki regime by the European Union, to which we have contributed. The United Nations said in June that Eritrea is a country which is likely to have carried out gross human rights violations. Some 5,000 people leave Eritrea every month. A total of 350,000 people, 10% of the population, have fled. This is a huge development question. It also leads to an exodus of people in Mediterranean passages and some also, of course, being beheaded by ISIS.
The House of Commons International Development Select Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into the Syrian refugee crisis. It was recently told by a witness that aid is not reaching the Christians or Yazidis because those are too frightened to go into the UN-registered camps. How does the Minister respond to that? DfID could usefully become proactive in promoting a debate about Article 18, the right to believe, not to believe or to change your belief. Think of recent events with secularists in Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh. Look at the link between prosperous societies and those that uphold freedom of religion and belief. These are crucial questions and should be at the heart of our aid programmes. It may salve our conscience to give money, but it has to be effective.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, before I address the substantive issue of the effectiveness of this country’s international development work, I want to draw attention to my various charitable interests in the register and also to say that I wish the conventions of your Lordships’ Chamber allowed me to describe the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, as “my noble friend”. I greatly admire his commitment to these issues, and the passion he brings to the Chamber regularly in addressing them makes your Lordships’ House a much better place.
I want to address two issues today. The first concerns the sustainable development goals agreed by the United Nations in September. I think that these are really exciting times for international development and I congratulate the Government on the role they have played in bringing these new goals about. I hope that their commitment drives these goals forward and that we are able to move forward in a way that, on a cross-party basis, we have done regularly over recent years.
These new sustainable development goals give us a chance to address important issues that were ignored by the millennium development goals, such as the business environment, taxation systems and the role of the private sector in creating jobs. Not only do they put the role of women and the education and liberation of girls more fundamentally at the centre of the strategy, not only do they look at resilience in areas affected by natural disasters and regular emergencies, to ensure that they are better prepared for the impact that such events have on development, but they provide a wider, comprehensive package for development. This should encourage us that in 15 years’ time we can have made further real inroads into tackling extreme poverty worldwide.
I want to address one specific issue within all that, which we have discussed before in your Lordships’ Chamber and commented on in relation to the Government’s policy, which has been, since 2010, a policy of allocating roughly one-third of the international development budget to fragile and conflict-affected states. Actions have been taken not only to improve the governance of those states and development within those states but to try to prevent conflict and further fragility in the future. I see that the Prime Minister has said this week that we might now move to 50% of the development budget being allocated in this way. In principle, I would not have an objection to that.
I believe that the new goal 16 agreed as part of the sustainable development goals is a very important addition to the international framework, highlighting the importance of peace and justice. If we are to secure real development for the long term, I believe that that goal is critical. If the UK is to contribute to international success on that goal, then, yes, perhaps a higher proportion of the budget should go towards conflict-affected and fragile states—but we must not use such a commitment simply to add resources to the old way of doing humanitarian relief, for example.
In these humanitarian camps, important as they are, it is no longer the case that water, shelter and food are enough. We need to start educating the children in these camps so that the next generation are not disillusioned, angry and willing to take up the fight in the way that their fathers and uncles appear to be back home. We also need to ensure that in these fragile states we do not just support NGOs that implement development programmes that allow us to add high numbers to our achievements, but that we create the kind of legitimate, independent institutions that give people hope for a peaceful and just future. If we address those issues, an increase in the proportion of the international development budget allocated to issues of peace and justice in fragile and conflict-affected states would be money well spent.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I speak today as I have spent the last 30 years or more involved in international development projects in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe, and I direct the House’s attention to my interests in the register. I will be critical today but first I will pause and acknowledge that international development is difficult and complex work—although absolutely vital in the globalised world in which we live, where hideous imbalances are a threat to us all. We owe gratitude to DfID for the work that it does.
This is a huge topic, and I will focus on just one aspect, based on my experience. There is a pendulum, a fashion even, in this work, that alternates between favouring very large development projects and relying on small projects to deliver. At some stage a Minister will get the idea that big projects are best. These go under many names, but the advent of multilateral donors has caused this tendency to explode. After all, if it was good yesterday to say that you were spending £10 million on a project, how much better to say today that you are part of a £100 million multilateral project. I am afraid that some Ministers tend to like that sort of thing. Large commercial consulting companies like them, too. These large projects, often with quite fuzzy success criteria, provide tremendous fee-earning opportunities that are worth bidding for.
Finally, the Minster’s officials may have a strong temptation to feel the same way, because a few big projects run by large commercial consulting companies are a lot easier to administer than a plethora of small ones run by a diversity of small organisations. I remember officials some years ago—unaware of my presence— punching the air at the news that smaller projects were to be dispensed with in favour of fewer and bigger ones. Perhaps things are different now, but the House of Commons International Development Committee report of March this year said that there is,
“a focus on large programmes, which are outsourced to multilateral organisations and large contractors to manage”—
so it does not sound like much has changed.
However, what is actually wrong with great big grandstand projects? Here are a couple of examples from my own experience. First, I have worked on projects where, by the time the needs assessment has been done, the reports written, the tender drawn up and run, the contracts awarded and the project finally gets started, hundreds of thousands could have been spent. The project can be years out of date, even irrelevant, but the successful bidder is locked into a commercial contract that they are ill-advised commercially to upset. This is a very dispiriting experience, but all too common in large multilateral projects.
My second example: millions of pounds simply disappeared into multilateral projects providing so-called budget support to other Governments. When I asked questions about this, they tended to be met with a shrug or an embarrassed smile. Nobody really knew what the money had been spent on. Of course, large projects may sometimes be justified. However, the temptation in a Government department to opt for too few—big—projects has been too strong for too long.
Smaller, bilateral projects tend to be far more plugged in to real-time needs, nimbler in meeting them, and implemented by people with a commitment that predates and goes on way beyond the project rather than just the project period. They also tend to have long-term relationships with community partners, and others have already touched on that. In short, I have seen millions wasted on big projects and hundreds spent very well on small ones. The House of Commons report suggests that there is a need for a “change of culture” at DfID. I do hope that DfID is listening.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My Lords, I am sure that the whole House was delighted with the news last month that the Nobel prize for economics had been awarded to a British economist, Professor Angus Deaton. It was awarded for his work on global poverty, on which he is the world’s leading expert. I commend to all noble Lords who have participated in this debate his best-known book, The Great Escape, which I suspect many have not read. I commend it in particular to my noble friend who will be winding up in the debate, and I hope that she will draw it to the attention of her boss, the Secretary of State.
I should like to end this very brief intervention in the gap by quoting, in his own words, Professor Deaton’s conclusion in the book on official foreign aid:
“While some of this aid has clearly done good—and I think the case for assistance to fight disease such as HIV/AIDS or smallpox is strong—I have come to believe that most external aid is doing more harm than good. If it is undermining countries’ chance to grow—as I believe it is—there is no argument for continuing it on the grounds that ‘we must do something’. The something that we should do is to stop”.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for securing this debate and challenging us all so effectively. I have hugely valued his expertise over the years. I also commend the noble Lord, Lord Barker, for his maiden speech, and I look forward to hearing more from him.
As a former DfID Minister, I feel very proud of what DfID has achieved. The department is indeed renowned throughout the world for its work, as my noble friend Lord Chidgey made clear. As a Lib Dem, I am delighted that my colleagues Michael Moore and Jeremy Purvis—now, my noble friend Lord Purvis—took through Parliament the Bill to enshrine in law the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on aid. I am extremely grateful for so much cross-party support, not least from many—although not all—who have spoken today. Therefore, it is vital for me to ensure that this aid is indeed spent wisely and well. It must be effective.
We are coming up to the comprehensive spending review next week and the strategic defence and security review. The SDSR was due to be published on Monday but it may, as I understand it, be postponed. So this debate is also very well timed because of the key agreements of this year.
As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and others pointed out, in September, after worldwide involvement, we agreed the new sustainable development goals. We hope that the climate change conference will take place shortly in Paris, despite the terrible events of the last few days. There could not be a more stark contrast between that appalling series of attacks and the need to work collectively to tackle global climate change. Right now, as we have heard, DfID is conducting a number of its own reviews. As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned, aid is scrutinised by the Commons Select Committee and by ICAI, as well as through transparency and public scrutiny. That scrutiny is vital because of all that we need and must achieve in an unstable world.
DfID’s work takes place in very challenging circumstances, as the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, pointed out. However, if we look at the wider changes that we seek, we can see major progress. The MDGs aimed to halve extreme poverty. Clearly assisted by economic growth in China, India, Brazil, Mexico and other key economies, the world achieved that, even if half the world’s population—women—remain worldwide less well off than men.
However, the newly-agreed SDGs now aim to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, thus finishing what the MDGs started, and they aim to leave no one behind. That must mean a continued concentration on women and girls, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson and Lady Flather, the noble Lord, Lord Desai, the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, and others have made clear. It also means that we must focus, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, emphasised, on those from ethnic minorities in particular countries where they are excluded, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, pointed out, on members of the LGBT community, those with disabilities, the elderly and so on. I look forward to the Minister’s response on these points.
In tackling fragile states, as Save the Children points out and as was emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, an over-focus on short-term results can deflect from longer-term aims. Building systems, capacity and institutions takes time. The Prime Minister’s recent announcement, which the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, referred to, that the UK may be focusing half its aid budget in fragile states must surely mean that long-term development strategies are vital; for example, across the Middle East and north Africa. Perhaps the Minister could clarify that. Here, echoing the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, I note CDCs very interesting support in frontier economies.
We also hear that DfID will emphasise humanitarian emergencies. Again, we must make sure that we invest in longer-term development to reduce the impact of natural disasters. Earthquakes striking the west coast of the US do not cause the death rates that we see in developing countries—for example, around the Himalayan ring—where the challenge of poor housing lies at the root of many casualties. We know from tsunamis that building key public structures in a way that can withstand such floods is crucial. We also know that warning systems can save many lives.
In building resilience, we need to implement the advice from the expert panel on disasters, chaired by my noble friend Lord Ashdown.
Many noble Lords have made reference to the fact that more ODA money may be assigned to other departments. Cross-departmental working is absolutely right; after all, trade policies from BIS—
Baroness Northover
If the noble Earl will look at his piece of paper, I am allowed eight minutes.
The Earl of Courtown
I do apologise to the noble Baroness, but it is four minutes.
Baroness Northover
I apologise on behalf of my Whips’ Office, which told me last night that, whereas everybody else had four minutes, I had eight minutes in which to respond for the Lib Dems.
I will conclude by arguing that it is important that DfID and DECC work closely together. Removing renewables in the United Kingdom helps to undermine what we are doing overseas.
It is important that the FCO, MoD and DfID work together; that was surely and sorely missing in the early days in Afghanistan and Iraq, with long-term consequences.
This has been a very thoughtful debate—
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, I am sorry, but will the noble Baroness give way, please?
Baroness Northover
I now conclude and look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I will run through what I have to say very quickly. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for initiating this debate, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Barker, on his excellent maiden speech.
The cross-party consensus on 0.7% would have been unthinkable 20 years ago—as evidenced by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. However, we need to do far more to persuade many of the public. We should make the case every day we can that development changes and saves lives.
Today’s debate is less about how much we spend and more about how we spend it. Can a larger development budget be delivered by an ever-smaller department? As the aid budget rises, so must our ability to control it. That is why the role of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact is so important. I want to focus on its comments on the use of contractors to deliver UK aid. The effectiveness of that aid is reduced, ICAI argues, because of the arm’s-length relationship between DfID and the contractors, and a lack of strategic guidance on their use. However, what ICAI failed to address is the key comparison of the effectiveness of a private sector-led approach to poverty alleviation over a public sector-led one. The use of certain consultants, such as Adam Smith International, inevitably predetermines the policies that are implemented overseas, from privatised water to privatised education. Earlier this year, Global Justice Now published a study stating that the DfID’s funding of private sector health and education projects was driving inequality.
We know that public services can provide better value in developing countries, but in some cases that choice is not being given. This is crucial in ensuring that the needs of the poorest are met and that recipient countries’ ability to become self-reliant is increased. The Ebola crisis highlighted the importance of sustainable public health systems. I urge the Minister to ensure that the department and ICAI give this question the scrutiny that it deserves.
Last year, DfID launched an inquiry into the use of consultants and in its response pointed out that it had tightened procurement controls and ministerial oversight. However, what the department did not do was publish the full results of the inquiry. Will the Minster now agree to do so and advise whether any assessment has been made of the new procedures?
I would also be grateful if the Minister could inform the House of the results of the review of the strategic choices that the department makes in its use of contractors, including when the department should be delivering in-house and when and how it should bring in suppliers.
As my noble friend Lord McConnell noted, with DfID increasingly working in fragile and conflict-affected states requiring complex programmes, the department is more likely to rely on contractors and their local partners. The Prime Minister’s announcement that at least half the UK’s £12 billion aid budget will be spent on supporting fragile states raises even more questions on how this might be managed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Verma) (Con)
My Lords, let me begin by thanking the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for securing this debate and all noble Lords for their contributions. They have been wide-ranging, informative and questioning. Many questions have been posed today and I may have to undertake to write to noble Lords given the time constraints.
I also join all noble Lords in welcoming my noble friend Lord Barker to your Lordships’ House; I congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. Having worked with my noble friend in a previous role at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, I know that he will bring passion and deep knowledge to ensuring that we have a planet that is fit for all its citizens. He will bring to the House the benefit of the knowledge and experience that he gained not just from that department but from the reason why he came into public life. I look forward to working with my noble friend.
I am proud of the role the UK has played in setting a new agenda for development, and ensuring that global goals are universal and leave no one behind. For a sustainable route out of poverty, Her Majesty’s Government will put inclusive economic growth, resilience to crises, empowering women and girls, and tackling climate change at the heart of our approach. DfID is already achieving transformational results and has transformed as an organisation to deliver even smarter programmes.
Under this Government, Great Britain was the first major economy—as is widely recognised not just here in the UK but globally—to meet the UN target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on development. Since 2011, this commitment has placed more than 10 million children into school, immunised nearly 50 million children against fatal diseases and prevented 24.5 million people going hungry. It has supported some 480,000 people to start HIV treatment plans and distributed 47.4 million insecticide-treated bed nets.
As well as saving lives, we have stepped up our focus on economic development and the golden thread. By improving opportunities for communities and their economies, we can catalyse sustainable, long-term benefits for generations to come. With this in mind, DfID is helping people to work their way out of poverty, not least by supporting 69 million people to access financial services.
The way we and our partners deliver and the way we work with civil society and others has changed. The bilateral and multilateral aid reviews will ensure that our strategy is sensitive to this shifting landscape and informed by the latest evidence. Internally they will target our work in the right places and in the right ways. DfID’s operating framework will continue to demand that lessons learned from the past impact evaluations and changes in the global evidence base be considered throughout programme design and implementation.
Since 2012, DfID has transformed how it demonstrates greater accountability and transparency. Every programme in the department now has a named person in charge with clear responsibilities. Financial, audit and risk systems have been strengthened. Programmes are reviewed more frequently, and if seen not to deliver they may be closed down.
We also continue to raise the bar with the key multilaterals we work with. In 2013, the International Development Committee said:
“The multilateral aid review has made a real contribution to the efficiency of the multilateral system”.
So while it is too soon to pre-empt the full results of the reviews, I am confident that they will deliver a flexible approach that ensures that the benefits of aid reach those most in need, even in the most difficult places.
Flexibility means surging our resources to respond to global shocks—as we did last year on Ebola—and focusing on the longer term to help countries to rebuild themselves after crises. That is where smart development comes in. We know that for every £1 spent on disaster preparedness we save up to £7 on disaster response. In Nepal we are building schools to withstand earthquakes; in Africa we help countries insure themselves against extreme weather; and last year we committed £27 million into a cross-government fund for peace, stability and security programmes.
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for highlighting the vital role of UK parliamentarians in scrutinising the effectiveness of UK aid. DfID works directly with Parliaments in 75% of its bilateral country programmes. Earlier this year we committed £9.3 million to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which works in more than 40 countries to support Parliaments and political parties. Our support for transparency in sectors such as construction and forestry—such as the Nepal forestry programme to which the noble Earl referred—empowers civil society with information about revenues and contracts to help citizens scrutinise government decisions.
DfID undertook a comprehensive review of the Nepal multi-stakeholder programme this September. While it was noted that management and governance challenges had delayed progress, results were nevertheless achieved: 8,100 jobs were created and 381 local groups were trained in forest management.
Empowered societies and open Governments are a prerequisite for effective public accountability. This golden thread underpins sustainable long-term growth and stability. DfID is a global leader in publishing timely, comprehensive and open data on its programmes and asks its main suppliers and implementing partners to do the same.
I shall try to respond to a number of the questions that were raised. My noble friends Lady Hodgson and Lord Craigavon, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and other noble Lords asked whether, through the reviews, we would be considering supporting smaller organisations. We want to see how best we can reach the people who will benefit, whether it is through the smaller organisations on the ground or through the multilateral agencies. Often, some work is better performed through the multilateral agencies. It is about seeing how these reviews can give us results and help us deliver better to the people who need us the most. The review will help us to develop a more thoughtful, innovative, strategic and fairer relationship with organisations that share our objectives.
There should be simplified programme designs. In the past two years, DfID has stripped back its guidance so that we now have 37 smart rules that operate in the department. I am responsible for procurement within the department and I can tell noble Lords that, from my perspective, we scrutinise very carefully the business case for every single proposal that comes through. We do not simply reject on the basis of size. It really is about how effectively the programme supply will actually deliver.
My noble friend Lord Black rightly raised the important issue of freedom of the media and ensuring that people are able to get information on the ground that rightly empowers them to question local governance and services. The UK Government have been a champion of Goal 16, which encourages greater transparency and accountability, and press freedom globally. In support of that, DfID provides BBC Media Action with a large global grant of £85 million to support citizens gaining better access to information through the media. We support the global work of the London-based organisation, Article 19, which focuses on the defence and promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide.
My noble friend is also absolutely right to highlight the importance of tackling LGBT discrimination. The UK is behind the commitment to the principle of “leave no one behind” in the implementation of the global development goals. I welcome the opportunity to chair discussions on the protection of LGBT people during the upcoming CHOGM People’s Forum in Malta over the next few days. The UK continues to urge all states with laws that criminalise homosexuality urgently to review them. DfID remains committed to fighting for equality and against discrimination. We see human rights as universal; they should apply to all people.
My noble friend Lady Hodgson and other noble Lords asked about corruption and fraud. The Government do not and will not tolerate corruption or the misuse of taxpayers’ funds in any form. All allegations of fraud are taken seriously and we follow them up through DfID’s Counter Fraud and Whistleblowing Unit. We have in place robust systems to safeguard aid money. DfID is delivering a new anti-corruption research programme over the next three years to provide relevant operational evidence on how to tackle corruption in priority countries.
My noble friend Lord Barker talked about the Energy Africa campaign. He is absolutely right to say that we focus on ensuring that the two out of three people living in sub-Saharan Africa who do not have access to electricity today are not in that position in the future. We are doing our very best to ensure that we reach out to help them on to the path to economic growth, and I am very pleased to be able to support my honourable friend in the other place, Grant Shapps, who launched this initiative on 22 October. It has been very well received globally and, again, the UK is showing the leadership that encourages others to look at what we are doing in this area, so that they can assist us. Three countries have already signed partnership agreements.
I have too many questions to respond to in the time available because the clock is ticking away rapidly. Perhaps I may conclude by saying that the international community sees DfID as a development leader. We are not complacent, and we will continue partnering across government, parliamentarians, civil society, the British public and others to deliver smarter and more effective programmes which demonstrate that the power of change is on the ground and in the hands of the people.