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Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
1. What steps her Department is taking to monitor and prevent future chemical spills from quarrying in the headwaters of the River Tamar.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
We take the issue of chemical spills very seriously, particularly in the context of the Tamar. Such spills have caused significant damage to biodiversity and, specifically, to fish. We are analysing the pH levels and the dissolved solids to prevent future occurrences.
Scott Mann
I am grateful for the Minister’s response. Will he ask his Department to review the decision of the Environment Agency not to pursue legal action against Glendinning for the major pollution incident relating to Pigsdon quarry in 2014?
Rory Stewart
Legal proceedings were brought and the decision was made by Truro Crown court, under the hon. Judge Carr, to instead impose an enforcement order. Some £70,000 has been contributed by the company, but, much more importantly, five new lagoons have been put in place to deal with the incident and chemical processes are being used to prevent a recurrence.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before the hon. Gentleman comes in, I emphasise that we are discussing the Tamar, not the Dee.
Christian Matheson
Indeed, sir. Cornwall is well-known for its history of mineral extraction, whether it be china clay or Cornish tin. Cheshire is about to enter into mineral extraction as well through fracking. The Government have gone back on their pledges on monitoring and preventing chemical spills from fracking rigs. While the Minister is considering the potential pollution of the Tamar, will he also consider whether there is sufficient monitoring to prevent chemical leaks from fracking in the headwaters of the River Dee, like that in the headwaters of the Tamar?
Rory Stewart
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for an ingenious connection, although the nature of the extraction in the two cases is quite different. The Environment Agency takes its responsibilities very seriously, whether in respect of quarrying or fracking. If there are particular concerns, I would be happy to sit down with him to discuss them in more detail.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
2. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Transport on the proposals by the European Commission for it to levy fines on vehicle manufacturers that do not meet emissions standards.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
In the wake of the Volkswagen engines scandal, it is extremely important both that we have monitoring in place to check the real levels of emissions of nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants from engines, and that we have proper fines in place. This Department and the Department for Transport will look very carefully at the proposals that were put forward by the Commission last week.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
I am grateful for that very positive response from the Minister. Does he agree that it is time to break the relationship between industry, testers and regulators, so that the process is truly independent and so that Government agencies, whether they be in his Department or the DFT, act wholly in the public interest?
Rory Stewart
As a matter of principle, it is incredibly important that regulators are entirely independent of the industry they regulate. This is essentially an issue for the DFT. The reason the Commission’s proposals are interesting to ourselves and the DFT is that they include both the commitment on spot checks, with a clear indication of the fines, and a separation, as the hon. Gentleman says, the regulator and the industry.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Car emissions are a main contributor to poor air quality in this country. Many of the former local authorities that covered my constituency were among the first to sign up to the Clean Air Act 1956, but much of that progress has gone backwards as a result of poor air quality in urban areas. Is it not time for a new clean air Act that is fit for the 21st century?
Rory Stewart
Clean air is certainly an issue of significant concern, but air quality has improved significantly over the past 30 years. The levels of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, PM2.5 and PM10 have improved.
Rory Stewart
Air quality has also improved here. However, we will work very closely with individual local authorities on clean air zones to meet the level in the ambient air quality directive of 40 micrograms per cubic metre.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
On the foot of the ongoing discussions with the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in relation to our inquiry into air quality, will the Minister hold the car manufacturers to account to ensure that car owners throughout Britain and Ireland who have been affected by the defeat devices are compensated?
Rory Stewart
This is a DFT lead, but the issue raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) about the Commission’s proposals addresses the relationship between the manufacturer, the vehicle owner, and the kind of fines that could be imposed. That is why member states will be looking closely at that Commission proposal.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
3. What steps the Government plan to take to meet the UN target of halving food waste by 2030.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
Our commitment to the UN target of halving food waste is immensely important, and work on that is being taken forward by the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, the Waste and Resources Action Programme—WRAP—and the Courtauld 2025 agreement. It will aim to build on work that we have achieved since 2009, which has reduced household food waste by 17%.
Paul Blomfield
The Minister is right to highlight the reduction in household food waste, but he will know that that is not being matched by the food industry. Will he explain why Government Whips objected to the Food Waste (Reduction) Bill, which was promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) last Friday? Would it not be better to get the Bill into Committee, where its provisions and the positive course of action that it proposes could be properly considered, and we can take the opportunity to end the scandal of food waste?
Rory Stewart
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who has campaigned strongly on this issue for a long time. We have significant concerns about the targets set in that Bill, and we believe that its proposals include perverse incentives. Voluntary measures have increased by 70% the amount that retailers have managed to redistribute to charitable organisations, and the real key will be getting councils and retailers to work on a unified system.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
While visiting the anaerobic digestion plant belonging to Severn Trent, which is near to my constituency, I was impressed by the energy recovery from food waste. However, does the Minister agree that too much edible food is still going into waste? How do the Government plan to intercept that food for redistribution while it is still edible?
Rory Stewart
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, because at the moment the average household in the United Kingdom wastes more than £60 a month on food waste. We must ensure that food is not wasted in the first place on its way from the farm gate to the house, and if food cannot be consumed by humans, we must ensure that it is consumed by animals, and that it goes to anaerobic digesters only as a last resort.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Soil Association estimates that between 20% to 40% of UK fruit and veg is rejected before it even reaches the shop—it is deemed as being a kind of “wonky veg” because it fails to meet the supermarket’s strict cosmetic requirements. Will the Minister ensure that supermarkets and manufacturers transparently publish their supply chain waste—I think Tesco is doing that with food waste hotspots? That is vital if we are to achieve a meaningful reduction in waste.
Rory Stewart
I absolutely agree that that is vital, and we recently held a round table with retailers on that issue. One solution, although not a total solution, is being pioneered by Tesco and Co-operative supermarkets, which are looking at individual varieties—for example, of potatoes—that result in much less food waste on the way from the farm gate to the shelf.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
My constituents in Kettering, especially those from the wartime generation, are horrified about the amount of food that is wasted. How can we get back to the principle that we do not put more food on our plate than we can eat, and that we consume the food that is on our plate?
Rory Stewart
My hon. Friend has drawn attention to one of the central points of this issue, which is human behaviour and culture. Certain things can be done by the Government and others by retailers, but in the end a lot of responsibility rests on us all regarding how much food we buy, how we use it, and how much of it we throw away.
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
4. How many schemes will begin construction under the Government’s six-year flood defence programme in 2016.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
A total of 246 schemes will begin construction in 2016-17 as part of our first ever six-year programme of investment in flood defences. That £2.3 billion of investment represents a real-terms increase on the last Parliament, and will protect an additional 300,000 homes.
Sir Henry Bellingham
I congratulate the Minister on championing this cause. Does she agree that when it comes to investing in new flood defences and improving existing ones, getting the support of local authorities, drainage boards, and the private sector is incredibly important? Will she pay tribute to Mike McDonnell in my constituency, who has helped to set up a community interest company to invest in sea defences along the stretch of coast adjacent to Snettisham and Heacham in west Norfolk?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When internal drainage boards work with local businesses and local councils, we can get really good local solutions. The community interest company is a particularly interesting model, which is being pioneered by him and his constituents in North West Norfolk. It could potentially be used elsewhere.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Sheffield remains £20 million short of the investment it needs to protect our city. The Department is holding a teleconference with council leaders, but will the Secretary of State commit to visiting Sheffield to see the innovative flood defences we have planned that will protect the city from a potential £1 billion of economic damage?
Elizabeth Truss
As part of the national resilience review being led by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Sheffield is one of the core cities that will be looked at in particular to make sure it is sufficiently resilient to flooding. I am sure that as part of that review there will be a visit to Sheffield to ensure that that very important city has the protection it needs.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Flood Re insurance will help many householders in Thirsk and Malton affected by recent floods, but it does not cover small businesses or leasehold properties with more than three units. In one such development in my constituency at Topcliffe Mill, residents of a two-bedroom flat now face a premium of £4,000 a year and an excess of £40,000. Will Ministers agree to meet me and representatives from the insurance industry to consider how we can provide a solution to this problem?
Elizabeth Truss
We are providing £6 million to help small businesses as a result of this winter’s floods. The issue my hon. Friend raises with regard to leaseholders is important. Ministers will be very willing to meet him to discuss it.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
On the defence programmes and the victims of flooding, will the Secretary of State confirm whether her Department is making an application to the EU solidarity fund to draw down funds for victims and businesses?
Elizabeth Truss
We have not ruled out an application to the EU solidarity fund. We have until the end of February to apply. We need to find out the total cost of the floods before a potential application is made. Our priority has been to make sure we get funding to affected homes and businesses as soon as possible. In fact, for the floods that took place on 26 December, funding was with local authorities on 29 December. Our priority has been making sure we make £200 million available to fix the damage and help communities to get back on their feet.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The devastating floods across the country are extremely well documented, as are the knock-on effects of the Government’s decision to postpone or cancel capital schemes—an estimated cost of £5 billion. Communities, families, individuals and businesses have suffered ruinous consequences. It is imperative that the Government do everything possible to maximise resources from all areas. The Secretary of State mentioned the EU solidarity fund. Time is running out, with only three or four weeks left for an application in relation to Cumbria. Will she just get on with the job and do it now, please?
Elizabeth Truss
This Government have invested more in flood defences than ever before: a real-terms increase on the previous Parliament, which was a real-terms increase on what was spent under Labour. The fact is that the Labour Government spent £1.5 billion and we are spending £2 billion in this Parliament. We have got money to affected communities as soon as possible—that is our priority.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
5. What the role is of the Great British Food Unit in promoting British food (a) in the UK and (b) overseas.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
9. What the role is of the Great British Food Unit in promoting British food (a) in the UK and (b) overseas.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
10. What the role is of the Great British Food Unit in promoting British food (a) in the UK and (b) overseas.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
We launched the Great British Food Unit in January. It brings together expertise from UK Trade & Investment and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to create a team of 40 people in London and teams around the world, including five people in China, to promote great British food. I am pleased to say that food and drink manufacturers have already agreed to expand their exports by a third by 2020.
Andrew Griffiths
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I am concerned that the Secretary of State is anti-European, because she is denying our European colleagues the opportunity to drink great British beer. Although we imported £418 million of beer last year, we exported only £494 million of beer. Given that we brew the best beer in the world, that figure should be much higher. What is she doing to promote the British beer industry and to encourage our European friends to sup up?
Elizabeth Truss
I know that beer is my hon. Friend’s passion, and I congratulate him on his role as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on beer. Also, his constituency is home to some of the finest water in our country that produces some of the finest beer. In fact, Lord Bilimoria, one of the founders of Cobra, is one of our food pioneers helping to promote great British beer not just in Europe, but in India and China—we recently promoted great British beer at the Baker Street brew pub in Chongqing.
Stephen Metcalfe
The success of the food industry, not least in counties such as Essex, is largely down to the innovation and skill of the workforce. How will the Great British Food Unit encourage more people into the industry, particularly through apprenticeships?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are fantastic jobs to be had in the food industry, from farming to engineering and food technology. Food and drink is our largest manufacturing sector, and we need more apprentices in this vital sector. We have an ambition to triple the number of apprentices by 2020, and I will be holding a round table shortly with some of the leading figures from the industry to make sure they commit to that goal.
Richard Graham
The Great British Food Unit and the enthusiastic Secretary of State will know that some of the greatest food on earth comes from the Gloucester Old Spot pig and from Gloucester cattle, including the single Gloucester cheese, which is famously used in the annual cheese rolling race. There is no better place to see these and 130 other great Gloucester producers than the Gloucester services on the M5, described by The Telegraph as probably the best service station in the UK. Were she to find herself near the M5 in the near future, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and I would give her a warm welcome and a Gloucester Old Spot sausage. [Laughter.]
Elizabeth Truss
I thank my hon. Friend for his extremely kind invitation. It is one of the best offers I have had all year. [Laughter.] Next time I am driving along the M5, which I frequently am, I will be very happy to meet him at this amazing service station.
Mr Speaker
The Secretary of State has made the hon. Gentleman’s day, possibly his month and conceivably his year.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
To hit a more serious note, after that interesting and humorous exchange, may I say to the Secretary of State that to produce great British food, we need great British technology? The news yesterday that Syngenta, our leading European food innovator, which produces wonderful technology and innovation and has a large plant in my constituency, is to be taken over by ChemChina means that overnight the European capacity for innovation in food technology and much else will be wiped out. Should the House not debate that very seriously before it goes through?
Elizabeth Truss
We are investing in science and technology. Last year, the Prime Minister announced a food tech innovation network, and, in terms of DEFRA’s capital budget, we are doubling our spend on investment in science and animal health research precisely so that we can take advantage of these huge opportunities.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The Great British Food Unit depends on great British farmers producing the goods for the unit, but many farmers are still experiencing problems with the Rural Payments Agency. One of my constituency farmers was only told late on Sunday afternoon of the failure to issue his payment, and even then it was done by email. What will the Secretary of State do to make sure that farmers are properly supported by the RPA?
Elizabeth Truss
The hon. Lady is right: farmers are facing difficult cash flow at the moment. We are doing all we can to get those payments out as soon as possible. It is the most complicated common agricultural policy that has ever been introduced. We were still getting the final details of it in February last year, but up to 77% of farmers are now being paid, and £1 billion has gone out the door to farmers. We are working to make sure that the farmers get their money as soon as possible.
Calum Kerr (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (SNP)
Scotch whisky is a great Scottish and UK success story, with exports totalling £4 billion annually. Does the Secretary of State agree that reducing the 76% tax burden on an average bottle of Scotch in the coming Budget would send an important message that the Government support the industry? Will she speak to her friend the Chancellor and ensure that such a reduction is included in his statement?
Elizabeth Truss
I am sure that the Chancellor and the Treasury team have heard what the hon. Gentleman had to say. I agree with him that Scotch whisky is our top international export. Other products such as Scotch gin, which I promoted recently with the Scottish gin trail, taking people from the golf clubs of St Andrews to the distilleries around the north of Scotland, can also play a massive part. We have fantastic products in Scotland and fantastic products right across the UK. The Great British Food Unit is all about promoting them around the world. I am happy to work with the hon. Gentleman on that.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
17. In supporting Dorset food and exports internally and across the world, will my right hon. Friend pay particular tribute to some notable producers in my constituency: Fudges, the Blackmore Vale dairy, Sixpenny Handley brewery and the Langham estate? Without wishing to outdo my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), I should also add to that list the manufacturer of Dorset knobs, which I am very happy to offer the Secretary of State. Will she also take into account in all that her Department does the burden of regulation and the impost of the living wage, because many of these producers are very small, so those burdens fall particularly heavily on them?
Elizabeth Truss
I would be delighted to visit some of the fantastic producers in Dorset that my hon. Friend mentions, such as the Blackmore Vale dairy, and to see what they have to offer as well as using the Great British Food Unit to promote them both here and overseas. We are working to reduce regulation on our food and farmers, and over the course of this Parliament we are looking to reduce the costs by £500 million, so that we can see more new businesses opening, more exporting and more selling their fantastic food here in Britain.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
6. What assessment she has made of the effect of recent flooding on the agriculture industry.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
Farmers in many parts of the country have been affected by the winter flooding, notably in Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Scotland and, of course, areas of Northern Ireland. We identified 600 farmers in Cumbria alone who suffered flooding after Storm Desmond. Unlike the Somerset floods two years ago, the flooding events have been relatively short-lived. However, in their wake, considerable damage has been done to stone walls, hedges and tracks. In England, we have established a farm recovery fund to help farmers get back on their feet.
Tom Elliott
In Northern Ireland, there is a long-established relationship with the Republic of Ireland Government in relation to Lough Erne and its levels. The UK Government had a relationship, too, from 1950, when that deal was made. Have there been any discussions with the Northern Ireland Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development about reviewing the levels of Lough Erne to stop farmers from being flooded in the area?
George Eustice
As the hon. Gentleman knows, flooding is a devolved matter, but if there is a need for discussion with the Irish Republic and if the Northern Ireland Administration would like me to be involved in that, I would be happy to have that conversation with them.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Farmers in areas in the south of my constituency, around Methley and Mickletown, have had large areas of their land flooded to hold water in order to prevent flooding of housing, which the farmers themselves agree with. However, what they do not agree with is the Environment Agency saying that it could take up to six years for this water to drain off the land. One particular farmer in my constituency had 80% of his land covered. Will my hon. Friend speak to the Environment Agency to speed up the draining of the water from this land?
George Eustice
That is a good point. Natural flood plains play an important role in alleviating the risk of flooding in urban areas. We intend to use the countryside stewardship scheme to help us to deal with flood problems. As for my hon. Friend’s specific point about the length of time for which land has been flooded, I shall be happy to take it up with the Environment Agency and see what can be done.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I am still waiting to hear the date of the meeting with Members whose constituencies lie along the River Wharfe to discuss the flooded farmland in Pool-in-Wharfedale and Arthington, in my constituency. We particularly need to discuss what can be done upstream to prevent the water from coming down and threatening both farms and housing. When can we have that meeting?
George Eustice
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), the floods Minister, has heard what the hon. Gentleman has said, and will be willing to meet him to discuss his concerns. My hon. Friend has already had many meetings with the many Members who have been affected by winter floods.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Secretary of State says that DEFRA wants to be able to spend more on flood defences by reducing the millions paid in penalties to the EU every year. However, the National Audit Office says that the Rural Payments Agency fiasco could cost the country a whopping £180 million a year in penalties. Can the Minister confirm the most recent estimate of the amounts that are being paid to Brussels in fines, rather than being spent on British agriculture and dealing with flooding?
George Eustice
The “horizontal” regulation that governs the disallowance system has been changed, and the penalties that the Commission can charge, and their frequency, have increased. That is the issue of concern in this instance, rather than any particular issues involving the rural payments system. I repeat that we are spending £2.3 billion a year on flood defences, and have provided £200 million to help people to get back on their feet after the most recent episode.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
7. What assessment the Government have made of the contribution of nature improvement areas to habitat creation and wildlife conservation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
The nature improvement area report has been overwhelmingly positive, which is quite a rare feature of monitoring reports of this kind. I pay particular tribute to the Wild Purbeck nature improvement area, where there has been an extraordinary combination of activities: saving the ladybird spider, which has included 3,000 volunteer hours, and involving schools through the forest school learning initiative. These are great, great projects.
Oliver Colvile
I thank my hon. Friend for our hedgehog summit on Monday. What measures does he propose, along with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to increase the number of hedgehogs, which, as he knows, has declined by between 30% and 50% over the last 15 years?
Rory Stewart
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has become a doughty champion of the hedgehog. The most important thing for hedgehogs, which are a much-loved species, is their habitat, and we are dealing with that by means of our hedgerow schemes, as well as the woodland planting schemes that the Secretary of State is promoting, which include the planting of 11 million more trees over the next five years. The real challenge for all of us, however, is to see hedgehogs in a suburban context, and, in particular, to consider the possibility of providing them with access and corridors through garden fences.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The 12 nature improvement areas were the right response to the Lawton report, but they were supposed to create 1,000 hectares of new woodland, 1,000 hectares of new chalk grassland, and more than 1,500 hectares of new wetland. How many hectares of each of those have actually been created?
Rory Stewart
I cannot give every one of those figures, but, as the hon. Gentleman says, the target for chalk grassland was 1,000 hectares, and a single project achieved 1,773 hectares.
Mr Speaker
That was a wonderfully precise answer, worthy of a boffin, although the hon. Gentleman is not a boffin; he is a distinguished Minister of the Crown.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am proud to say that Northern Ireland has eight areas of outstanding natural beauty, 47 national nature reserves, 43 special areas of conservation, and 10 special protection areas. The charities—especially the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds—are working very hard in campaigning for support for wildlife in urban areas. What discussions has the Minister had with his Northern Ireland counterpart about preserving the countryside and ensuring that housing does not expand further from urban areas into rural locations, often encroaching on the wealth of wildlife in those locations?
Rory Stewart
We work closely with our Northern Ireland counterparts. Some of these issues are of course devolved, but we would love to work more closely on issues such as these, and if there are opportunities to do that, I personally would be delighted to engage more closely.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
8. How many acres of farmland will be protected by Government investment in flood defences over the next six years.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
As a result of the Government’s £2.3 billion programme, more than 420,000 acres of farmland will be better protected by 2021. That means that over the course of the decade between 2010 and 2021, we will see 1 million acres of farmland being better protected from flooding.
Matt Warman
I recently visited the River Steeping in my constituency with representatives of the Environment Agency and saw the huge amount of damage that badgers are doing to flood defences in that area—[Interruption.] Don’t worry. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that the Environment Agency’s preferred method of creating artificial setts to relocate badgers will have a meaningful effect on the riverbanks and secure the area for the future?
Elizabeth Truss
I was pleased to meet my hon. Friend and representatives of the local internal drainage boards to discuss flooding in his constituency, and I am pleased to hear that the Environment Agency has found a solution to this issue. I note that 100,000 acres of agricultural land in his constituency will be protected as part of our six-year programme.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
While the Government are prevaricating, farms and businesses in the north of England and in Scotland are struggling to cope with the aftermath of the December floods. Can the Secretary of State explain why she needs to find out the total cost before applying to the EU solidarity fund, and will she be able to do this in time to meet the deadline?
Elizabeth Truss
The hon. Lady should be aware that we have made a farming recovery fund available, and that we have already paid out money to farmers worth up to £20,000 for each farmer. As soon as the floods took place, we looked on satellite mapping, identified the affected farmers and got on with paying them and sorting the issue out.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
11. What recent assessment she has made of the effect of slow broadband services on farmers and other rural businesses.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
Access to fast reliable broadband is of course important for rural areas, as the hon. Lady well knows. There are two indicative measures that we have taken. One was to ensure that by the end of last year anyone who wished to have a 2 megabit service could access such a service. Perhaps more important is the universal service obligation, which will be in place with 10 megabits by 2020.
Chi Onwurah
In 2012, when I criticised the Government for abandoning Labour’s universal broadband commitment, the then Secretary of State said:
“We have a plan and we are going to deliver it.”—[Official Report, 25 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 1059.]
So was it part of the plan that, in 2016, farmers would still be unable to get the broadband access they need in order to fill out the forms that the Department makes it mandatory to complete online? What is the plan now?
Rory Stewart
As the hon. Lady is aware, farmers are able to make applications on paper. Also, she is even more aware than I am of the fact that this is an extremely difficult issue to deal with in rural areas. We have just carried out seven very interesting pilots with operations such as Cybermoor to look at different technological solutions, but the key indicator is the universal service obligation of 10 megabits by 2020.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
The roll-out of superfast broadband in Devon and Somerset is being hampered by the poor performance of BT Openreach, which still has a virtual monopoly in the area. Is it not time that the Government did something to tackle that monopoly?
Rory Stewart
The Department for Communities and Local Government leads on this issue. The reason that the seven pilots have been interesting is that they are community-led pilots that have looked at different technological solutions ranging from satellite through to point-to-point wireless connections. We are going to need all those solutions and to involve all the different parties in order to deliver the difficult challenge of rural broadband.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
Following the severe flooding in the north of England over Christmas, the Government are working to help communities to get back on their feet and to restore critical infrastructure. We are taking forward two important areas of work: the national flood resilience review to assess how the country can be better protected from future flooding and increasingly extreme weather events and, in those areas affected by flooding, we are taking a catchment-based approach looking at what improvements are needed to flood defences and at upstream options for slowing the river flow.
Mr Cunningham
What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the supermarkets and farmers about food waste by the supermarkets?
Elizabeth Truss
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I held a round table meeting, with not just supermarkets, but food manufacturers, because we need to address the issue of food waste right through the food chain. We are working on the next step of the Courtauld agreement—Courtauld 2025—which will have voluntary targets to get both supermarkets and the food manufacturers to a better level.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
T6. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will reallocate fishing quota from those who hold it only as an investment to active, small-scale fishermen such as those who fish out of Lowestoft, who bring real benefits to their local community?
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
My hon. Friend will be aware that we had a manifesto commitment to rebalance quotas, and we have already commenced that this year, with the quota uplift that comes with the introduction of the landing obligation. We have made it clear that we will give the first 100 tonnes, and 10% thereafter, to the under-10 metres, and this year it will give them an extra 1,000 tonnes of fish.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
T2. The recent Tesco case has shown the importance of the Groceries Code Adjudicator. Does the Secretary of State share the view of the National Farmers Union, the Farmers Union of Wales and many in the dairy sector that now is the time to consider extending the adjudicator’s remit right across the supply chain, from gate to plate, even if that requires legislative change?
George Eustice
I am aware of the representations made by the NFU and of the conclusions of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in this regard. I know that colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are about to commence a review of the role of the adjudicator so far, and it may well be that as part of that they look at how the code is implemented. There would be challenges involved in trying to regulate things that far up, with thousands and thousands of different relationships to police, but we hear what has been said and we will look at this matter.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
T8. Cross-compliance rules prevent hedge cutting in August, yet the only bird that seems to be nesting at that time is the very prolific wood pigeon. The rules are preventing farmers from doing vital work, as they are unable to get on to that land during August. Will Ministers agree to look at this to see what can be done to change these rules?
George Eustice
My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that I am always looking at the cross-compliance rules to see whether we can introduce proportionality. I do not agree with him that it is just the wood pigeon that is being protected; yellowhammers and other rare species that we are trying to encourage to recover also have second broods later in the year.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
One less well-publicised deal the UK has been negotiating with our European partners recently is the circular economy package, which could not only bring about significant environmental benefits, but create jobs and growth. The Government, however, do not seem to have a strategy for achieving the ambitious waste targets set out there or for unlocking the economic opportunities that would come from greater resource efficiency. When are we going to have a proper waste resources strategy from the Secretary of State?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
The circular economy package is absolutely central, and we are looking closely at it. We sat down with a number of different people last week specifically to address it. The key is in getting the right balance between preventing the resources from being wasted in the first place and the targets that the European Union is setting, but I absolutely agree that this is vital and I am very happy to include the shadow Secretary of State in these discussions going forward.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for that response —I hope the Secretary of State can reply to the next question. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation says that the huge growth in plastics production means that by 2050 there could be more waste plastic in the sea than fish. Just 5% of plastics are recycled, 40% end up in landfill and a third end up polluting our ecosystems. What is the Secretary of State doing to combat plastics pollution? For starters, how about doing what President Obama has just done and ban microbeads in cosmetic products?
Elizabeth Truss
We are looking at the issue of microbeads, but I would point out that the plastic bag charge that we have introduced has brought about an 80% reduction in the use of plastic bags.
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming the multimillion pound joint investment by the Environment Agency and my local authority in the work on the River Avon, which runs through my constituency, as it will help to reduce flooding for hundreds of homes and businesses across the constituency? Will she also look at further funding should the flood risk increase?
Elizabeth Truss
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I congratulate the Environment Agency and his local authority on that work. What we are doing as part of the national resilience review is making sure that we are properly protected right across the country. We are investing a record amount in flood defences, and doing it in a way that is fair. Therefore, our flooding formula reflects the number of houses and businesses protected wherever people live in the country.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
T3. I welcome the announcement of further marine conservation zones around our coast to protect our wildlife. However, back in November 2012, when the previous round of MCZs was announced, many in my constituency were very concerned that the zone to protect Hilbre Island was dropped at the eleventh hour, especially in the light of the licence for underground coal gasification that exists in the Dee. Why was Hilbre Island not included in this latest round?
George Eustice
We ruled out Hilbre Island, following assessments by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, because the simple truth was that the features that people said were there were not there sufficiently for us to designate those areas.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
For farmers, farmgate prices are so low that the single farm payment is absolutely essential. Will the Secretary of State assure me that the Rural Payments Agency recognises that there are still too many farmers who have not received their payments, and that work is being done to ensure that, next year, we catch up so that we are not late in paying again?
Elizabeth Truss
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. A number of farmers are facing cash-flow issues, which is why we are putting as much resource as possible into the RPA. We are now up to 77%, and we have paid out £1 billion. The cases that we are now dealing with are the more complicated ones, including those involving common land and cross-border land, which take extra time. As I have pointed out, we are dealing with a very complicated cap. One of my main efforts is to try to simplify that cap and enable farmers to make claims online this year so that the system will be faster next year.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
T4. No ifs, no buts, will the Secretary of State commit to maintaining the ban on foxhunting with hounds?
Elizabeth Truss
We have been very clear in our manifesto. We retain our commitment to a free vote on this issue, with a Government Bill in Government time.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State undertake that the Great British Food Unit will promote the superfood, Bury black pudding?
Elizabeth Truss
I certainly will. I have had the opportunity to sample the great British Bury black pudding in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and I hope that it will become known around the world.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
T5. London breached annual pollution limits just days into 2016, repeating what happened in 2015. The Government were forced by the Supreme Court to publish plans on reducing air pollution. Does the Secretary of State think that her Department is doing enough to tackle air pollution? It is projected that there will be five years of this in London.
Elizabeth Truss
As the hon. Lady said, we published plans just before Christmas to ensure that we comply with those air pollution levels. The level of roadside nitrogen dioxide has fallen over the past five years. We have invested £2 billion in that already, but we do need to do more, which is why we issued the plans just before Christmas.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Seafood is nutritional and healthy and many thousands of people in the Cleethorpes and Grimsby areas work in the industry. What initiatives is her Department planning to promote the seafood industry?
Elizabeth Truss
I thank my hon. Friend for his point. The Great British Food Unit has not just outposts around the world, but regional teams to help local businesses, whether they are in Cleethorpes or elsewhere in the country, to promote their food both in the UK and overseas. Certainly, seafood is a huge part of that.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
T7. Can the Secretary of State confirm that it was her signature on a letter last July promising to drive forward fracking in sites of special scientific interest and national parks, in complete contradiction to assurances previously given? May I respectfully suggest to her that, since she is the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, she should be standing up for the interests of the environment and rural areas, and not the interests of big globalised fracking companies that want to frack in rural Cheshire?
Elizabeth Truss
As the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering made clear in their report, shale gas extraction is safe and has minimal impact on the environment, provided that it is correctly regulated. I am absolutely confident that we have very strong protections in place through the Environment Agency to do that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I fear that this will be the last question. I am sorry, but progress has been very slow—very long questions and very long answers.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Has my hon. Friend thought through the impact of the introduction of marine conservation zones on the under-10-metre fleet? That could have an effect on smaller, non-nomadic boats, which might be banned from fishing in their own grounds.
George Eustice
I absolutely assure my hon. Friend that the interests of fishermen are taken into account when we make decisions on these designations. It is important to note that designation does not mean that we ban fishing; it may mean, for instance, limitations on the particular types of bottom-trawling gear that do most damage.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to disappoint colleagues, but we really must move on.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
1. What recent assessment the Electoral Commission has made of the potential effect of the date of the EU referendum on mayoral, local, and devolved institutions’ elections.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)
The Electoral Commission recently wrote to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, following that Committee’s recent evidence session, on a number of issues, including the potential impact of the date of the referendum if it were to be held in June. A copy of the letter is available on the Committee’s website.
Ian Blackford
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer. As he will know, early-day motion 1042, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins), has cross-party support in the House. It calls for the EU referendum not to be held in June.
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that holding the referendum in June would seriously undermine the democratic process? Furthermore, yesterday the First Ministers of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales published a joint letter calling for the EU referendum not to be held in June. Does he not agree that the Government should respect the calls from the devolved Administrations and defer the referendum?
Mr Streeter
It is for the Government to decide how they respond to the letters from the heads of those Governments. The Electoral Commission has strongly advised the Government and the House about the date of the referendum. The Government listened; they are not holding the referendum in May. I am sure that, as soon as a specific date is announced, the Electoral Commission will give further advice.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Given the lengthy procedure for determining the lead organisation, will my hon. Friend make it clear that the Electoral Commission will ensure that it appoints a lead organisation in sufficient time—and not halfway through the campaign?
Mr Streeter
The Electoral Commission is extremely exercised about the issue of appointing the lead campaigns, and it will do that as soon as possible.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm whether the Electoral Commission has given any views about potential dates for the EU referendum in June?
Mr Streeter
My hon. Friend has his finger on the pulse. Let me read one sentence from the appropriate letter:
“As may be expected, the impact is greater the closer together the dates of poll and is particularly significant for the first two Thursdays in June (2 and 9 June in the case of 2016.) I would encourage that these dates are avoided if it is possible to do so.”
That is the advice that the Electoral Commission has given the Government.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
2. What assessment the Electoral Commission has made of the effect of the level of policy development grants on the operation of political parties.
Mr Streeter
The Electoral Commission has recently written to the Government setting out its recommended approach to implementing the reduction of policy development grants, which the Government announced in the spending review and autumn statement of 2015. A copy of the Electoral Commission’s letter will be placed in the House Library.
Kirsty Blackman
Policy development grants allow political parties to develop considered, costed policies to the benefit of the people living in the UK. As the hon. Gentleman said, the grants are to suffer a cut, which will save the Treasury a very small amount of money relatively but have a big impact on political parties. Does he agree that there could not be a less appropriate time for such a cut?
Mr Streeter
The important thing is how the money is allocated among the various parties. The hon. Lady will know that the Electoral Commission has consulted the smaller parties. It has written to the Government recommending that those parties should be disproportionately protected—that is, they should get a smaller cut than the larger ones. The Electoral Commission is waiting for the Government to respond to that advice.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Is this issue not a real worry? In a healthy democracy we need parties to be able to develop policy. What is going on in the House of Lords and in this Chamber is penalising the Opposition in terms of the Short money and the policy development grant they get. That cannot be good for democracy, can it?
Mr Streeter
The hon. Gentleman always speaks very clearly and powerfully on these issues. Unfortunately, the issue he raises is a matter for the Government, not the Electoral Commission. It is for the Government to decide the size of the grant; the Electoral Commission will advise the Government on how the grant should be allocated.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
This mean, despicable cut will hamper the power of Oppositions—the Conservative party will be in opposition in the future, as they were in the past—to reduce the democratic accountability of this place. Would it not be a great improvement, if the Government wish to improve the quality of our democracy, to cut the number of hereditary chieftains who sit in the House of Lords and the number of people in the House of Lords who buy their places by making donations to political parties?
Mr Streeter
Once again, a very powerful outburst from the hon. Gentleman, but I am afraid these issues have absolutely nothing to do with the Electoral Commission.
Mr Speaker
That has never stopped the hon. Gentleman before. [Interruption.] I have never accused the hon. Member of indulging in an outburst—more a spontaneous articulation of strongly held opinions.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
3. What plans the Church of England has to mark the 90th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
The Church of England will mark the 90th birthday of Her Majesty with a large number of events and activities at national and local levels. Alongside these events, the Bible Society and HOPE have released a companion book titled “The Servant Queen”, with a foreword written by Her Majesty that discusses how her faith has influenced her service of this nation over the last 90 years.
Dr Offord
I am sure I speak on behalf of the whole country when I say that the opportunities for the Queen to be celebrated are most welcome. The Church is recommending that every parish church organises an exhibition or festival on the weekend of 10 to 12 June. Will my right hon. Friend use her office to encourage residents to challenge local authorities that seek to charge for road closures or to require events to have public liability insurance?
Mrs Spelman
My hon. Friend makes a good point, because there will be a large number of activities in London, not least a special service at St Paul’s on 12 June, and his constituents will no doubt want to be there. While this issue is not directly my responsibility, I will use my good offices with the Local Government Association to try to make sure that our constituents are not impeded in celebrating Her Majesty’s birthday in the best possible way.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
4. How many street pastor teams the Church of England works with.
Mrs Spelman
The Church of England has supported Street Pastors since its formation in London by the Ascension Trust in 2003. A large proportion of its clergy and members of the congregations are involved in Street Pastors. In Kettering, nine of the 27 street pastors are Anglicans.
Mr Hollobone
Kettering is indeed fortunate to have a superb team of street pastors, who go out in the town centre at weekends to speak to, often, vulnerable people and to many young people who are the worse for wear and who have had too much to drink. That really is an excellent example of faith-based action. May I urge my right hon. Friend, through her good offices, to encourage the Church of England to get even more involved in supporting such a worthwhile cause?
Mrs Spelman
I could not support that recommendation more. There are now 12,000 trained street pastors in our country, serving 270 towns and cities. It is particularly interesting that the nightly reporting inventory for the last year for Kettering showed remarkable attention to detail. It refers to giving away 125 pairs of flip-flops, 294 bottles of water and an amazing 2,299 lollipops.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In my constituency, Street Pastors started in September 2015. Its vision is to go out to help vulnerable people and to do the best for them, and the results have been excellent. What discussions has the Church of England had about working with other Churches? We are better together, as we all know, and if we can do these things together, we can reach more people.
Mrs Spelman
As I indicated, the concept of street pastors did not actually originate with the Church of England, and we acknowledge that. However, Anglicans support absolutely what the street pastors do. Churches should work together; indeed, we should look to work with other faiths. In the city of Birmingham, near my constituency, there are also street pastors of the Muslim faith, and I have seen for myself what an impact street pastors have on gang culture and on tackling knife and gun crime.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
5. What recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Church Commissioners’ ethical investment policy.
Mrs Spelman
During 2015, the Church Commissioners’ ethical investment strategy won awards at the Portfolio institutional awards in the category of responsible investment. The commissioners have also had success in leading shareholder resolutions on climate change behaviour with BP and Shell, and they will continue to work with other institutional shareholders on filing similar resolutions at their annual general meetings.
Mrs Spelman
Yes. Indeed, it is just a year to the day since the Archbishop of Canterbury said that a good economy is based on
“the principle that you pay the tax where you earn the money. If you earn the money in a country, the revenue service of that country needs to get a fair share of what you have earned.”
I could not put it better myself.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
One of the ways in which the Church deploys its investments, ethical or otherwise, is in supporting schools across the country. Will my right hon. Friend use her offices to persuade the Church, and particularly certain dioceses, to take a more responsible and open-minded approach to joining academy groupings where some of their schools, particularly primary schools, are underperforming and need to change?
Mrs Spelman
The Church of England is the largest provider of education in this country, and it is co-operating with the Government in trying to address poor performance in schools. Eighty per cent. of Church of England schools are rated “good” or “outstanding”, but the Church recognises the need to work with schools where the performance is not as good as that. Multi-academy trusts present a great opportunity for successful Church of England schools to mentor and help with the raising of standards among those which find this more difficult.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
6. What further steps the Church of England is taking to increase the representation of women and BME groups among its leadership.
Mrs Spelman
The Church of England needs to increase its vocations for ministry by around 50% in the next 10 years in order to sustain the 8,000 clergy it currently has in parish ministry. The representation of women in the Church has grown significantly, with almost equal numbers being recommended for ordination training. Currently, those of black, Asian, and minority ethnicity make up 3% of the clergy population, and the Church is committed to increasing that percentage.
Matt Warman
I welcome that answer. May I ask that, when trying to increase the range of people available to take up positions that are currently vacant, we pay particular attention to churches that have been vacant for long periods, because that is damaging to communities such as that at St Matthew’s in Skegness?
Mrs Spelman
I hope I can reassure my hon. Friend on this, because as recently as Tuesday night in this House we passed the obscurely titled Diocesan Stipends Fund (Amendment) Measure. That Church Measure—it originated from the diocese of Lincoln, which covers his constituency—should enable his diocese to invest in the training of more clergy by releasing money from the funds for that purpose.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
7. What support the Church of England provides to local credit unions.
Mrs Spelman
Churches and dioceses across the country have responded enthusiastically and creatively to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s call to support credit unions and community finance, often building on pre-existing initiatives and helping to build financial resilience in communities. The diocese of Gloucester has recently part-funded the appointment of a credit union development worker for Gloucestershire Credit Union and established collection points in local churches.
Richard Graham
The diocese of Gloucester has shown real commitment to breathing new life into Gloucester Credit Union; I should declare an interest as a long-standing member. However, we need to do much more to reach effectively those who are most vulnerable to loan sharks. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that, while the Church of England builds and promotes its own new credit union, that will not distract from the important work it does in supporting existing local credit unions?
Mrs Spelman
I absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. Every Member of this House would recognise the importance of credit unions at the local level, but that goes hand in hand with, and does not detract from, the Archbishop’s task group on responsible credit savings, which has sought to harness the Church’s national and grassroots resources in support of developing a stronger community of finance.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
As chairman of the all-party group on credit unions, may I welcome my right hon. Friend’s last answer? I also welcome the leadership that the Archbishop of Canterbury has shown on the issue of problem credit. Does she welcome the launch of Fair For You, and will she comment on how the Church can support that community finance initiative in the rent-to-own sector that is taking on some of the challenges in that sector and showing that responsible, local community finance can compete?
Mrs Spelman
I will certainly take that suggestion back to Church House. The Church has shown commitment to helping people manage their money and invest safely, and to teaching our children at the very earliest age—through its LifeSavers project, with assistance from the Treasury—how to ensure that they do not get into debt. All that is evidence, I think, that the Church will be supportive of my hon. Friend’s suggestion.
Return of Kings
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Home Affairs if she will make a statement on events planned by the group Return of Kings.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
Roosh V is a US, self-styled pick-up artist. Media reporting has suggested that supporters of Roosh V and the Return of Kings website were scheduled to hold nine events across the UK this Saturday 6 February. An announcement on the group’s website has been publicised in the press this morning, stating that no Return of Kings events will be held on Saturday.
The Government condemn in the strongest terms anyone who condones rape and sexual violence or suggests that responsibility for stopping these crimes rests with the victims. Responsibility always unequivocally rests with the perpetrator of these serious crimes.
Any form of violence against women or girls is absolutely unacceptable. The impact of domestic and sexual violence on the victims—physically, psychologically and emotionally —cannot be overstated, and the Government are working closely with victims and survivors, support services, the police and criminal justice agencies to end these terrible crimes. If criminal offences have been committed, including incitement of violence against women, the Government would expect local police forces to deal with any offenders appropriately.
The Government do not routinely comment on individual immigration or exclusion cases, but the Home Secretary has powers to exclude an individual who is not a British citizen, if she considers that their presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good. This Home Secretary has excluded more foreign nationals on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour than any before her. That can include, and has included, exclusions based on threats posed to women’s safety because of encouragement of violence against women.
The Government are pleased that the Return of Kings events appear to have been cancelled, and I look forward to this afternoon’s full debate in Westminster Hall on the subject of the role of men in preventing violence against women. I am sure we will discuss these issues at length.
Kate Green
I welcome the Minister’s response. There has been widespread ridicule of, and revulsion at, the antics of the group Return of Kings, including from the respected police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, Vera Baird, and parliamentary colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) has written to the Minister about the matter, and there has been widespread coverage in the media. The public, in this country and worldwide, have also responded. Indeed, there are 63,000 signatures to the online petition calling for the events to be banned, so I am very glad that they will not go ahead this weekend. That is in no measure, as far as I can tell, due to the action of the Government, but we need assurances for the future, because Roosh V has said that he cannot stop men attending private meetings.
The Minister has said that the Home Secretary has the power to exclude individuals from the UK. What information do the Government hold about Roosh V’s plans to travel to this country in future, and is it the Minister’s expectation that he would attract a ban? Has she or the Home Secretary considered classifying Return of Kings as a proscribed group?
Events were advertised to Roosh V’s followers, which led to plans for counter-demonstrations in a number of UK cities, creating a threat both to public order and to women’s safety. The Minister has said that the police have powers to act if they believe that crimes have been committed. Does she believe that the threshold for incitement to rape or hate crimes has been met? What discussions have been had with the police, and what guidance has been issued to them, about handling such activities? In relation to the online advertising of the events—at which participants were apparently required to give the password “pet shop” before being admitted—what discussions have the Government had with internet providers and Facebook about taking down those offensive posts?
The events take place against the backdrop of a 41% increase in rape in the past year and the loss of much specialist provision. According to the Women’s Budget Group, 29% of the cuts announced to local authorities in the 2015 spending review could fall on services to support women who are suffering from violence, and 32 specialist refuges closed between 2010 and 2014. Many rape crisis centres have told me that they have no guarantee about their funding after next month. Will the Minister assure the House that that funding will continue from April this year?
As the Minister has mentioned, there will be a debate in Westminster Hall this afternoon on the role of men in tackling violence against women, and that is welcome. I expect that it will cover perpetrator programmes and compulsory sex and relationships education in schools, for which Labour has been pressing for many years. Will the Minister commit to introducing compulsory sex and relationships education as part of the personal, social, health and economic education curriculum in every school?
Finally, when will the Government ratify and implement the Istanbul convention, which was signed in 2012? What is the explanation for the delay?
Karen Bradley
I start by agreeing with the hon. Lady that the comments of this individual and the proposals of this group are absolutely repulsive. I am sure that everybody in the House will join us in condemning what they have said. Such things have no place in British society. I assure her that the Government are taking all the steps we can to deal with the matter, and I will be happy to write to her on the specifics of what the Government can do. She will understand that I cannot comment on individual cases, and many of the things that she asked about are operational matters for local police. I will be happy to write to her about what local police can do to stop such activities, but it would not be appropriate for me to go into detail here.
The hon. Lady talked about ridicule, and I share her view that we should ridicule the group and show contempt for them, because they hold the most ridiculous views. She mentioned Vera Baird, with whom I agree that we should make a point of ridiculing the comments. If we can show that they are ludicrous, people will not want to be part of this.
The hon. Lady asked about internet providers. As she knows, we talk with internet providers about many topics, including indecent images of children online, children having access to pornographic material, and inappropriate material. I will certainly take this point up with the internet providers when I see them at the UK Council for Child Internet Safety board next month.
The hon. Lady asked about the Istanbul convention. We have an issue on article 44 of the Istanbul convention, which concerns an extraterritoriality matter. We are discussing it with the devolved Administrations, because it needs primary legislation, and I am not going to ratify the convention until I am absolutely certain that we comply with all its measures. We comply with everything except that one point, and I want to make sure that we deal with it before ratification.
The hon. Lady mentioned the debate this afternoon in Westminster Hall. I pay tribute to the white ribbon campaign, which has been instrumental in making it clear that men do not want to see violence against women and girls.
Finally, I want to take up what the hon. Lady said about the 41% increase in rape. That is a 41% increase in reported rape, and we welcome that, because it shows that victims have the confidence to come forward and that they are reporting those crimes. If they do so, we can get convictions, which are at their highest ever level. The crime survey for England and Wales shows that the level of those crimes is not going up, and we welcome that. We want to see more reporting, and I hope she will join me in welcoming the increase in reporting.
Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
I welcome the Government’s commitment, through education, to raising awareness about sexual and relationship abuse with its “This is Abuse” campaign. Does the Minister agree that more emphasis must be placed on tackling controlling behaviour and emotional abuse, which often go unreported?
Karen Bradley
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The “This is Abuse” campaign has been extremely successful, and I am very pleased that the Government announced, just before Christmas, that we are continuing with it. It is so important that young people understand what is appropriate, understand what is appropriate in relationships and understand what a normal loving relationship is, as opposed to an abusive one.
My hon. Friend will know that the new domestic abuse offence—the offence of coercive or controlling behaviour—was commenced on 29 December. The new offence had been called for for many years. It was a difficult thing to do, which is why the Government made sure that we got it right, but we now have the ability to prosecute and convict offenders who never commit physical violence against their victims, but have abused them for far too long.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I thank the Minister for her comments. I join her in condemning rape and violence in any form and, in particular, any attempt to blame the victims. I wholeheartedly agree with her that responsibility must always rest with the perpetrator.
We in the Scottish National party are pleased that the events have been cancelled. The anti-women agenda behind them is utterly and completely repugnant. In Scotland, our petition against the events, which were due to take place in Edinburgh and Glasgow, has attracted about 40,000 signatures. Members may be aware that SNP Members have signed an early-day motion condemning these sexist and hate-mongering meetings and the misogyny behind them.
In Scotland, Police Scotland has been working closely with anti-violence against women organisations. It put out a fairly strongly worded statement about the policing of the events that were to have taken place. It is obviously absolutely paramount, as I am sure the Minister would agree, that women should be able to go about their lawful business, day and night, in our cities and towns without being subjected to this sort of intimidation.
The Scottish Government and Police Scotland have worked hard on the investigation of sex crimes in Scotland. The Minister will be aware that a number of years ago —in 2008—the Scottish Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service set up a specialist national sexual crimes unit. I was very proud to be one of its founding prosecutors. Our conviction rates for rape and sexual violence have indeed increased, but we are still working very hard on that, as these are challenging crimes to prosecute.
I associate myself with the questions raised by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), and I thank her for asking this important urgent question. SNP Members, too, want the Istanbul convention to be ratified as soon as possible, and I am sure the Minister will reassure me that she is continuing to liaise with the devolved Governments about that.
Will the Minister reassure me about one point raised by the Member for Stretford and Urmston? If the Home Secretary becomes aware of any plans this gentleman—I use the word loosely—may have to enter the United Kingdom, will she liaise with the Scottish Government, and indeed the other devolved Administrations, on any future events?
Karen Bradley
I thank the hon. and learned Lady for her comments. I assure her that I will copy her into my letter to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). We want to take all the steps we possibly can, and I want to set out in depth the steps that the Government can take and what we will do.
The hon. and learned Lady mentioned the Istanbul convention. I assure her that we are liaising with the devolved Administrations to make sure that we ratify it as soon as possible. She talked about police forces. I want to pay tribute to Police Scotland, and to all police forces across the United Kingdom. It is worth making the point that such criminals do not recognise borders, and police forces need to work together to make sure that we tackle these crimes. Such crimes are not acceptable in the United Kingdom—and I mean the whole United Kingdom.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I very much support what the Opposition Front Benchers have said. We defend our cherished liberty of free speech to the utmost, but with that freedom must come responsibility. May I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I am pretty certain all Conservative Members would welcome the proactive engagement of the Home Secretary and her Department not only in excluding this man—frankly, he is an embarrassment to all men—but in proscribing his organisation?
Karen Bradley
I want to reassure my hon. Friend that he would struggle to find a more proactive Home Secretary. This Home Secretary has excluded more people and done more to tackle violence against women and girls than any Home Secretary in history, and I am very proud to serve in her Department.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
These planned meetings may well have been simply a publicity stunt by an attention-seeker so insecure in his own masculinity that he goes to such lengths to augment the size of his—er—following. I have been contacted by many constituents—men and women—who are outraged and revolted and also frightened by the planned meeting in Newcastle, so can the Minister reassure them that anyone meeting in Newcastle or anywhere else, or coming to this country to plan or condone rape, would be treated in the same way as anyone planning or condoning murder, terrorism or any violent act?
Karen Bradley
I can assure the hon. Lady that that is a criminal offence and such people would be treated in the same way. I join her in her comments about the possible reasons why this individual is doing what he is doing—to ensure that he gets publicity, which he may need for other reasons. I will say no more.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Can we be really robust in deciding who is allowed into this country and who is not? Rather than relying on individual police forces to intercept such individuals after their arrival, if the Government have clear intelligence that an individual or a group are seeking to incite criminal activity in this country, the Government should have no qualms at all about making it clear that these people are excluded from our country, so that we do not have to put extra pressure on our police forces, who have many other things to do.
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot comment on individual cases, but I agree that it is much better to exclude than to deal with such people when they are here. This Home Secretary has excluded more foreign national offenders and foreign nationals than any other.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I can see no possible benefit from this individual being allowed into the UK now or in the future, so may I add my voice to those of hon. Members who say that, although we understand that the Minister cannot comment on individual cases, we hope that very soon she will be able to do so by saying that this person is excluded permanently from the UK? She cannot talk about operational police matters; is there a general steer that she would hope to give to the police as to their response to this matter?
Karen Bradley
I am sure the hon. Gentleman’s comments will have been heard. I have the Police Minister sitting next to me and he has also heard the hon. Gentleman’s comments.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Although I share the revulsion at this group’s views and the need to exclude such people from the UK, there is a substantial weight of evidence now to suggest that this group has no plans to meet and is concocting these plans across the globe to generate maximum publicity for its vile views, and that it is taking politicians and the media across the globe for a ride. I welcome the news that these alleged events have been cancelled, but has the Minister seen or heard any evidence to suggest that there was actually a plan to hold any of these events in the UK?
Karen Bradley
I have as much information as my hon. Friend as to how valid the plans may or may not have been, but he makes an important point. We should all remember, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) said, to treat such people with ridicule rather than seriously.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I, too, welcome the public revulsion which has resulted in the cancellation of the Return of Kings meetings, including one in Cardiff, which Plaid Cymru was set to oppose. How will the Minister address the wider question of the balance between free speech online and the incitement of violence against women as though it was socially acceptable?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady asks about online specifically. I assure her that what is illegal offline is illegal online. If it is a criminal offence, it is a criminal offence, no matter where it happens.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
As part of the review of public order, will my hon. Friend review the weighting of the community impact element when the police decide when to intervene? One of the problems with such public order decisions is that the police take quite a black and white decision about whether the law has been broken, rather than taking a wider view of the impact that that has on the community involved.
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I know that he has personal experience in his own constituency. I can assure him that we will look at those points.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
This is not the first time that a campaign of violence and aggression has been orchestrated via the internet, and it will not be the last. Although we hear warm words from the Government every time there is an incident, nothing ever seems to happen. I press the Minister to say what action the Government will take over the ease with which vile messages can be distributed via the internet.
Karen Bradley
I assure the hon. Lady that it is a criminal offence to make these kinds of comments. The Government do not take these matters lightly. We work hard and at length with the internet service providers, which have a responsibility to ensure that such messages are not distributed.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
This individual’s offensiveness and arrogance are exceeded only by his ignorance. There are real worries about whether the meetings were anything other than a publicity stunt to get a reaction. Does the Minister agree that the key thing is to ensure that there are positive role models for young men, which the majority of people are, and that the key mistake this individual made was to think that many men would want to attend meetings so vile in their intent?
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
On the very day when we will discuss for the first time at Westminster the positive role that men can play in preventing and ending violence against women, does the Minister share my concern that this small, small man’s abhorrent views and publicity seeking risk distracting us from the positive role that the vast majority of men —real men—would like to play in ending misogyny in all its forms?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point and I look forward to debating the matter this afternoon. He is absolutely right that men have a positive role to play, and the vast majority of men do so.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree that this situation is symptomatic of a much bigger, awful trend towards misogyny, hatred against women and violence that we are seeing on all sorts of media, including Twitter, which is international? What efforts is she making to promote an attitude of zero tolerance towards that trend, not just in Britain, but by taking leadership internationally to address it at its roots?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman leads me into an answer that could potentially last many days on the different things that need to be done internationally to promote women and women’s rights, such as the action that the Government are taking to tackle female genital mutilation and forced marriage. All people have a right to exist and live equally. These views and comments are not acceptable.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
It is a ridiculous irony that the events have been cancelled for the safety of this man’s supporters, given the nature of the events. I join everybody in their condemnation of this sick individual and his misogynist followers. Will the Minister pay tribute to the groups of campaigners across the country, particularly in Glasgow, who have helped to force the cancellation of the events? Will she also pay tribute to Police Scotland, which has worked closely with the campaigners in Glasgow and Edinburgh to ensure their safety at the events? There was unequivocal condemnation in the Police Scotland statement, which said that
“sex without consent is rape.”
Karen Bradley
I agree with the hon. Lady. I pay tribute to Police Scotland and to all police forces across the country, which work equally hard to deal with these crimes and to make that message heard.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I agree with the Minister that most men will not support these vile, anti-women, misogynistic, pro-rape views. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will support the Home Secretary unequivocally in making sure that Roosh V never sets foot on British soil. What more are the Government doing to make sure that the small number of individuals who do support these abhorrent views learn the error of their ways and see that such views are not acceptable in a decent society?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman makes the important point that prevention and education are incredibly important to make sure that the young men—and older men—who hold these views understand that they are wrong. The “This is Abuse” campaign, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) mentioned, is part of that, as is our work to end gang and youth violence and exploitation, because young men who are in a circle where it is seen as acceptable to exploit young women and treat them as no more than sex objects have to be educated that that simply is not right.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
The fact that this event in Glasgow has been cancelled shows that people do make Glasgow. Does the Minister agree that any event planned to coach men how to coerce women into having sex. is not a free speech issue but an issue of public safety and order? Will she join me in condemning the sick-minded halfwits who support these events and were planning to attend them, and does she welcome the fact that this weekend they will now be sitting in their underpants, eating cold ravioli from a tin?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman conjures up quite an image—I think I will leave it at that!
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
Such grotesque misogynist and homophobic views are not masculine—they are a perversion of masculinity and are cowardly. Does the Minister welcome initiatives by the National Union of Students and student unions—including in Leeds—to train bar staff to spot signs of sexual harassment? We must stamp out sexual harassment in all our society.
Karen Bradley
I would be very interested in learning more about what the hon. Gentleman says, as that is exactly the kind of initiative that we need to ensure that it is clear that no woman can ever be guilty of inciting her own rape. Rape is committed by the perpetrators, and they are the only people who are responsible.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
As the Minister will know, I wrote to the Home Secretary on this issue in response to the outrage and anger of my constituents who contacted me about it. The Government of Australia have publicly stated that they will continue to monitor any application from Roosh V, or anyone else associated with the Return of Kings. Will the Minister assure the House that the UK Government will do likewise for any individual associated with this group who is promoting a diet of hate?
Karen Bradley
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Home Secretary keeps a very close eye on all these matters, and that the Government take every step they possibly can.
Business of the House
(8 years, 10 months 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 forthcoming business, and all that jazz?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)
There is not much jazz in this, unless there is an MP4 concert coming up, but that is not something I know about. The business for next week is as follows:
Monday 8 February—Motions relating to the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2016 and the State Pension (Amendment) Regulations 2016—that certainly doesn’t have any jazz in it—followed by debate on a motion on the future of the routes of the Great Western Railway. The subject for that debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Tuesday 9 February—Opposition day (un-allotted day). There will be a half-day debate on the European referendum on a motion in the name of the Democratic Unionist party, followed by a half-day debate on housing on a motion in the name of the Liberal Democrats. That will be followed by a motion to approve a money resolution on the House of Commons (Administration) Bill.
Wednesday 10 February—Motions relating to the police grant and local government finance reports, followed by a motion relating to the Procedure Committee report on the notification of arrest of Members.
Thursday 11 February—Debate on a motion relating to Equitable Life, followed by debate on a motion on the conservation of sea bass and the effect of related EU measures on the UK fishing industry. The subjects for both debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 12 February—The House will not be sitting.
We have yet to finalise the full business for the week commencing 22 February, but provisional business will include:
Monday 22 February—Second Reading of a Bill—[Interruption.]
Hon. Members will just have to wait—anticipation for next week.
I also inform the House that the business for Westminster Hall for 11 February will be:
Thursday 11 February—General debate on the persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims and other religious minorities in Pakistan.
Chris Bryant
It has been quite a week, hasn’t it! I thought I was hearing things yesterday morning when listening to the “Today” programme, when they said that a “Belgian loon” had given the Prime Minister his backing, I thought, “Is that gross BBC bias? Inappropriate stigmatising language?” Perhaps they were talking about a Walloon? No, it was Mr Sander Loones, the vice-chair of the New Flemish Alliance. So now we know—the Loones back the Prime Minister.
As far as I can see, the only people Leave.EU hates more than the EU are Vote Leave. And Grassroots Out, of course. Oh, and then there is Better Off Out, which I thought was a gay organisation but apparently is not, and is a completely different organisation from Get Britain Out, which also is not a gay organisation. “Splitters!” we might all shout. Leave.EU believes that Vote Leave does not really want to leave the EU. Vote Leave believes, however, that Leave.EU is a bunch of right-wing homophobes—it is not far wrong. Leave.EU thinks that Vote Leave are a bunch of hippy-dippy, let-it-all-hang-out libertarian lunatics. And everyone hates Iain, apparently. Will the Leader of the House tell us which group he is going to join? Will it be Grassroots Out, Vote Leave or Leave.EU, or will he just sign up to the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean Popular People’s Front and the Popular Front of Judea all at the same time?
I note that the Leader of the House just announced the Second Reading of “a Bill” for 22 February. That is not an announcement—it is a non-announcement. What Bill will this be, or does the Leader of the House even know? Has the Chief Whip not told him yet? He could whisper in his little ear and tell us all later. For all we know, following what the Minister for Europe said earlier this week, it could be the putting children up chimneys Bill. Frankly, I would not put it past this lot. Now that the new Justice Secretary has consigned yet another preposterous policy that came from the pen of the former Justice Secretary, will the mystery Bill be the Chris Grayling abolition Bill?
Incidentally, Mr Speaker, I can let you in on a secret, as long as you do not tell anybody else. Apparently, members of the Cabinet refer to the Leader of the House as the Dark Lord, although at this rate I think he is going to be the Invisible Lord. Will the hon. Member for Mordor ensure that the Work and Pensions Secretary comes to the House next week to make a statement on the despicable appointment of Doug Gurr, the head of Amazon China, as a non-executive director of the Department for Work and Pensions? Is this some kind of cruel joke or deliberate insult to benefit claimants and people in receipt of pensions?
For years, Amazon has used anti-competitive practices to crush competitors. It has used deliberate and calculated means of avoiding paying its fair share of tax in this country and it has systematically refused to co-operate in tackling VAT fraud. If it was a benefit claimant, people would be accusing it of fraud. The figures are shocking. It took £5.3 billion of sales from British internet shoppers but, according to Companies House, paid just £11.9 million in UK tax. That is a tax rate of 0.002%—not 0.2% or 2%, but 0.002%. Those are best mates rates. Is it not always the same with the Tory Government? There is one rule for the rich and powerful, and quite another for the rest.
When the Work and Pensions Secretary comes to the House, will he explain this to us all? Under his rules, if we take two twins born in 1953—let us call them, for the sake of argument, Jack and Jill—Jack gets £155 in state pension, while Jill gets £131 just because she is a woman. And that is not all. Less than one in four women born in the 1950s will qualify for the full flat-rate state pension. That is a disgrace! It is unfair, unjust and immoral.
On Tuesday, we had the Second Reading of the Enterprise Bill. The Bill has already been through all its stages in the House of Lords. As it started in the Lords, the Public Bill Committee in the Commons cannot take any public evidence. Yet in a case of startling hubris, the Business Secretary announced that the Government intend to add a whole new section to the Bill to liberalise Sunday trading. This was not in the Conservative manifesto. It was not even mentioned in the Lords. Who are the Government frightened of—the bishops or the voters?
Lent starts on Wednesday, so may I suggest a new Lenten discipline for the Leader of the House and the Government? Tell the House first. Today is Time to Talk day, when we talk about mental health. Will the Leader ensure that the NHS England mental health taskforce report, which has been constantly delayed and was originally promised for before Christmas, is not published during the recess, but when the House is sitting next week? Leaks from the report suggest a £1.2 billion gap in mental health provision. Warm words about mental health and parliamentary sovereignty are all very well, but we will judge the Government by their actions, not their words.
I want to end with a few words about personnel in the office of the Leader of the House. I understand that he has decided to do without the services of his head of office, Mike Winter. I cannot say how retrograde a step I believe this is. Mike is a man of complete and utter civil service professionalism. He served Labour and Conservative Leaders of the House with complete impartiality and dedication, working closely with Members of all political parties, putting in extremely long hours and leading his team admirably. He frequently put me right. His total focus has been on serving the House, which I gently suggest to the Leader of the House should be his focus too. I wish Mike well.
Chris Grayling
Mr Speaker, your request about the length of the shadow Leader of the House’s contribution lasted just one week.
The shadow Leader of the House made several requests for statements. I simply remind him, as I do each week, that I provide him with extensive opportunities to debate matters in the House, but we have established in recent weeks that each week he stands and asks for debates, and almost never do they get tabled when the Opposition are given time for them. He and his party table debates on fewer than one in six of the subjects he asks for debates on. Either he is not seriously interested in them, or his own party is not listening to him.
The shadow Leader of the House asked about tax paid. I simply remind him that our steps to recover tax from companies such as Google are necessary because, during its 13 years in power, Labour did nothing about it. I sit and listen to the hypocrisy of the Opposition—they ask why we are doing this now and they talk about mates rates—but they did nothing about it in government. He also talked about pensions, which they did nothing about in government either. We are introducing a new single-tier pension that will deliver fairness for people in our society and ensure that everybody has a decent retirement. In the 13 years Labour was in power, when did it ever do anything about that?
The shadow Leader of the House talked about the changes in the Enterprise Bill. I simply remind him that we are the elected House, and we will debate a matter related to devolution, which is something that Labour is supposed to support but which it clearly does not any more.
Once again, we heard nothing of this week’s events in the Labour party and its latest madcap idea. As if using nuclear submarines as troop carriers was not enough, the shadow Chancellor now wants to get rid of borders. Yes, no borders at all! We would have terrorists crossing borders, organised crime spreading its nets and more and more migration against the wishes of the people of this country. The Labour party has been seized by a madcap ideology, and the shadow Leader of the House is still sitting there and supporting it. I do not understand why.
Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
Will the Treasury take a closer look at the proposed changes to the disbursement of landfill tax revenues through the landfill communities fund before they become effective in April? Currently, 10% of the funds for every project are raised by a third party—usually the applicant—but the proposal is to transfer that 10% to the landfill operator. The concern is that many small operators might withdraw from the scheme, meaning that fewer projects can be considered. I am sure that this is an unintended consequence.
Chris Grayling
I am aware of my hon. Friend’s concerns, and I can assure her that the Department for Communities and Local Government is in discussions with industry representatives and is trying to do what it needs to do in the right way. It has to take some decisions, but it is fully aware of her concerns as it looks to reach a decision.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. Mr Speaker, I am sure that you and the rest of the House would like to know that today is World Cancer Day. Almost every household in the country is touched by cancer, so this is a great opportunity to pay tribute to all the wonderful staff who work in the hospitals across the whole of the United Kingdom and treat people with this still appalling condition.
This morning, the Daily Mail intriguingly asked, “Who will speak for England?” I have no ambition in that department, but I was thinking that the Leader of the House is perhaps the ideal candidate. He is “Dr EVEL of Lore”, the man who liberated English legislation from the oppression of we pernicious hordes of Scots MPs and he is also one of the leading Eurosceptics in the Cabinet. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
We have an opportunity to debate this matter because we have a European debate next week, courtesy of the Democratic Unionist party—I am grateful to DUP Members for bringing it to our attention again. Perhaps we will have another opportunity to discuss the joint letters from the First Ministers of the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments from across the UK. Perhaps it will not be so contentiously dismissed as it was yesterday by the Prime Minister when it was raised here. A little bit more respect for the First Ministers of the various Assemblies and Parliaments would be in order this time round.
We have only one week in which to secure a deal on the fiscal framework—the critical financial arrangement that underpins the Scotland Bill—yet the two Governments could not be further apart. We had only an hour or so to debate it yesterday, unfortunately, as a result of the extended statement, and there will be no further opportunity to look at this before agreement is to be reached next Friday. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said something intriguing yesterday in front of the Scottish Affairs Committee. He said that if agreement on the fiscal framework is reached, it would have to come back to this House for a possible debate, and he hinted at a possible vote. I do not know what the Leader of the House knows about what the Chief Secretary was saying yesterday, but it raises some intriguing questions. If it does come back to this House and the House then rejects the fiscal framework, what on earth happens to Scotland? I want to hear the Leader of the House respond on this matter.
I know that urgent questions are a matter for you, Mr Speaker, and that you decide whether or not they happen. Could we have a little debate or even just a conversation about urgent questions on sitting Fridays? There were two last Friday, and that presents immense difficulty for Scottish Members—in fact, for Members of any constituencies other than those in London—because we cannot get to the House on a Friday morning. We have to make some critical decisions on whether to stay for the urgent questions or go back to serve our constituents on a Friday—the one working day when we have such an opportunity—given that we have to spend a day travelling back and forwards to this place. May we have a conversation about that, Mr Speaker?
May we have a debate on tax arrangements across the United Kingdom? Apparently, Labour wants to tax workers on below-average earnings in Scotland, but also to reduce taxes for the rest of the United Kingdom. I do not know whether this is Labour’s Better Together tax or the Tory austerity tax, but I would like to have some clarity about Labour’s plans for the whole UK.
Lastly, I come to an issue on which we might all be able to agree—MP4 for Eurovision! The time has come. I know that you are a fan, Mr Speaker, as is the Leader of the House. This is a political contest, as we know, and we have had all these young starlet acts trying to achieve a win, but now is the time for grizzled old politicians to get in there and do their bit for the United Kingdom. I am sure I will secure the support of the whole House for MP4 for Eurovision.
Chris Grayling
I think that is a great idea. The hon. Gentleman and I do not always share exactly the same views on European matters, but I can tell him that I will happily champion the cause of MP4 in Eurovision. I just hope that there is a change when it comes to those difficult votes, because countries in eastern Europe unfortunately tend to award the UK entrants “nul points”. Let us hope that MP4 will turn things round. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have the support of the whole House in doing so—
Chris Grayling
Oh no. I am sorry to say that the shadow Leader of the House will not be supporting MP4 for Eurovision. I think that is a shame and a betrayal of the principles of the House, but never mind.
The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asks whether I am going to speak for England. I have to say that I speak for the United Kingdom, and I think all of us here should speak for the United Kingdom. He called me Dr Evel—I have been called Dr Evil and the Dark Lord today, so we are mixing our books somewhat—but on the EU vote, we were very clear, as was the hon. Gentleman’s former First Minister, that there should be a sensible gap between the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections and a referendum. The Prime Minister made it clear yesterday that there will be a gap of at least six weeks, which is the gap requested by the hon. Gentleman’s former party leader. He will therefore forgive me if I treat his comments today with a degree of scepticism. We are simply doing what the Scottish nationalists asked for.
The hon. Gentleman is more pessimistic than I am about the fiscal framework. I am sure that the constructive dialogue between the Government at Westminster and the Government in Edinburgh will ensure that there is no problem with it, and that we will reach agreement. We all want to see a Scotland Act, rather than a Scotland Bill, in time for the Scottish elections, and we will continue to work to that end.
Urgent questions on Fridays are, of course, a matter for you, Mr Speaker, but I am sure that the Scottish National party will want to participate in Friday debates just as actively as any other party in the House.
There is one more thing on which we can agree today. The hon. Gentleman talked about Labour’s tax rise proposals. I do not think that they are good for Scotland either, and I think that that is why the Labour party is struggling in Scotland. Saying to people, “Vote for us and we will increase your taxes” has never, in my experience, been a good platform for an election.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
Let me give the Leader of the House an opportunity to be a white knight for the people of Lancashire. The county council has embarked on a consultation about the withdrawal of subsidies from bus services. The consultation will close at the end of March, but in the meantime the council has already told bus operators that it will withdraw the subsidies, and some services will cease on 21 February. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a Minister to make a statement about this sham consultation, and about what can be done to help some of the most elderly and vulnerable people, living in villages, who will be isolated if the bus cuts go ahead?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend has made his point in his customary forthright manner, and he is right. It is not acceptable for a county council—a Labour-controlled county council—to announce a proposal, to consult on that proposal, and then to start to take action before it has even seen the responses to the consultation; but that, of course, is what Labour is really like when it holds power.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
When can we debate the Government’s planned cut in funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit, which is welcomed only by those sadists who think it fun and amusing to torment defenceless wild animals? Will the Government cancel the threatened cut, or will they proceed with it and reinforce their reputation as the nasty party which does not care about animals’ suffering?
Chris Grayling
I know that a number of Members have expressed concern about the issue. The Home Secretary will be in the House on Monday week, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be able to raise it with her then.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Last Saturday I sent the Fisheries Minister an image of a chart showing a French-registered fishing vessel inside the United Kingdom’s six-mile limit. Looe Harbour Commissioners would like to know what investigations the Minister has carried out. As today is my birthday, will the Leader of the House give me a present by asking the Fisheries Minister to come here and make a statement? Perhaps he could also tell us how he will deal with the imbalance in the haddock quota, whereby UK fishermen receive about 10% of the total allowable catch while French fishermen receive about 80%.
Chris Grayling
Let me begin by wishing my hon. Friend a very happy birthday, probably on behalf of all of us. She is still a very powerful advocate for the fishing industry and the communities that she represents. The Fisheries Minister is, of course, a neighbour of hers, but I will ensure that he is made aware of the point that she has raised. It is a matter of great concern to our fishing communities that such matters are dealt with properly and the rules are followed. We should certainly take action when they are not.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I welcome the announcement that DONG Energy is to proceed with Hornsea Project One. May we have a statement on how the project can be used to assist the development of the South Humber bank, and how the Government will use their new procurement guidelines to ensure that UK steel is used in that development?
Chris Grayling
We are anxious to ensure that UK steel is used in UK projects. As the hon. Gentleman will know, many of the big infrastructure projects are using it, and we will continue to work to ensure that that happens. We want the sector to be developed on Humberside; it is already a very important part of the local economy. There will be questions on this very subject next Thursday, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman raise it with the relevant Minister then.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
It is one thing for the Leader of the House to poke fun at the Leader of the Opposition over his strange ideas about the Trident successor, as he did today. It is quite another thing for No. 10 to adopt this policy on the question of delaying a vote which everyone, including the Ministry of Defence, industry and both sides of the nuclear debate in Parliament, expected to take place in the next few weeks. Can the Leader of the House look the House in the eye and tell us that those at No. 10 are not playing party politics with the nuclear deterrent? If they are, it is beneath contempt.
Chris Grayling
My right hon. Friend has been a powerful advocate for our nuclear deterrent—a view that I support wholeheartedly—and he has been effective in highlighting the flaws in the Opposition’s policies. He will know that it is the Government’s intention to debate this matter in the House in due course. I cannot give him an announcement today on when that will happen, but I will ensure that my colleagues are aware of the concerns that he has raised.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Last year, Dublin’s Special Criminal Court convicted Thomas “Slab” Murphy of tax evasion. On Tuesday evening on the BBC, he was exposed as a former chief of staff of the Provisional IRA and a godfather of serious and organised crime. Putting the Accutrace S10 marker in British fuels was supposed to stop the laundering of British fuels across the whole of the United Kingdom, but this man’s crime syndicate continues to launder these fuels. When is the Treasury going to get a grip on HMRC and get a new marker into British fuels that actually works? This week, 59,000 litres of fuel were wrongly seized by HMRC because the roadside test for Accutrace is a dud. Will the Leader of the House urge the Treasury to get this criminal activity stopped?
Chris Grayling
We all want to see this kind of criminal activity stopped, because it damages legitimate businesses and it damages the economy of Northern Ireland. I will ensure that the point he has raised is brought to the Treasury’s attention, because it is clearly something that it would not want to see continuing either.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on pharmacy services? Having visited a local pharmacist in Prittlewell this week, I was horrified to find that as a result of overall reductions in the budget of £174 million, there is every likelihood that the wonderful range of services that our pharmacists offer will be diluted.
Chris Grayling
This concern was raised last week, and the Minister responsible, the Minister for Community and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), happened to be on the Front Bench at the time. I was able to provide an assurance to the House that he would treat this matter with great care. He is aware of the concerns that hon. Members have raised and he will be back in the House next week. This is something we have to get right, because pharmacies play an important role in local communities, and the Minister is well aware of that.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House might not be aware that, before I entered the Parliament, I had a proper job outside this place—
Mr Sheerman
No, in the 18th century, with you! One of my employers was ICI—Imperial Chemical Industries—which has now become Syngenta. Is the Leader of the House aware that Syngenta is one of the three largest chemical companies in the world, and that it now looks as though it could be taken over by ChemChina, a Chinese Government-based organisation? This will put thousands of UK jobs in danger and could eradicate them from the market. May we have an urgent debate to discuss this? Just like steel, the chemical industry is a big employer at the heart of our economy.
Chris Grayling
I am not aware of the details of the proposals, but as ever the hon. Gentleman certainly makes a powerful case. I am sure that his comments will be listened to by the Business Secretary, but may I suggest that he seek to secure an Adjournment debate in order to bring Ministers to the House to discuss the matter?
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
In this country, 320,000 people are both deaf and blind, yet local councils are only required to provide a register of those who are blind only. Would it not make more sense for local authorities to have a register to collect information on those who are both blind and deaf in order to better co-ordinate care for all those who suffer in this way? May we have a debate on this matter?
Chris Grayling
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the important work he does in this area and on the support he provides for those who suffer from both those disabilities. The relevant Minister will be in the Chamber next week and my hon. Friend will have the opportunity to make that point then, but I will also ensure that his concern is raised with the Department before then.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Leader of the House may be aware that the House of Representatives in Australia has deemed this week that bairns in arms are no longer visitors in the Chamber and can be brought in to be breastfed or bottle-fed by their parliamentarian parents. Would he support such a change in this Parliament?
Chris Grayling
There are a few people who believe that such a change is necessary, but of course it would be a matter for the relevant Committees and for the whole House to discuss. We have to make sure we have a family-friendly Palace of Westminster and House, but we must also be careful to maintain some of the traditions of the House as well.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
May we have a debate to celebrate the work done in this country by organisations such as the Arts Council and the Royal Ballet, which bring in so much tourism, and by the wonderful organisations in my constituency that add to the different tourism offer we have in the area? That has been recognised by the Chancellor in his autumn statement.
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I am glad that the Chancellor did recognise that in the autumn statement. It is very important that we maintain the strong arts bodies in this country. They make a valuable contribution to our culture, as well as attracting business from overseas. She makes an important point, and may I take advantage of this opportunity to wish her a happy birthday, too?
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
Last Saturday, the extremist group Britain First came to Dewsbury town centre, carrying crucifixes and proclaiming the Prophet Mohammed a paedophile. There was understandable concern among our community, with many businesses closing for fear of violence. A huge police operation took place, which clearly cost a lot of money. I pay tribute to the wonderful people of my constituency and the police, who carried themselves in an exemplary manner. Does the Leader of the House agree that we should now have an urgent debate on where the balance lies between freedom of expression and incitement of racial hatred?
Chris Grayling
I very much agree with the hon. Lady on that; we benefit from being a multicultural, multi-ethnic society. The different communities in the United Kingdom bring great strength to it. Those who would seek to divide us should be unreservedly condemned. I pay tribute to her constituents and to those police officers, who often put themselves at risk in dealing with incidents of this kind. There can never be an excuse for the incitement of racial hatred. We have strong laws in this country, and it is of course for the police and the prosecuting authorities to decide when and how to use them, but I am sure she would find universal support in this House for what she says. Racial hatred is something to be abhorred and to be prevented at all cost.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
The Government are rightly taking steps to counter the threat of violent extremism and to promote community cohesion, and I am sure everyone in this House supports that. The Leader of the House will, however, be aware of the recent Westminster Hall debate on the registration of out-of-school settings, which highlighted considerable concern about that issue. Does he agree that it is essential that there is widespread consultation on any other proposals in the Government’s counter-extremism agenda before a counter-extremism Bill is brought before this House?
Chris Grayling
I absolutely accept the point my hon. Friend is making. It is very much the intention of those in the Department for Education who are working on this to listen carefully to representations from hon. Members to try to get this right. We all share a common objective in these matters. What we do not want is inappropriate, unnecessary regulation placed on small groups that do small amounts of work each week to the benefit of local communities.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), I learned from my constituents this week that the snaring of wild animals is still not illegal. It is, of course, cruel and sadistic, so do the Government have any plans to introduce legislation to ban snaring and to protect our wild animals?
Chris Grayling
I am aware that this matter is subject to campaigning at the moment, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will give careful consideration to it. I am not aware of any current plans, but given the concerns raised in this House, it is certainly something we need to give some consideration to.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
May we have a debate on unitary authorities and the potential efficiencies that they can create?
Chris Grayling
Many in this country believe that unitary authorities are a better way of running local government. Equally, there are parts of the country where the two-tier approach works extremely well. What we are seeking to do through the changes we are pushing through to the relationship between central and local government is give greater freedom to local authorities to decide what is right for their area and to give them the opportunity to put forward reforms that will involve both change and greater devolution. If my hon. Friend feels that is right for his area, I encourage him to get into discussions with the relevant Department about it.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
Can we have a statement from the Government on when they will review the 1955 treaty on tax treatment that operates between the UK and Malawi, as the treaty operates to the considerable disadvantage of one of the poorest countries in the world?
Chris Grayling
I am not aware of the specific detail of that treaty, but I will ask the Foreign Office to ensure that the hon. Gentleman gets a proper response to the concerns that he has raised.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I am pleased to say that employment levels in Crawley are at a record high, with the jobless claimant count now at 1.5%. Of course there is always more that can be done and, one month today, I am holding an apprenticeship fair in Crawley civic hall. May we have a debate on the importance of further encouraging apprenticeships to help promote economic growth?
Chris Grayling
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that he is doing locally on this matter. One of the most important parts of achieving our collective goal of 3 million apprenticeships in this Parliament is the work done by individual Members to encourage local employers to provide apprenticeship places. I commend him and other Members around the country for the work that they are doing in this regard. Apprenticeships are a central part of our future economic success.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Yesterday, we heard from the Prime Minister that in-work benefits for EU migrants are a pull factor, but we cannot judge that to be the case as the information has repeatedly been withheld after freedom of information requests. Given that the Leader of the House is such a fan of FOI, will he request Ministers to put that information before this House alongside a statement?
Chris Grayling
We will be debating the renegotiation and the package that we have been offered, and statements will be made by the Prime Minister in this House once the renegotiation is complete. I have no doubt that all the information required by Members will be there when those debates take place.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
Carlisle and Cumbria are starting to experience recruitment issues, and, in time, there could well be a skills shortage. In many respects, that is partly an indication of success, but that success will be further exacerbated by the potential large investment into Cumbria, which will raise issues about attracting the right people with the right skills into the county. Will the Leader of the House agree to a debate on those issues, and on what central Government can do to assist in creating the opportunities from which Cumbria can benefit?
Chris Grayling
The challenges to which my hon. Friend refers are a symbol of the success of this Government in generating real economic improvement in parts of the country that have, all too often, been left behind. In many respects, I am pleased to hear of the pressures that he describes, but clearly we have to react to them and help businesses in Cumbria to secure the skills it needs. That is why this Government’s programme to build apprenticeship numbers and other measures that we will take to improve our skills base are so important. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the issue.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
November 2015 is the latest month for which we have A&E figures. The Royal Free recorded 1,592 patients not seen within four hours, and the North Middlesex a shocking 3,306 patients. Both hospitals are now supposed to serve the people of Enfield North, as the Government have closed the A&E at Chase Farm hospital. May we have an early debate on the Government’s mismanagement of the NHS, as the people in Enfield and across the country are being badly let down when they arrive at A&E in need of treatment?
Chris Grayling
The right hon. Lady will have an opportunity to raise her concerns on Tuesday when the Secretary of State for Health is in the Chamber. I simply say that, under this Government, the NHS is receiving more money than ever before and is treating more patients than ever before.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend knows, I have been campaigning to save the hedgehog for several weeks now. On Monday, we have the hedgehog summit with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State. Next week, I plan to launch a petition to make the hedgehog a protected species—I very much hope that everyone in this House will participate in it. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, if we get more than 100,000 signatures, we will be considered for having a further debate on this very important issue?
Chris Grayling
I have to congratulate my hon. Friend on his diligence on this matter; the hedgehog has a much better chance of survival with him around than might otherwise have been the case. If he secures 100,000 signatures on his petition, I am almost certain that the Petitions Committee will feel obliged to have a debate on it. Given how strongly he has pushed the issue in the House, I am sure that his request will also have universal support across the House.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
My constituent David Chamber has raised with me his not uncommon problem: he is a graduate unable to find graduate work. The Prime Minister has said that he does not want foreign graduates doing what he describes as “menial” labour. May we have an urgent debate on what help we can give our UK graduates to get graduate jobs, on which the student loan repayment system depends?
Chris Grayling
When I was employment Minister in 2010, and we had inherited unemployment levels almost twice as high as they are now, conversations with young people entering the job market were challenging. Today, the situation is very different—unemployment has come down by almost half and job opportunities for young people in this country are better than they have been for a very long time. Under Labour, things went badly wrong; this Government have sorted them out.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
My constituent Cordelia Law was left with a legal bill of nearly £3,000 after being threatened with a libel action by a developer whose planning application she commented on to her local council. May we have a debate on our libel laws? I would not endorse every comment that Cordelia Law made, but that type of reaction from developers could deter many other people from commenting on planning applications in which they have an interest.
Chris Grayling
Obviously, I cannot comment on the specific detail of that case, because I do not know enough about it, but it is always right and proper for those putting in planning applications to treat local communities with respect. If people feel that they have been let down by local authority processes, they can and do go to the ombudsman to seek a determination of maladministration. It sounds as if my hon. Friend is doing a fine job of representing his constituent anyway.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Civil society organisations have legitimate concerns about restrictions on their ability to challenge school admission arrangements. May we have a statement about the proposed ban on objections from these organisations so that we can better understand who will and will not be affected?
Chris Grayling
These things are, of course, predominantly for governing bodies and local authorities to decide, but the hon. Gentleman is free to raise this issue as an Adjournment debate and bring a Minister to the House to respond to his concern.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
People in the villages of Lincolnshire are desperate to get to Cleethorpes, where they will find excellent shopping and the finest fish and chips in the land. Unfortunately, however, the Cleethorpes economy could be set back owing to cuts in rural bus services. May we have a debate about the funding of rural bus services, which clearly needs a rethink?
Chris Grayling
I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes. That is a matter for the Department for Communities and Local Government, which will come before the House on Monday. I encourage him to bring his point to the attention of the Ministers with the most direct responsibility for addressing these issues.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
Yesterday, the Bank of Scotland announced that it will close its Mount Florida branch in my constituency, which serves thousands of people in that community, King’s Park, Battlefield and slightly further afield. The bank has announced the closure without having done any community consultation at all; a lot of older people in particular will have to travel quite far to get to their local branch. May we have a debate on how the big banks are able to do such things without proper consultation with the community and to the detriment of local people?
Chris Grayling
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, that issue has been raised by a number of hon. Members in the past few weeks. If the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee were here, I would be saying that there is clearly a demand across the House for a debate on this subject, and I encourage the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) to make such a request. I should also say that the Post Office now offers many alternative banking services. I hope local communities will take advantage of the Post Office, to make sure that it can offer those services in their local communities.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Chair of the Backbench Business Committee has been called away on urgent business, so he has asked me to say that the Committee has scheduled every debate that has been requested. We are very much open for business as far as debates after the recess are concerned. As you will be aware, Mr Speaker, debating time in this Chamber and Westminster Hall is extremely precious, so I encourage Members to put applications in.
The Community Security Trust reported this week that the number of anti-Semitic incidents has fallen by a welcome 21%. However, before we all get complacent, that is the third highest level on record, and it follows the highest level ever recorded. May we have a statement from the Home Secretary responding to that report to make clear what action the Government will take to make sure that anti-Semitic incidents are not only treated seriously, but combated across this country?
Chris Grayling
I absolutely echo that point. I commend the work of the Community Security Trust. This is every bit as much of an issue as the events in Dewsbury last week, which were mentioned earlier. Anti-Semitic racist incitement in our society is utterly unacceptable, and so is incitement of race hatred against any group in our society. All of us in this House should stand against it when we discover it and see it. It is unacceptable and should never be tolerated.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Does the Leader of the House detect any difference between his view of the European convention on human rights—when he was Lord Chancellor, he said:
“We have a treaty right to withdraw…We would exercise that right. There is always a first time for everything”—
and that of the current Lord Chancellor, who said this week that the Government were
“not planning to derogate absolutely from any”
of the ECHR rights? Should we now expect any repeal of the Human Rights Act in this Parliament, or has that vanished with the rest of Leader of the House’s programme when he was at the Ministry of Justice?
Chris Grayling
I hate to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but Government Members believe that the Human Rights Act should be replaced. Labour do not. The public support us. Labour are wrong, we are right.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Hundreds—probably more than 1,000—British nationals have taken the very brave decision to go and fight against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, joining the YPG and the foreign fighter forces of the Kurdish peshmerga. Those people include my constituent, Aiden Aslin, a former care worker from Newark. It is now Home Office and police policy to arrest these individuals under counter-terrorism legislation on their return to the UK. Even if, as is most likely, they are not charged, that will remain on their record, and constituents such as mine, who have taken an extremely brave decision—one could argue that it is foolhardy, but it is extremely brave—to fight with our allies, will not be able to, for example, enter the United States for the rest of their lives. What can my right hon. Friend do to raise this issue with the Home Secretary and the relevant authorities so that we adopt an appropriate policy towards these brave citizens of this country?
Chris Grayling
Of course, this issue has to be treated with great care. I will make sure my hon. Friend’s concerns are raised with the Home Secretary, who will be in the Chamber on Monday week taking questions. I encourage him to raise that point with her, but I will make sure she is aware of the concern he has raised.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to nag his colleagues in the Department for Transport? The very expensive public inquiry into the New Generation Transport trolleybus scheme in Leeds concluded in October 2014, but the report has been gathering dust in the DFT for about six months. Can we finally have a statement on the issue so that we can get an answer? I hope it will be a no, so that we can then progress with a genuinely modern scheme involving light rail and/or tram-train.
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I will make sure that it is raised with the Department today and ask it to write to him.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
I recently met Noor Mukhtar, Pendle’s Member of the Youth Parliament, at Nelson and Colne College to discuss the UK Youth Parliament’s anti-racism and anti-discrimination campaign. Given recent Government initiatives on the issue, and the fact that the Prime Minister used his new year’s speech to talk about discrimination in Britain today, may we have a debate on this important issue?
Chris Grayling
Again, my hon. Friend makes an important point about the need to avoid discrimination and racist behaviour in our society, and I think the whole House would agree with that. On behalf of the House, could I—particularly a few days after you, Mr Speaker, hosted Members of the Youth Parliament in your state rooms to celebrate the achievements of some of those young people—pay tribute to all those involved in the Youth Parliament, who make a really important contribution to discussions between young people and parliamentarians around this country?
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
On Monday, I attended the Women Against State Pension Inequality debate in Westminster Hall. It is such a big issue, and the debate was so busy, that I had to sit in seats normally occupied by Tory MPs. The novelty quickly wore off as I had to watch colleagues point their fingers at Members on the Benches opposite. On a serious point, however, the Minister in that debate yet again hid behind the excuse of the deficit, so can we have a real debate about alternative measures we can put in place to end the injustice to women of the inequality of the state pension increase? We should bear it in mind that this Government recently allocated an extra £6 billion to Trident, with a £10 billion contingency—that is £16 billion right away that could be better spent.
Chris Grayling
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I always value the moments when we find ourselves sitting alongside the SNP, as it were, because they are all too rare. We talk about the deficit because it is true: over the past few years this country has had a major crisis in its public finances. We have made good progress in turning that around, but we have a way still to go. It has led to some difficult decisions. The pension issue is about equality. It is about ensuring that men and women have the same state retirement age, and it is also about our retirement age reflecting the good news that we are all living longer.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the impact of relaxing planning rules? Such a debate would give me the opportunity to raise the plight of Haughton Green in my constituency, where, in recent times, residents have seen a loss of their heritage with the bulldozing of the old rectory and have been deprived of a say over the future use of the Methodist church, and where there is likely to be extensive in-fill development, even though that will require the use of already congested medieval road infrastructure.
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to raise these issues with Ministers on Monday. There is a balance to be found in making sure that we protect local environments and the character of local areas but also provide adequate housing for the next generation, because that is also important.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
You probably know, Mr Speaker, that children living in low emission zones have a 10% lower lung capacity than children living outside, partly because diesel emissions from cars cause pollution worse than that of many lorries, and Volkswagen has obviously been involved in emissions testing scandals. Will the Leader of the House consider having a debate on improving the cleanliness of the air in our city centres for the sake of our children’s health, including the possible restriction of diesel vehicles, given that 52,000 people die each year from diesel pollutants?
Chris Grayling
This matter is now attracting widespread concern. It is obviously important to ensure that we have proper air quality and that we look after public health. Ministers are taking the matter very seriously and investigating it carefully.
Point of Order
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to go back to the issue of the Second Reading on 22 February of a Bill as yet unannounced. There is no Bill sitting waiting to be finished off in the House of Lords, as a Lords starter, and no Bill that has had a First Reading in this House, as yet, so the only possibility is that the Government fully intend next week, by the time we are back here next Thursday, to have the First Reading of a Commons starter Bill that will then have its Second Reading on 22 February. Would it not be grossly discourteous to this House for the Leader of the House, who knows perfectly well what that Bill is going to be, not to stand up and tell us exactly what it is going to be, because otherwise he will have published it by the time he is back here next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)
Can I just say that the shadow Leader of the House is talking absolute nonsense?
Mr Speaker
Right. Pursuant to the hon. Gentleman’s point of order, I can say only, at this stage, that I have no knowledge of the matter. I heard what the Leader of the House has said. I think it is a fair point to make to the House as a whole that it is not obligatory, but it is desirable, for words uttered to be genuinely meant. On one or two occasions in the past, I have come across language used such as “Second Reading of a Bill” which turns out really just to be a kind of holding statement, if you will, and what eventually transpires is something somewhat different—perhaps quite specifically not a Bill, and not a Second Reading of a Bill, but something else. On a serious note, in terms of the intelligibility of the proceedings of the House and the transparency with which we operate, I know that the Leader of the House will want to hold himself to a rather higher standard than that, and I am sure we can be assured of that.
Personal Statement
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
In 2009, the House resolved that hon. Members should register all outside earnings within 28 days of their receipt, whether connected with their parliamentary duties or not.
For a prolonged period last year, I very much regret that I failed to comply with that rule in respect of my professional earnings as a barrister.
The House has a right to expect of its Members, particularly those on the Standards Committee, as I was, that they will uphold its rules to the fullest extent. For that reason, I have stepped down from the Standards Committee, and I hope that the House will accept my sincere and full-hearted apology for my failure to observe this important rule.
Collapse of Kids Company
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs committee
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
We now come to the Select Committee statement. The Chair of the relevant Select Committee, Mr Bernard Jenkin, will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which, as those familiar with the procedure will realise and those who are not will now learn, no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I or whoever is in the Chair will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement, and call Mr Bernard Jenkin to respond to these in turn. Members can expect to be called only once. Interventions should be questions and should be brief. Front Benchers may take part in questioning.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to make this statement on our report entitled, “The collapse of Kids Company: lessons for charity trustees, professional firms, the Charity Commission, and Whitehall”.
We found that an extraordinary catalogue of failures of governance and control had taken place in the charity. It is obvious that many will feel blamed by our report. However, we very deliberately set about investigating the matter with a view to find lessons to be learned, not to find blame. Unless we can learn lessons, there will be an increased likelihood that such events will be repeated.
First, on the question of professional firms, the charity’s auditors repeated in every audit letter their concern that reserves in the charity were very low. The charity never acted on that advice. Instead, it was all too keen to trumpet the fact that it had received what it called a “clean audit” in every year of its existence. Under questioning, the auditor said that the charity had been living permanently “on a knife edge”. That sense of urgency was not communicated in formal advice to the charity. He also candidly admitted that the auditors should have notified the Charity Commission of their concerns about the charity, in accordance with the duty placed on auditors of charities under section 156 of the Charities Act 2011. That is a lesson that I hope all auditors will learn.
We also cross-examined Pannell Kerr Forster, which did an investigation into the governance and controls of the charity, on behalf of the Cabinet Office. We were concerned about how it evolved the remit of its report into being an investigation into governance controls rather than governance and controls. The report ended up being of rather limited value in the Cabinet Office, although it was read as what it was originally intended to be. That gives rise to the question of how the Government manage professional firms, as well as of how professional firms conduct themselves in respect of their responsibilities.
The charity also commissioned advice from PricewaterhouseCoopers, but it had so little time to produce anything in the run-up to the collapse of the charity that what it produced was of extremely little value. The Government took too much comfort from that report as well, and PwC should have been more candid and direct with the Government about how valuable its work could be to them.
The Charity Commission has a statutory duty to prevent, detect and tackle abuse and mismanagement in charities. It did not do so with Kids Company. Prior to 2015 the Charity Commission did not engage with Kids Company, because it received very few complaints. Why did so few people complain to the Charity Commission, given that this was, for a long period, a charity with a mixed reputation that excited a lot of public comment? In order to attract complaints, the Charity Commission should have a much higher profile as an avenue for complaints. It needs to be much more proactive in responding to concerns that are raised in public about a charity. In the case of high-risk charities with many employees and dependent beneficiaries, it should be equipped and funded to do more to provide scrutiny and, more importantly, advice and support to struggling trustees.
The Government need to reverse cuts to the Charity Commission to enable it to carry out its statutory function. We also recommend that the Charity Commission take new powers to hold hearings and to produce reports and recommendations about charities. It really should not fall to a Select Committee of the House to produce reports on the activities of individual charities. Kids Company received more than £42 million in grants from central Government across several Administrations, and it has not had to compete for a grant since 2013. Other charities have voiced bitter discontent at the unfairness of that. Government will need to work hard to restore faith in the grant-giving system of Whitehall.
Kids Company enjoyed unique, privileged and significant access to senior Ministers, and even to Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition, throughout successive Administrations. Some witnesses stated that they were intimidated by that high-profile support, and questions have been raised about whether it affected funding decisions; it certainly discouraged people from raising concerns. Government lacked any objective assessment of Kids Company’s activities and outcomes, and the effectiveness of its governance. Government must improve their capability so that they are less reliant on external reviews when making assessments about charities.
The civil service should be commended for resisting the hold that Kids Company seemed to have over so many others, but the advice of the civil service was, in the end, overridden. Ministers should not allow charity representatives to exploit their access to Government in a way that might be construed to be unethical. Ministers should not override, or risk creating the perception that they are overriding, official advice to hand over funding to charities on the basis of personal prejudice or political considerations. That raises questions about how conflicts of interest for Ministers are addressed in Government with respect to charity funding. The awarding of commercial contracts could never have been conducted on the same basis.
The real message of the report is about charity trustees. It is the same as the message in our report about charity funding last week, in which we found that trustees of some of the most famous charities in the country had failed to understand what was being done in their name. Both reports highlight the role of trustees of charities. The primary responsibility of trustees is the good governance and the maintenance of the reputation of their charities. The primary responsibility for Kids Company’s collapse rests with the charity trustees, who failed in their duty concerning the governance of the charity. I do not for a moment doubt the good faith of every trustee who served the charity, and I have evidence that some tried very hard to do the right thing. The only conclusion that anyone can reach is that either they did not know or understand the implications of what was going on in the charity, or they knew and failed to act.
The Charity Commission’s guidance requires trustees to
“make decisions solely in the charity’s interests. They should not allow themselves to be swayed by personal prejudices or dominant personalities.”
That seems to be exactly what happened in Kids Company, however, and it must be in danger of happening in every large charity that has been built up by a powerful and influential founder. The lesson is a universal one for all trustees. The trustee body of Kids Company did not have the necessary knowledge or experience of, for example, psychotherapy or youth services to be able to interrogate the operating model and safeguarding procedures.
In conclusion, it would be wrong to scapegoat any single individual for what occurred in the charity, but there are lessons that the House, the Government, the Charity Commission and professionals should draw from the situation. Most importantly, the Government need to understand what went wrong and how it can be rectified in future.
Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and the members of the Select Committee for this important report. It has shone a light on what is a very sorry saga for all concerned, not least the vulnerable children who turned to Kids Company in their hour of need. I also pay tribute to the thousands of volunteers and workers in the sector who do so much to support vulnerable young people, usually without the same levels of funding and freedom that Kids Company clearly enjoyed. It is a deep shame that so much good work is at risk of being tarnished by this unique, high-profile failure. Having read the report, particularly the evidence given to the Committee by the senior civil service, I want to ask the hon. Gentleman about the way in which grants were administered, and whether he feels anything has changed since his report.
The Government have just passed the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill, which was supported by Labour, to beef up the Charity Commission’s regulation of the sector, particularly when it comes to trustees. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that the Government have learned their own lessons? For example, it is clear that rules applying to other charities did not apply to Kids Company. As he said, it had not had to compete for a grant from central Government since 2013. The Committee was told by a former Conservative Minister that Kids Company
“appeared to have a lower threshold of proof in order to get money from public funds”
and that its chief executive
“was almost the poster girl at the Big Society summit”.
I ask the Minister whether the Government—both Ministers and civil servants—have actually acknowledged their role in this sorry saga, and whether they have taken any concrete steps to ensure that they are never complicit in such a tragedy again.
Mr Jenkin
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her comments. Let me emphasise, as she did, that it is plain to see that there was much good work going on in the charity, and that has been lost; that many vulnerable young people were dependent on the charity, and they have been left forlorn and bereft; that many of the employees and volunteers were deeply committed to the charity’s work, and they feel deeply betrayed and let down by what has happened; and that this has caused a great deal of distress. I am pleased to be able to inform the House that there is already evidence of things being salvaged from Kids Company and of things being rebuilt in the sector. We wish every success to those who are going to fund and support those things, because there is a gap, which the charity was seeking to fill, in meeting the needs of our society.
Yes, we are recommending even more powers for the Charity Commission than those in the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill. We very much want the Charity Commission to recommend courses for charity trustees, so that they have somewhere to go to learn. The Institute of Directors runs courses for non-executive directors. Where is the equivalent for charity trustees, who have just as onerous a set of responsibilities? It is not the executives and the chief executive who are responsible for the conduct of a charity, but the trustees, who are jointly and severally liable, and it is not just the chairman who is responsible, but all the trustees.
We want the Charity Commission to have the power to hold legally privileged hearings, like those of a statutory inquiry, so that it can hear and receive evidence that cannot be impugned in the courts. That would mean that people with concerns about charities could go to the Charity Commission without the fear of losing their job, of reprisals or of being traduced in the press. The Charity Commission would be able to hold proper hearings and people could speak to it without fear or favour, as they do before Select Committees.
The hon. Lady raised the question about conflicts of interests that Ministers did not quite understand and that the system has not quite grasped. If the senior executive of a charity appears on a public platform with someone who then becomes the Prime Minister or is photographed in the Cabinet room with the Prime Minister at the launch of a Government initiative, they have a mutual interest, and that was not reflected in the way decisions were made in this case. If the political interests or the financial interests of the charity become aligned with the political interests of certain Ministers, those Ministers should recuse themselves from those decisions, as they would in any commercial arrangement. There is going to be a new arrangement. We are going to require the Government to think about this very seriously and possibly even amend the ministerial code accordingly.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
As my hon. Friend has said, the ultimate responsibility for the failure of Kids Company lay with the board of trustees. Does my hon. Friend agree that, among the many lessons to be learned from this sorry episode, is that the board of trustees should include members with appropriate qualifications for the sort of charity they are operating, and in addition that the board of trustees should be regularly refreshed? In the case of Kids Company, the chairman had been in that role for many years. That, I would suggest, led him to become far too close to the chief executive, and ultimately to be dominated by her.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question, and I am grateful to him and all members of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, who were all so fully engaged with this inquiry, which made our report so much more valuable. My right hon. Friend is right about the appropriate skills that trustee bodies need. Very often people think they need business skills, whatever those are, or accounting skills or some kind of technical skills. Actually, they need other skills. They need skills in the sector in which the charity operates. As I pointed out in my opening remarks, there was nobody with psychotherapy experience, and the charity was a psychotherapeutic charity. There was nobody with youth sector experience, and this was a charity in the youth sector.
Boards of trustees also need people who are able to hold the right kind of conversations, who are fearless about hearing what needs to be heard, and who are capable of confronting people if necessary, but with kindness and understanding, in order that the truth reaches the charity trustees and the messages are heard. This charity prided itself on being open and consensual. I am afraid the evidence is that it was precisely the opposite. There were many people in the charity who were fearful of those who wanted to suppress the truth because the truth was so difficult to deal with. The truth was very difficult for individuals to deal with, and if there is no truth, there will be no enlightenment and no judgment. There is no substitute for charity trustees exercising broad and enlightened common sense and judgment. It is not just about sets of skills.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The answers have been very thorough, but they need to be a little shorter.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the Chairman of the Committee. The inquiry was quite a harrowing experience for all of us and he handled a difficult situation extremely well. Will he comment a little further on the role of journalists and the media in the inquiry? Incredibly detailed work was done by Miles Goslett, for example, and The Spectator was willing to publish when no one else was prepared to do so. That journalist had to go round all the media, which did not want to know because of some of the issues that have been referred to. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the role of media in such investigative journalism and the role of freedom of information are even more important now?
Mr Jenkin
I agree with everything the hon. Lady says. There were journalists who tried to get things published, but the editors and the publications that might have carried those messages were also scared of confronting what appeared to be a very powerful charity with very great influence leading to the heart of Government. There is a message there.
There is a message, too, for the Charity Commission. Even when things were published, why were those journalists not invited to the Charity Commission, and why did it not say, “Tell us what you think is going on here, because we probably ought to know”? I hope journalists will feel a sense of obligation, not necessarily to reveal their sources or anything like that, but where they think a big charity is in serious trouble, to offer their advice to the Charity Commission. It would be a public-spirited thing to do. They would do that in respect of a serious risk to national security; they should do so for the security of the charitable sector as well.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I join my colleague, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), in paying tribute to our Chairman, who led the inquiry, and to the staff of our Select Committee, who did some very valuable work in the course of the inquiry. The last tranche of Government money, £3 million, was given to facilitate restructuring, but I was surprised to see in the television programme aired on BBC 1 last night the impression given that the management and the chief executive had other ideas about how that money was going to be spent. Do we know whether the £2 million balance of the unspent £3 million that was given has been recovered by the Government? Will there be any further investigations into that money passing to Kids Company virtually 24 hours before it shut down, or is this report the end of the matter?
Mr Jenkin
That last question is very interesting. There is an ongoing investigation by the official receiver, which should be able to tell us what happened to that money and if any money is due to be returned to the Government. I am not a legal expert, but I think that once the Government handed over the money, it belonged to the charity. It no longer belonged to the Government and, although the Government might be a creditor, they will probably have to queue up behind other creditors. I very much hope that the Government might accept that the employees who lost their employment very abruptly are entitled to some measure of recompense, perhaps out of those funds. The answer is that I do not know. What was evident from that programme last night was how the restructuring was resisted to the very end. I am not sure whether that was known to the Minister who signed the letter of direction.
I, too, would like to pay tribute to the staff of the Committee. They do not usually like their name up in lights—it is not the tradition of the House service—but we are very fortunate in our Committee. We have very good staff.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
Having watched the BBC documentary last night and seen the founder of Kids Company laugh about breaking the law and be dismissive of a vast amount of UK taxpayers’ money which was handed out so freely by both Labour and Conservative Governments, it is clear that lessons have to be learned. One of the lessons that we failed to learn in the past was that brash, bright, colourful, flamboyant characters who are favoured by senior politicians should be open to the same scrutiny as the many conscientious hard-working individuals who work tirelessly for a charity with only the best of intentions. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the report should be only an opening salvo and must be followed up?
Mr Jenkin
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. Yes, this is an opening salvo—both reports are opening salvos—about governance. The question of governance extends beyond charities to how the whole of Whitehall is governed—all the public bodies and the civil service, and how we govern the contractual exchanges between the public and the private sectors from Whitehall. Governance is not just about compliance and box-ticking. Governance is about the exercise of judgment by the people who are accountable for what occurs, and I hope that fellow Select Committee Chairs and I will pursue the matter of governance across the whole of the public sector and the parts of the private sector that are funded by the public sector.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend and his Committee for his report and for his statement to the House today. On pages 47 to 49 of his excellent report he is excoriating in his criticism of the two Ministers who signed off the direction in June 2015 to give Kids Company £3 million, against the advice of the permanent secretary to the Cabinet Office. One of those Ministers, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was good enough to give evidence to the Committee and has shown courtesy to the House by being here today. The other, the Paymaster General, does not appear to have given evidence to my hon. Friend’s Committee and is not in the House today. In his report, the Chairman writes:
“In neither his letter of direction nor his oral evidence has Mr Letwin provided convincing justification for his and Mr Hancock’s decision to ignore the comprehensive advice of senior officials . . . This grant should not have been authorised contrary to advice.”
In the Government’s response to his Committee’s report, can we expect a ministerial apology from both Ministers involved and a clear explanation of how the £2 million which is still missing will be found?
Mr Jenkin
I have heard everything that my hon. Friend has said. The report speaks for itself. I hope very much that the Government will give a full and clear explanation in response to the report. I am sure that they will. I have never doubted the integrity of the two Ministers who signed the letter of direction at all. We must wait for the Government’s response. In the end, I am not responsible for the Government’s response.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
May I add the name of Harriet Sergeant to that of Miles Goslett as she, too, exposed this fraud? This was British journalism at its very best and the report shows our Select Committees at their very best in the way that it exposes the waste, extravagance and delusions of this sad episode, which robbed far better charities of vital funds to help children in distress.
Is it not vital that the conduct of the Ministers who ignored the advice and wrote the letter of direction is considered by the adviser on Ministers’ interests? Is it not crucial that we get to the nub of this terrible waste? The buck stops with the Prime Minister. We should have broken the taboo that exists—I would like the Chairman to make this suggestion. As this charity was linked in every way with the big society stunt that was being run by the Prime Minister at the time, the person who should have given evidence to us was the Prime Minister.
This matter will not be put to rest until the Prime Minister explains why he set up what was virtually a slush fund, by getting funds moved from the Department for Education, where Ministers might have stopped this, to the Cabinet Office, from where the money was going out. That was wrong, it was damaging to many of the children who were allegedly being helped by Kids Company and it was very damaging to those charities that could prove the worth of what they were doing through statements and evidence, which Kids Company never did. Should we not look forward to this never happening again and to moneys being moved out of the Cabinet Office’s control?
Mr Jenkin
It is in the nature of politics that some people will always be readier to pin the blame and extract some action as a result. I hope that I am conducting the Committee in a way that all its members support. I think that we get so much more from witnesses and that our reports have more authority if we do not try to pin blame on individuals, but the House will have heard what the hon. Gentleman said.
The hon. Gentleman touched on the important issue of why youth funding was moved from the Department for Education to the Cabinet Office. We really did not get an explanation of that, except for a denial that it had anything to do with wanting to be able to continue funding Kids Company, which the Department for Education had clearly become reluctant to do. One of our conclusions is that Departments should be responsible for allocating funding to outside bodies, rather than the Cabinet Office, because it is, by its nature, too close to the political centre of power in Government and a suspicion can be created, at the least, that decisions are being influenced.
We made a recommendation about the LIBOR fund, which was set up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to support military charities. It is clearly a very worthwhile initiative, but any possibility that it could be construed as a fund under the personal control of the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be very clearly checked.
Mr Speaker
Somewhat tighter answers would be appreciated. They are way too long.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for his statement and his Committee for the work it has done in preparing the report. Does the Committee plan to review the extent to which the valuable and important recommendations in its report are complied with and carried out?
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I commend the hon. Gentleman and his Committee for this very good report. He is absolutely right that a focus on governance is vital. The Public Accounts Committee is very clear that we will follow governance and accountability in respect of taxpayers’ money wherever they lead. In the evidence that we heard from senior civil servants about the use of ministerial directions, there was clearly a reluctance on the part of permanent secretaries to call for a ministerial direction because of the relationship that they had with their Secretaries of State. Has he had any thoughts about undertaking further work with his Committee on the use of ministerial directions and whether that system is working well in Whitehall?
Mr Jenkin
There has been controversy about the role of ministerial directions. The former Minister for the Cabinet Office, who was responsible for civil service policy, urged permanent secretaries to ask for ministerial directions to facilitate the making of decisions. That was understandable because he felt frustrated that, as he saw it, decisions were being blocked. On the other hand, senior civil servants pride themselves on having a good relationship of trust and understanding with their Ministers and are therefore reluctant to reach for the requirement for formal direction. They would far rather have a relationship with their Ministers that is based on a shared understanding of the concerns about a particular issue. I am bound to say that I rather side with civil servants on that one. If we had a system that was run just on instructions, it would be impossible for civil servants to give their best advice to Ministers. That is the system that Northcote-Trevelyan set up and that we should attempt to sustain.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I apologise to hon. Members and to you, Mr Speaker, that I have only just arrived in the Chamber. I was speaking to a group of schoolchildren from my constituency in the education centre and I could not miss that.
I want to say a few words in support of the Chair. This was a difficult report to achieve consensus on and he did a very good job of getting us as close to consensus as was possible. I caught the tail-end of what my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) was saying and I sympathise with a lot of what he said. I also heard my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. The National Audit Office ought to have a stronger look at all of this, particularly at where Ministers are instructing civil servants on matters of funding in this way. I hope that this sort of thing will never happen again and that this report will go some way towards mending fences for the future. That being said, I think that this is the tip of the iceberg and that the story will continue. There is probably a lot more that we have not reported on.
Mr Speaker
I feel sure that the House will agree that the Chamber’s loss was the school students’ gain.
Mr Jenkin
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support and for his work on the Committee. The one point that I will pick up on is his comment that this must never happen again. I can tell you for certain, Mr Speaker, that it will happen again. The question is whether we have a system in place that allows us, each time it happens, to learn, rectify and prepare for the future to make sure that it happens less and less often. That is what our recommendations are really about.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and his Committee on bringing forward this report. Many points have been made about the governance of the Charity Commission and I welcome the specific recommendation that he mentioned, but what role should the Care Quality Commission have played in inspecting some of the services that Kids Company claimed to be providing? There seems to have been a gap there. It might have helped to identify the fact that the numbers did not stack up. Will he join me in congratulating the director of social services at Southwark Council, David Quirke-Thornton, who stepped in to make sure that vulnerable young people received support quickly when Kids Company collapsed?
Mr Jenkin
I am certainly very grateful to David Quirke-Thornton. There are still discussions to be had between statutory social services and the charitable youth sector about what gaps in provision exist. Those would be productive discussions.
The question of inspection that the hon. Gentleman raises is a very important one. Ofsted did go into parts of Kids Company, but the senior executives of the charity did not find that very welcome. If social services are inspected, perhaps there is a case for inspecting charities of this nature, particularly if they are in receipt of public funds and if they have caring and safeguarding responsibilities. The private sector is investigated in that way—boarding schools and so on—and charities should be treated in the same way.
Mr Speaker
Notwithstanding what I said earlier about the prolixity of some of the answers and the relatively slow progress, the hon. Gentleman has received, and warmly deserves, the appreciation of the House for bringing before us this very important report on behalf of his Committee. It is a practical expression of his decades-long commitment to this House, its integrity, and its centrality in the affairs of the country, and he deserves our thanks.
Backbench Business
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Parliamentary Sovereignty and EU Renegotiations
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
To move the motion I call not a baron, but the Baron in the House.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
As ever, you have been very generous, Mr Speaker.
I beg to move,
That this House believes in the importance of Parliamentary sovereignty; and calls for the Government’s EU renegotiations to encompass Parliament’s ability, by itself, to stop any unwanted legislation, taxes or regulation.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and Members on both sides of the House who supported the application for it.
There can be no greater issue for this Parliament to debate and defend than the country’s sovereignty, as that goes to the heart of everything we do. Without it, we cannot truly have the final say on a host of issues, including the primacy of our laws, the integrity of our borders and the extent of burdensome regulation. As our EU renegotiations proceed, however, it appears that little effort is being made to truly restore parliamentary sovereignty. It is not a priority, which I suggest is a great opportunity missed.
We have a golden opportunity to pitch for fundamental change in our relationship with the EU for the benefit of both parties, as the Prime Minister promised in his Bloomberg speech, but we are missing it while No. 10 tinkers at the edges. Without consulting his parliamentary party, in my view the Prime Minister is sidestepping the issue completely by arguing for temporary measures, and measures that require us to club together with other Parliaments, in the vain hope of stopping the EU. That is not restoring parliamentary sovereignty. If we as a Parliament and a country cannot on our own stop any unwanted EU taxes, directives or laws, then it is clear that if we vote to stay in, we vote to stay on the conveyor belt towards ever closer union, as laid out in the EU’s founding treaty. Parliament will become nothing more than just a council chamber of Europe.
To those who say that the UK already accepts a certain pooling or loss of sovereignty when joining other international organisations, I say that only the EU can force us to take in economic migrants despite the strain on our infrastructure, override our laws, and foist burdensome regulation on our companies, despite the vast majority not even trading with the EU.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising this important issue, and I agree with everything he has been saying. The great 19th-century constitutionalist, Walter Bagehot, divided politics into the “effective” and “decorative” parts of the constitution. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this place must be the effective part of our constitution, not just a decoration?
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I wonder whether all those years ago Enoch Powell was right, and that we have been dodging this issue ever since 1972. The question he posed was that if we join the EU, this Chamber and democratically elected House loses its sovereignty. Now an historic moment is approaching, and the British people have to make that choice. Will they reclaim that sovereignty or not?
Mr Baron
I can only repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins)—I completely agree, and that is why this debate is important. It is not easy to say some of these words, but I regret that there has been a lack of consultation on the proposals in this renegotiation. Better engagement, certainly with the parliamentary party, and perhaps with Parliament generally, given that we are representatives, would have been useful.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Would the hon. Gentleman include in that statement of regret the complete failure to consult the national Parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during the process?
Mr Baron
What I regret is the lack of wide consultation generally with regard to renegotiation. When many of us were campaigning in the last Parliament for a referendum in this one, it was in the hope that we would have a meaningful debate prior to the renegotiation, and then a meaningful debate afterwards as we headed towards a referendum.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Baron
Let me make a little progress, and then I will take further interventions. I am also conscious of the time.
Let us be clear about the so-called “red card”. We appear to have a system that has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese—so much so that it is more like a lottery ticket that has been through the wash. The question is: is it valid? The idea is that we club together and form a majority with other national Parliaments to stop unwanted EU taxes and laws, but that would not enable our Parliament, by itself, to reject anything that it did not want. This would be an extension of the ineffectual “yellow card'” system currently in operation, but with an even higher threshold.
Lord Hague once referred in this Chamber to the system then in operation, which was similar to what is now being proposed:
“Given the difficulty of Oppositions winning a vote in their Parliaments, the odds against doing so in 14 countries around Europe with different parliamentary recesses—lasting up to 10 weeks in our own case—are such that even if the European Commission proposed the slaughter of the first-born it would be difficult to achieve such a remarkable conjunction of parliamentary votes.”—[Official Report, 21 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 1262.]
The “lottery ticket” system will not work. It would be like a football referee getting out his fraction of a red card, only then to consult with 14 other officials before deciding what to do, by which time the game is over. If we are serious about regaining control of our borders and fisheries, and about having the ability to set our own trade deals and the power to set our own business regulation, sovereignty must be restored to Parliament. It is quite simple. Everything else is a cop-out, a sell-out, a lottery ticket fraud. Let us be honest about the washed-out lottery ticket.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am glad that I did not interrupt my hon. Friend in the midst of that wonderful metaphor. One of the real problems with the mentality of those who subscribe to the EU project is that instead of being honest enough to say “no” to those of us who want our sovereignty back, they put forward devious and deceptive and pretences to say yes, when in reality they know it means no.
Mr Baron
I can only agree with my right hon. Friend. Having said that, the Minister for Europe is nothing but a courteous and able Minister, and I am delighted that he is in his place. I would not want him to be under the illusion that we are suggesting that of him, but there has been a tendency to act out a charade, when actually we have been on the conveyor belt of ever closer union. We need greater honesty in this debate.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
My hon. Friend has raised the issue of sovereignty, and the draft decision document published this week by the European Union contains a section called “Sovereignty”. If ever there was a misnamed section of a document, it is this—perhaps my hon. Friend will come on to that. The one thing that this document does not return to the United Kingdom Parliament is sovereignty over the laws that are made for this country. Indeed, it promises a “red card”, which is no more than an extremely cumbersome method of qualified majority voting in the European Union.
Mr Baron
There will be people who want to disagree—don’t worry.
I will just turn, if I may, to the immigration emergency brake, which again is questionable. I speak here with a tinge of sadness, because I think the Government have framed this part of the debate in the wrong manner. Let us first of all be clear that the emergency brake access to in-work benefits will last only four years, with the EU, not Britain, judging whether the emergency brake is declared. Not even here do we have control. It is also unclear what happens after the period expires. In addition, access to benefits would gradually be increased, meaning it is moot how much of a deterrent to immigration a brake would actually be.
My sadness—I have said this many times in this place —is that I believe the Government are wrong to couch the debate in these terms. It feeds into a negative narrative about immigrants. It ignores the fact that almost all—the vast majority—immigrants from the EU come to Britain to work hard. They are not looking for benefits. It ignores the fact that large-scale EU immigration cannot be stopped, in all truthfulness, while we adhere to the EU’s founding principle of freedom of movement, particularly as the rise in the national living wage picks up speed. Let us have real honesty about this debate. I am fed up with listening to politicians focus on benefits and play to the gallery. It is absolutely wrong to do so. It feeds a negative narrative. The vast majority of immigrants —let us make this absolutely clear—come here to work hard and we should acknowledge that fact, so let us have clarity about the emergency brake. After all, it can only be used by the EU backseat driver, and we all know how dangerous that can be.
There are massive holes in the two key planks of the Government’s renegotiations. Is that important? For some, it will not be. I say it is important, because while the general view may be that we are standing still while inside the EU, we are in fact standing still on a conveyor belt towards ever closer union. Let us be absolutely clear about that. Indeed, the lesson of the eurozone crisis is that the EU usually finds a way of achieving what it wants, ever closer union, even at the expense of violating its commitments. As Mr Juncker once said,
“when it becomes serious, you have to lie”.
Those are the words of the President of the European Commission.
The EU is developing all the trappings of a nation state: a currency, a body of law and a diplomatic service. It makes no secret of its ambitions or its determination to succeed, even if this results in a democratic deficit with its own peoples. We only have to hear what has been said by some of the key people in the EU. Mr Juncker has made his position very clear:
“if it’s a ‘yes’, we say ‘on we go’; and if it’s a ‘no’, we say ‘we will continue.’”
Angela Merkel has made her wishes clear:
“we want more Europe, and stronger powers to intervene”.
Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament, has been particularly blunt:
“the UK belongs to the EU”.
Mr Barroso, the former President of the Commission, has cast light on the EU’s integration process:
“they must go on voting, until they get it right”.
If things do not change, the UK is captive on a journey to who knows where. Looking into voting at the EU’s Council of Ministers, academics based at the London School of Economics—there has been very little research on this—have shown that, in recent years, Britain has voted against the majority far more often and been on the losing side more than any other member state. It is not as though it is even getting better within the internal structures of the EU. The British people never signed up to this and it is therefore right that they are finally having their say in a referendum. Do the British Government truly believe that they can muster sufficient votes to stop this inexorable vote towards ever closer union? That is one of the key questions Ministers should try to answer today.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman mentions various eminent and well-known persons in the EU. Is not one thing that binds them all together in relation to this debate the fact that they are not elected? We in this Parliament had no say in who they are and we cannot get rid of them. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned Enoch Powell. Tony Benn said that if we cannot get rid of the people in an institution, it is not democratic.
Mr Baron
I very much agree with the hon. Lady. There is a democratic deficit in the EU. It is no coincidence that the European Parliament, after the most recent elections, is probably the most Eurosceptic European Parliament in the EU’s history. There is a connection there and the EU needs to recognise that it needs to put that democratic deficit right.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that even elected people do not get thrown out? We cannot get rid of Dan Hannan, for example, because he is No. 1 of 10 or 11 Members of the European Parliament.
Mr Baron
There are many flaws in the system. The peoples of Europe—although one can generalise too much in this respect—are asking more and more questions as the system fails to deliver, in particular on the economic front. Mass unemployment is causing great hardship in many countries and the EU is failing to deliver.
Sammy Wilson
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. He is hitting the most important point here. Does he accept that this is not just an academic debate about sovereignty? This is an issue that goes to the very core of social cohesion. If people feel they cannot change those who make decisions, we will have all kinds of trouble and tensions on our streets. That is the core of the issue. Democratic institutions are important for the wellbeing of society.
Mr Baron
I completely agree and that is very well put. It is terribly important that there is an element of democratic accountability. If there is not, we will alienate sections of society and issues such as unemployment will not be properly addressed. How are people going to voice their opinion without moving to the extremes of the political divide, and feeding that extremism because they do not feel they can be democratically represented within the existing structures?
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree there is a practical side to the issue of sovereignty, too? As a member of the EU, we have lost our sovereign ability to negotiate friendly or free trade agreements with major economies around the world. It would be in this country’s interests to have a friendly trading agreement with the big economies, such as America, China and Japan. We cannot do that, however, because we have lost our seat at the World Trade Organisation and our membership of the EU forbids us from making such negotiations.
Mr Baron
That is absolutely right. It is a question of sovereignty, at the end of the day. If we cannot take our seat at the WTO and negotiate our own trade deals, indirectly that is a loss of sovereignty. There is no doubt about that. I am conscious that time is ticking on, so I will make some progress if colleagues will forgive me.
The Prime Minister misses the importance of parliamentary sovereignty in the EU debate. That is a mistake No. 10 is in danger of making when it focuses too heavily on Project Fear issues, such as immigration and jobs. We all know it is the loss of parliamentary sovereignty that really lies at the heart of our uneasy relationship with the EU, and which has rankled since we first joined in the 1970s. Over the course of the referendum campaign, I do not believe Project Fear will bite. Ever-increasing numbers of big businesses, including the likes of JCB, Toyota, and Unilever, make it clear that they will not pull out in the event of a Brexit. Indeed, a recent Barclays report suggested a Brexit would be beneficial to the UK. Jobs are linked to our trade with Europe, not to our membership of the EU. Given that our vast trade deficit is in the EU’s favour, it would want to sign a trade agreement in the event of a Brexit.
Furthermore, even if the EU wanted to get awkward, it could not. Falling global tariffs since the 1970s mean that both the UK and EU are bound by the WTO’s “most favoured nation” tariffs—the USA’s average being under 3%. One can easily lose 3% in a currency swing in a week. Many smaller countries outside the EU easily trade with it. Does the “in” camp think the public believe we could not do likewise?
What excites voters’ imagination is the ability to restore sovereignty to our ancient Parliament. I rather suspect the Prime Minister knows this, and that consequently he is holding something in reserve—we are hearing something about a sovereignty Bill, for example—but details are scant. If it is true, however, does it not acknowledge that the “washed-out lottery ticket” and the EU “backseat driver brake” are not fit for purpose? Will the Minister supply the House with more details?
In conclusion, there has never been a better time to renegotiate our relationship with the EU, and nor are we ever likely to be in a stronger position to win meaningful concessions. I therefore urge the Prime Minister, at this critical stage, to return to the renegotiations and seek nothing less than a true restoration of parliamentary sovereignty. Let us step back for one brief moment. If the EU did not exist today, would we really invent it? I cannot understand why this and other Governments have acquiesced in this charade. I can only surmise it is because it is easier not to correct it and to do nothing, than to put it right and take action. But inaction is costing this country dear, not just by way of our £10 billion a year net contribution, but in terms of our sovereignty and responsibility to the people of this country.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. On account of the number of hon. Members who wish to contribute, I am afraid we must start with a six-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on his excellent speech.
I want to address those of my Labour colleagues who mistakenly remain in favour of staying in the EU. The hon. Gentleman talked about being told, “No”, but we have some opt-outs, which is good, because they have saved us some of the pain of being a member of the EU. I think, in particular, of the opt-out from the euro. Had we been a member, we would have been destroyed by the crisis in 2008. The fact that we could depreciate by 30% protected our economy, to an extent, from that terrible experience. Other countries in southern Europe had much greater difficulties and are still suffering. Currency flexibility, which means that countries and economies can adjust to appropriate parities with other economies, is fundamental to a successful world economy, let alone national or European economies.
Mr Jenkin
Is not one of the more ridiculous parts of the document published yesterday the idea that we need the EU to recognise more than one currency in the EU? Given that Sweden voted in a referendum to stay out of the euro, when it did not have an opt-out, as was negotiated in the Maastricht treaty for the UK, is it not clear that if a country has its own currency, the EU cannot take it away, and that we do not need a treaty change or anything to tell us we can have the pound?
Kelvin Hopkins
I agree absolutely with the hon. Gentleman. I have had the pleasure of being a member of the European Scrutiny Committee for some years now, and in that capacity I meet representatives from other Parliaments. Swedish Parliament representatives tell me that support for joining the euro is at 11% in Sweden, so I do not think it will be joining any time soon. We heard from the Czechs recently. As soon as anyone suggests they might join the euro, they basically say, “Never”. One or two countries that joined the euro now think it was not such a good idea and might like to withdraw if they could. It is true that there are several currencies in the EU: several countries retain their own currency. Some years ago, I met Polish representatives, and I said, “Whatever you do, don’t join the euro, if you want to run your economy successfully, because you would be pinioned, and it would not be good for Poland.” I do not think my advice mattered; nevertheless that country has not joined the euro, and I see no prospect of its doing so in the near future.
I want to talk about other opt-outs. I have long campaigned in the House on the bizarre and nonsensical common fisheries policy. Thousands, if not millions, of tonnes of fish are being destroyed by being dumped back into the sea dead, and fish stocks have been savagely cut. The only way forward is for countries to be responsible for their own fish stocks, along traditional lines, to husband their own resources and to fish in their own seas, as the Norwegians do.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
Is it not a pity that the Government have missed the opportunity of treaty change around the CFP, which has been an absolute disaster for the Scottish fishing community?
Kelvin Hopkins
Indeed. I raised the matter when a former representative from UKRep spoke to the Committee a few years ago. I said, as I had suggested to the coalition Government, “What would happen if we gave notice that in five years we would withdraw from the CFP, restore the 200-mile and 50% limits and start to manage fish stocks properly, in the interests of our own fishing industry, monitoring every boat and catch sensibly, as happens in Norway?” He said, “You’d be expelled from the EU,”, so there is no possibility of that happening.
If the Government put that in their negotiations, however, they might be a bit more persuasive. I have a list of things I would have in the negotiations—sadly, the Government have not followed it—and getting rid of the CFP is one of them. We have the largest fishing grounds and used to have the most successful fishing industry in the EU, but it has been devastated by overfishing and the appalling discarding of bycatches. The point is that, if we made a real change, we would apparently be thrown out, so the substantial changes I want would not be acceptable.
Even yesterday, people were talking about the common agricultural policy—another nonsensical policy that has cost us dear—under which we make massive net contributions to the EU. Every country ought to manage its own agriculture. Some, like the Norwegians, would choose to subsidise it for strategic reasons, as would be perfectly acceptable. We could do the same and choose either the current subsidy regime or a different pattern of subsidies. Each country should do its own thing. One of the nonsenses is that some countries are paid not to grow food. I was in Lithuania a couple of years ago with the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee. It used to be self-sufficient in food, but now thousands of acres are lying fallow because it is paid not to grow food. That is nonsense, and it is all to do with the CAP.
Sammy Wilson
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. In Northern Ireland, a big issue is what would happen to farming subsidies were we to leave the EU, but is not the point that farming subsidies are better tailored to the needs of individual countries than is a common policy that often fails to meet the needs of farmers in our countries?
Kelvin Hopkins
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. If we withdrew, we could eliminate the net loss of our contribution to the budget—some say £19 billion, others £14 billion, but either way it is in the billions—and still subsidise regional and other policies, and tailor them to our national and regional needs.
I turn now to the sham of so-called “social Europe”. It is used as a lever to persuade social democratic and socialist parties to say yes to the European Union, but when it comes to the crunch—this would not necessarily impress Conservative Members and certainly not Labour Members, I hope—the EU always finds in favour of employers. Free movement is not about being benign; it is about bidding down wages, ensuring that wages are kept down and profits kept high. It is part of the neo-liberal package of measures that is being driven by the European Union.
In the case of Greece and other southern European countries that have had bail-outs, one of the conditions for bail-out is to put a brake on collective bargaining: “You’ve got to calm down your employees, especially in the public sector. We’re not going to give you the bail-out unless you cut back on collective bargaining.” That is hardly “social Europe”. What about the rights supposedly involved in the charter of fundamental rights? Then, of course, another condition of bail-out is forced privatisations, and we have seen fire sales of public assets in these countries. All these things have damaged social welfare in those countries.
The biggest problem of all has been mass unemployment, falling national output and falling living standards. Greece provides the most extreme example, but other countries have suffered, too. Greece has seen its living standards cut by 25%, and its unemployment is at 25%—50% among young people. Across southern Europe as a whole, youth unemployment stands at 40%. It is nonsense—it does not work economically. The idea that is all about “social Europe” and that it is beneficial to workers is, I think, complete nonsense and simply not true.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s time is up—a point that I had not spotted. I am being more courteous than I need to be, but it seems discourteous to deprive the hon. Lady. Would she like to finish blurting out what she wanted to say?
Kate Hoey
I am saying that my hon. Friend provides a reason why the trade union movement and trade unionists across the country are catching on to this more and more. Is this not why trade unionists are speaking out and beginning to join and get involved in the campaign to leave?
Mr Speaker
Excellent. I was about to say that a single -sentence answer would suffice, but the hon. Gentleman has provided a one-word sentence—magnificent!
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on introducing this debate so well.
I have to say that this has been a very long journey—30 years, I suppose, in all. I do not want to speak about the technicalities of negotiation; we will deal with that when the Foreign Secretary appears in front of the European Scrutiny Committee on 10 February. I had the opportunity to say a few words yesterday in reply to the Prime Minister’s statement, but today I simply want to indicate what I really feel about this question and explain why I am so utterly and completely determined to maintain the sovereignty of this United Kingdom Parliament.
It is really very simple. We are elected by the voters in our constituencies. We come here, and have done for many centuries, to represent their grievances and their interests, to fight for their prosperity and to support them in adversity. The reason why this House has to remain sovereign is that it simply cannot be subordinated to decisions taken by other people. This is about this country and it is about our electors. This is what people fought and died for.
As I mentioned yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred in his Bloomberg speech to our “national Parliament” as the “root of our democracy”, but I would also mention that in our history, this Parliament has been steeped in the blood of, and nourished by, civil war. When your great predecessor, Mr Speaker—
Sir William Cash
Certainly not at this moment.
I was about to say that Speaker Lenthall, in defiance of prospective tyranny, refused to accept armed aggression by the monarchy. Pym, Hampden, ship money—this was all about sovereignty and defending the rights of the people from unnecessary and oppressive taxation, which was being imposed on them without parliamentary authority. Through subsequent centuries, we saw the repeal of the Corn laws, and parliamentary reform through the 1867 Act to ensure that the working man was entitled to take part in this democracy; and after that, through to the 1930s when we had to take account of the mood of appeasement.
With respect to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Europe, I take the view that in completely different circumstances what has happened in these negotiations in terms of parliamentary sovereignty can be seen when the die is clearly cast and we now have an opportunity for the first time since 1975 to make a decision on behalf of the British people. That is why we need to have regard to the massive failures of the European Union and to its dysfunctionality—whether it be in respect of economics, immigration, defence or a range of matters that are absolutely essential to our sovereignty.
All those issues have, within the framework of the European Union, been made subject to criticism. We are told that we would be more secure if we stayed in the European Union and that we would preserve the sovereignty of our electors who put us in place to make the decisions and make the laws that should govern them. Would we really be more secure in a completely dysfunctional, insecure, unstable Europe? No, of course not.
The issues now before us in Europe are actually to do with sovereignty. If we lose this sovereignty, we betray the people. That is the point I am making. Yes, there are certain advantages to co-operation and trade, for example, and I agree 100% with that. I have always argued for that, but what I will not argue for is for the people who vote us to this Chamber of this Parliament to be subordinated so that we are put in the second tier of a two-tier Europe, which will be largely governed, as I have said previously, by the dominant country in the eurozone—Germany.
Mr Jenkin
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most worrying sentences in the document published this week relates to what will occur if the eurozone seeks to deepen its integration? This sentence reads:
“member states whose currency is not the euro shall not impede the implementation of legal acts directly linked to the functioning of the euro area and shall refrain from measures which could jeopardise the attainment of the objectives of the economic and monetary union.”
Given that there is going to be a new treaty and we do not know how it is going to affect us, is this not in effect giving up our veto?
Sir William Cash
It is. We were promised that in 1972. Our membership of the European Union is entirely dependent on the same Act that was passed in 1972. It was a voluntary decision based on certain assumptions. The 1971 White Paper, which preceded that debate, said that we would never give up the veto, and went on to say that to do so would be against our vital national interests and would endanger the very fabric of the European Community itself. They knew which way it could go. They knew they had to keep the veto, but it has been taken away from us progressively by successive Governments. If we cut through all the appearances, this is a sham. That is the problem and this is the real issue.
Sir Edward Leigh
My hon. Friend is so right to raise the debate above mere technicalities. He will remember that at his school he was told that the blood of the martyrs is the seed corn of his church. Is not the blood of all those parliamentarians who died in defence in this House the seed corn of our liberties?
Sir William Cash
I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. This is not about technicalities. It is about freedom of choice—freedom of choice at the ballot box for people to have their own laws that can be challenged accountably —not by proportional representation, not by the European Parliament, not by COREPER getting together in unsmoke -filled rooms to hatch deals on behalf of the people who are actually being affected in their daily lives. That is the problem. We have wordsmiths, and we have people running around in big chauffeur-driven cars making decisions—unelected bureaucrats—just as Monnet and Schuman intended in the first place.
We have reached the point of no return. We have to say no: we have to leave. That is the position. I do not need to say any more. As far as I am concerned, this is about the liberties of this country. It is about the liberties of our people. That is why I say that we must leave the European Union.
Let me end by quoting from G. K. Chesterton and John Gower:
“Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.”
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I shall be very brief, because I know that many Conservative Members wish to speak. I am disappointed that so few of my own colleagues are here, wishing to defend the European Union and to speak against the sovereignty of this Parliament, but they are not here, so I shall say a few words.
Actually, what I really want to do—because we are talking about Parliament, and about great parliamentarians —is quote some of the things that were said in the House by one of the greatest parliamentarians, sadly now dead, the right hon. Tony Benn. They follow on from what was said by the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash)—and I agreed with every word of it. This is not about technicalities and “wordsmiths”, as the hon. Gentleman put it, and it is not about bureaucrats. It is about, fundamentally, our belief in our country, and our belief in our country’s ability to run itself.
Let me first quote from a letter that Tony Benn wrote to his Bristol constituents on 29 December 1974. I am not sure whether you had been born yet, Mr Speaker, but I think you probably had been. Tony Benn wrote:
“Britain’s continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation and the end of our democratically elected Parliament as the supreme law making body in the United Kingdom.”
So he was showing some foresight back in 1974. The following year, he made a speech during a meeting at which the Cabinet was discussing the Labour view on how Members should vote in the 1975 “leaving” referendum. As we know, the party was very split at the time. He said:
“We have confused the real issue of parliamentary democracy, for already there has been a fundamental change. The power of electors over their law-makers has gone, the power of MPs over Ministers has gone, the role of Ministers has changed. The real case for entry has never been spelled out, which is that there should be a fully federal Europe in which we become a province. It hasn’t been spelled out because people would never accept it. We are at the moment on a federal escalator, moving as we talk, going towards a federal objective we do not wish to reach. In practice, Britain will be governed by a European coalition government that we cannot change, dedicated to a capitalist or market economy theology. This policy is to be sold to us by projecting an unjustified optimism about the Community, and an unjustified pessimism about the United Kingdom, designed to frighten us in. Jim”
—I think that he meant Jim Callaghan—
“quoted Benjamin Franklin, so let me do the same: ‘He who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary security deserves neither safety nor liberty.’ The Common Market will break up the UK because there will be no valid argument against an independent Scotland, with its own Ministers and Commissioner, enjoying Common Market membership. We shall be choosing between the unity of the UK and the unity of the EEC. It will impose appalling strains on the Labour movement...I believe that we want independence and democratic self-government, and I hope the Cabinet in due course will think again.”
On 13 March 1989, he told the House of Commons:
“It would be inconceivable for the House to adjourn for Easter without recording the fact that last Friday the High Court disallowed an Act which was passed by this House and the House of Lords and received Royal Assent—the Merchant Shipping Act 1988. The High Court referred the case to the European Court…I want to make it clear to the House that we are absolutely impotent unless we repeal section 2 of the European Communities Act. It is no good talking about being a good European. We are all good Europeans; that is a matter of geography and not a matter of sentiment.
Are the arrangements under which we are governed such that we have broken the link between the electorate and the laws under which they are governed?
I am an old parliamentary hand—perhaps I have been here too long—“
He was here for a lot longer after that!—
“but I was brought up to believe, and I still believe, that when people vote in an election they must be entitled to know that the party for which they vote, if it has a majority, will be able to enact laws under which they will be governed. That is no longer true. Any party elected, whether it is the Conservative party or the Labour party, can no longer say to the electorate, ‘Vote for me and if I have a majority I shall pass that law’, because if that law is contrary to Common Market law, British judges will apply Community law.”—[Official Report, 13 March 1989; Vol. 149, c. 56-8.]
That was very, very apt all those years ago, and it is even more apt today, which is why I absolutely believe that this House must be sovereign. The Prime Minister’s negotiations have failed to take account of any of that. When we are given the referendum, the people will finally have a chance to say no to this undemocratic, anti-democratic system—a system that is opposed to the democracy that we want in this country.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
On this day of all days, let me commence by striking—I hope—a note of humility. The truth is that I do not know whether the conclusion I have reached is right or wrong. I think that the problem we face in questioning our consciences in relation to whether or not our country should take this historic step to depart from the European Union is almost too big for a single individual to compute. All the potential economic consequences, and all the other consequences for our social and other fabric, are of a complexity by which individuals, and even Members of Parliament, would rightly feel daunted.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr Cox
Not just now.
I think that the Prime Minister was right—completely right—when he said to the House this week, “Do what is in your heart.” We can never be sure, if we leave the European Union, that the economic consequences of doing so will play in one way or another, but we can have faith that they will, and, speaking for myself, I have that faith. Ultimately, we must ask ourselves, “What do we believe is right? What is important to us, as Members of Parliament and as representatives of our country and our constituents?”
That is why I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) struck the right note. For a long time I have remained silent on this issue, trying to wrestle with the rights and wrongs of it, and waiting until we have seen the final version of the proposals to be made by the Prime Minister. The draft decision was published by the Commission the day before yesterday; I have read it, and I have to say that I do not believe that it is a sham. I believe that it represents the best that the Prime Minister could do within the parameters that he had set himself. I think that there is much useful stuff there. If it is worked on, and if detail is provided and is sufficiently substantial and well drafted, no doubt it will provide some modest measure of satisfaction, and some ring-fencing for us in a thoroughly, fundamentally unsatisfactory position. However, I do not believe that it amounts to the rewriting of the DNA of this organisation which I believe the country is crying out for.
For that reason, I have concluded—and this is the first time that I have said so—that I shall be obliged to vote to leave the European Union. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, I believe that it is a question of freedom: the freedom of this country to be true to itself, and to follow the policies that the House and its Executive believe are the best policies, fitted and suited for the interests of this nation: not diluted, not representing an accommodation of, and a constant adjustment to, the competing interests of 29 member states, but following the path that this nation sets and that is right for this nation’s interests. For 40 years we have shifted, adjusted and felt uneasy in our skins at the compromises we have had to make as a consequence of our adherence to the Union.
I say to our partners in the European Union that this is not an act of hostility. It is a rebirth of our country in its full independence and its full freedom, to enable us to set our commercial policies, to be decisive and clear and give a lead to the international community in foreign policy, to set our own defence policy in the way we judge to be in the best interests of those we represent, to enable us to have clear lines of democratic accountability and to fulfil the spirit and genius of our own nation.
I say to this House and to those who listen outside: let us trust in the genius of our own people. Before 1974, did this country do so badly? Were we not leaders in the development of human rights? Did we not have 400 years of peaceful political evolution? This country does not have to be afraid of resuming its own independent self-governance. We can offer more to the world by that means than by being a muted voice in a big organisation with whose objectives and outcomes we do not feel at ease.
I shall not attempt to address now the technicalities of this issue or the economic rights and wrongs. I shall conclude on a note of freedom with the words of John Milton himself:
“Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.”
When he spoke those words, he spoke in defence of freedom and truth. Let us believe in the genius of our country.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I have had to remind myself what motion we are debating today because it strikes me that if it had been phrased to say what most of its sponsors want it to say—namely, that this House could not care less what the Prime Minister achieves because we are voting to get out anyway—I am not convinced that anyone, with the possible exception of the last speaker, the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), would have said anything different.
I would never have thought that, almost exactly nine months after becoming a new Member of Parliament, I would be giving a lesson in English parliamentary history to one of the most esteemed and experienced parliamentarians to grace this Chamber, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). However, this Parliament did not witness the English civil war, because it did not exist at that time. One of its predecessors, the Parliament of England, most certainly did, but at best this Parliament has existed since 1707. Some would argue that the Parliament of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is less than 100 years old. I say that not to knock the pride of those who justifiably believe that the previous Parliament of England delivered a lot and was a trend setter for democracy in many parts of the world, but if you have a strong hand to play, you damage it by overplaying it. I fear that some of those on the Conservative Benches are overplaying the significance of the history of previous Parliaments that have met not in this exact building but close by.
Sir William Cash
I would simply say that when Scotland joined us in the Union, it was in order to combine our fight for freedom. Indeed, the Scots fought with us in all the great battles including Waterloo and the Somme and right the way through the second world war. It is that freedom that we fought for together.
Peter Grant
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. The Poles, the French, the Hungarians and many others also fought alongside us.
What actually happened in 1706-07 was that the two Parliaments were combined; it was not a takeover of one Parliament by another. I entirely respect the clear pride and positive English nationalism that we have heard from some Conservative Members today. That is a positive thing; as long as nationalism is based on pride in and love for one’s country it is always to be welcomed. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stone on his pride in declaring that “we are the people of England”, but we are not the people of England; we are the people of Scotland. We are the sovereign people of Scotland, in whom sovereignty over our nation is and always will be vested. For Scotland, sovereignty does not reside in this place, and it does not reside in those of us who have been sent to serve in this place. It resides for ever in those who have sent us to serve here.
I am genuinely interested in the concept that the institution of Parliament is ultimately sovereign, even over the people. Perhaps someone who speaks later can tell me who decided that that should be the case, and who gave them the right to decide that. I suspect the answer will be that it was the people who agreed that Parliament should be sovereign, in which case it is the people who retain the right to change that decision.
Sammy Wilson
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this debate is not about the sovereignty of this place but about the sovereignty of the people who elect us to this place? Therefore, if we become pawns, the sovereignty of the people he is talking about—the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales—is diminished.
Peter Grant
I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s comment, but I have to draw his attention to the wording of the motion. It does not mention the sovereignty of the people; it talks about the “importance of parliamentary sovereignty”—[Hon. Members: “They are the same thing.”] The two are most definitely not the same thing. If Parliament is sovereign, does it have the legal and constitutional right to pass any legislation, however morally repugnant it might be, with the people’s only recourse being to wait five years and then vote for different Members of Parliament? That is not a version of parliamentary sovereignty that I recognise, and it is not a version of parliamentary sovereignty that the people of Scotland recognise or will ever be prepared to accept.
Peter Grant
No, I need to make some progress and the hon. Gentleman made a lot of interventions earlier this afternoon.
I want to look at the second part of the motion, which goes to the nub of the EU membership debate. We have heard the term “ever closer union” being repeated as though it was some kind of threat and we were going to be swallowed up by a big two-headed monster, probably in Germany but possibly in Brussels. I urge Members to look at the wording of the preamble to the European treaties to see what the term was originally intended to mean. The exact wording varies from time to time, but we are talking about ever closer union between the peoples of Europe so that decisions can be taken as close as possible to the people.
I want to ask those Conservative Members, and some on the Opposition Benches, who are determined to argue against the concept of ever closer union: are we really saying that we want to drive the peoples of Europe further apart at a time when we are facing the greatest humanitarian crisis in our history, which nobody believes can be addressed by individual nations acting on their own? Are we really saying that we are against the concept of ever closer union between the peoples of Europe? I also draw Members’ attention to the fact that my use of the word “peoples”—plural—is not some kind of mistake written by Alexander the Meerkat. I am using it deliberately to recognise the diversity of cultures, faiths and beliefs among the peoples of Europe.
Are Members against the idea that decisions should be taken as close to the people as possible? I believe that the term “ever closer union” can still be turned into one of the greatest assertions of the rights of the peoples of Europe that we have ever seen. However, I willingly accept that it is a vision that has not been followed by the institutions of the European Union. Those institutions have failed, and continue to fail, to fulfil the vision that was set out in the original treaties. I would much rather we continued to be part of the European Union so that that vision can be delivered, because I find it not only welcoming but exciting. Just imagine living in a Europe in which monolithic power-mad Eurocrats, whether in Brussels or closer to home, were no longer able to ride roughshod over the will of the people. I remind the House that there was a Prime Minister not long ago who chose to ride roughshod over the will of the people, when the immovable object that was the late Margaret Thatcher met the irresistible force that was the will of the people of Scotland over the imposition of the poll tax. Within two years, that immovable object had been moved. The irresistible force that is the sovereign will of the people of Scotland is still there and will be there forever.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the one thing the irresistible force would not be able to compete against would be an irresistible force from Brussels—he would never get his way, ever again.
Peter Grant
Nobody knows; during the independence referendum, when people asked why I was still happy for Scotland to be in Europe, I said it was because we have never had a chance to be a part of the European Union with a voice. Questions were asked about fishing earlier, and I can tell hon. Members that Luxembourg gets a vote on fishing policy whereas Scotland does not. Scotland’s fisheries Minister was not allowed to be part of the UK delegation; an unelected Lord who knew nothing about fishing was sent, instead of possibly the most respected fisheries Minister—one who is actually respected by fishermen. My constituency has a bigger coastline than Luxembourg, yet Luxembourg gets a vote on fishing policy and nobody in Scotland does. These are the kinds of areas where we need to see reforms.
I long to see the day when the dream of Europe, as originally set out, is realised, when the peoples of Europe are genuinely brought closer together—not the institutions, the civil servants or the Governments, but the peoples of Europe—and when decisions are taken closer to the people than they are now. I long to see a Europe where
“Man to Man, the world o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that.”
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for recommending this important debate. In 2013, the Prime Minister set out the future of Europe in his Bloomberg speech. He acknowledged that the status quo was no longer working for us, so he promised us change, reform and even a new treaty. Having received the draft negotiation earlier this week, I ask myself, “Where are these grand promises of fundamental reform?” There are none; there is not a single clear-cut promise of any treaty change. The Prime Minister said that the European Union cannot progress with “more of the same”, but so far that is all I have heard. It has been more of the same complex rules, restricting and burdening us; more of the same inability to change; more of the same foreign domination that we have not asked for and that we do not want. The European Union is its own biggest threat. How many times will we be promised a more competitive environment? How many times have we been told that red tape will be cut and the single market strengthened? We have yet to see real proposals and we have yet to see proper results—enough, is enough.
I am interested in Mr Tusk’s definition of sovereignty, because the proposals can hardly be called “sovereign”; nor do they let power flow back to this Parliament. Instead, we could receive a “red card”—a red card that can be used only when a group of national Parliaments decide to stop a legislative proposal. A majority of 55% of member states is to constitute a red card, whereas my majority would be 100% of the United Kingdom.
What about this “emergency brake”? It is an emergency that needs to be objectively justified. Whereas it is jolly good that the Commission tells us that the UK would qualify to pull this brake, it is outrageous that the final word lies not with us, but with other member states. We may not, says the EU, have to pursue an “ever closer union”. When the UK is neither allowed to pull its own brake, nor to decide its own emergency, that is when I feel that the ever closer union is still very much upon us.
The Prime Minister described an updated European Union as flexible, adaptable and more open. I can only see a supposedly updated European Union that is inflexible, unadaptable, and blocked. The Prime Minister did warn us, saying:
“You will not always get what you want”,
but it is becoming clearer by the day that with the European Union you never get what you want. If the European Union really wants us to stay, would it not have offered us more? The European Union has sucked up our sovereignty, and trampled all over our ancient rights and freedoms. Are we simply going to carry on with this relationship we have with the EU, when the EU so obviously does not want to change? Is not the only solution just to say “Leave” to this whole spectacle? This renegotiation is a spectacle; it is too much noise, too much of a farce and much too little substance.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) has completed his speech. I call Sir Gerald Howarth.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
May I say what a great pleasure it is to take part in this vital debate? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing it, and may I pay tribute to you, Mr Speaker, for being in the Chair for this important debate, because I know that you take these matters extremely seriously? As for my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), his speech was a tour de force and I feel every ounce of the passion that he feels about this subject.
This is not a new issue; this has been going on for well over half a century. When the then Lord Privy Seal, Edward Heath, sought advice from the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Kilmuir, he was given advice in December 1960 in respect of our potential membership of the Common Market, as it was then called. Lord Kilmuir stated:
“I have no doubt that if we do sign the Treaty, we shall suffer some loss of sovereignty, but before attempting to define or evaluate that loss I wish to make one general observation. At the end of the day, the issue whether or not to join the European Economic Community must be decided on broad political grounds”.
He continued:
“Adherence to the Treaty of Rome would, in my opinion, affect our sovereignty in three ways: Parliament would be required to surrender some of its functions to the organs of the Community; The Crown would be called on to transfer part of its treaty-making power to those organs; Our courts of law would sacrifice some degree of independence by becoming subordinate in certain respects to the European Court of Justice.”
Lord Kilmuir could not have been clearer, but in 1975, when people were asked to vote on these matters, this issue of the loss of sovereignty was played down by Ted Heath and his Government at the time. Some of us foresaw the dangers. We saw that the EEC had a president, a flag, an anthem and a court. In 1986, 45 of us voted against the Single European Act. I am the only Conservative who voted against it left in the House, but there are two who did so on the Opposition Benches: the Leader of the Opposition; and the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner). I quite accept that I am in rather questionable company, but we did have one thing in common: we believed in our country—in those times, at any rate.
Sir Gerald Howarth
I still do, as my hon. Friend says.
The EEC has now become the European Union, and it has a currency, a Parliament, a high representative and a defence identity, designed of course to undermine NATO. What are those things? They are all the attributes of a sovereign nation state, and we deceive ourselves if we imagine that this process has now somehow come to a halt, been frozen in aspic and will remain ever thus—it will not. The direction of travel is clear. We do not have to prove this to the people, because they can see the direction of travel since 1975 and how this organisation, which we were told was going to be a common market in goods and services, has grown to become so much more—and it intends to continue. As several hon. Members have said, we must look at what is happening in the eurozone, with this absurd deceit that there can be a single currency without a single monetary institution operating a single monetary policy. This process will continue, and the British people must be warned that if they vote to stay in this organisation, they will not be voting for the status quo; they will be voting for further integration and further change.
In his excellent speech at Bloomberg, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made it absolutely clear that he believed in maximising parliamentary sovereignty, and he said it again yesterday. The proposals contained in the Tusk arrangements, as my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay pointed out, are absolutely absurd. We have to get another 15 or so other Parliaments to agree. That is not the restoration of sovereignty to this Parliament, but basically a cop out.
I salute the European Scrutiny Committee, the illustrious Chairman and members of which are here in this Chamber today, for the work it has done in pointing out the exact situation. Its December report, “Reforming the European Scrutiny System in the House of Commons”, said that
“the existing Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union, which requires that the EU ‘shall respect the essential state functions’ of its member states, and that this means respecting the democracy of the member states.”
Accordingly, the Committee’s report recommended that
“there should be a mechanism whereby the House of Commons can decide that a particular legislative proposal should not apply to the UK.”
That seems to be the sensible way in which to go, and I am sorry that the Prime Minister did not accept the recommendations of that Committee. There is a way forward. There is plenty of evidence to show that these arrangements that the Prime Minister has put in place are not legally binding. We need to restore sovereignty to this Parliament. The British people have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do that.
I close with the words of Sir Walter Scott, the great poet from the Scottish borders from where I draw so much of my own blood.
“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!”
And I want it back!
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
What is parliamentary sovereignty? It is the power and the ability of this elected House to carry out the wishes of the British people. Sovereignty of Parliament is actually the sovereignty—or the power—of the British people. Bit by bit, over the past 40 years, successive Governments have handed over the power of this House, and therefore the power of the British people, to the European Union.
Of course it was not always the European Union. Back in 1973, and when people voted in 1975, it was the common market, the European Economic Community. It then dropped the middle E, so that it became the European Community. It gradually attracted all the attributes of a state as it moved towards its goal of becoming a united states of Europe, with its own Parliament, its own flag, its own anthem, its own court, and its own foreign service.
We do not have to be Einstein to work out where the EU is going. It is heading in that direction, and in doing so it means that, in so many areas, the European Union, and not this Parliament, is sovereign. This loss of sovereignty from this Parliament is at the heart of my opposition to our membership of the European Union.
Handing over powers to the European Union means handing over the powers of my constituents in Bury North and of the British people. Why is that important? Well, it is important for this reason: when my constituents come to me and ask for help, they expect this Parliament to have the power and the ability to be able to sort out their problem. In so many areas, that is no longer the case. Whether we like it or not, the reality is that the power has been handed over to Brussels.
Sir William Cash
As my hon. Friend knows, a very good example is the ports regulation. The industry, the employers, the unions, the Government and the Opposition did want not it to happen, yet we were powerless to do anything about it. The regulation will become a European regulation and imposed on this Parliament, unless we can obstruct it, as we have done so far.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is an excellent example of where this House no longer has the ability to control its own affairs. In passing, I pay tribute to the great work that my hon. Friend and his Committee have done in drawing to the attention of this House and therefore the British people the enormous number of rules and regulations that come out of Brussels and that have to be enforced by this Parliament.
As I was saying, our constituents come to us expecting that we will be able to help them. When they find out that we cannot do so, what does that result in? It results in their having a lack of confidence and faith in MPs and the political process. That is evidenced by a reduced turnout in elections. People think, “Well, why bother? These people have no power anymore.” That is why we have seen a fall in the turnout. It also means that there is a lack of engagement in the political process, because people lose faith and confidence in the whole democratic process, and that is dangerous. Societies break down once democracy breaks down, which is why it is so important that the people of this country seize this golden opportunity—this is their one opportunity—in the forthcoming referendum to take back the powers. They should do so for the sake not of us in this House, but of themselves, because if they do not like what we are doing, they can get rid of us and appoint someone else in whom they have faith. This is where we have common cause with those on the left of British politics. We might disagree with them—they want a socialist system, which is an honourable position, but I prefer a capitalist system and I will stand up and defend that—but we both can agree on democracy and on the fact that the power lies with our constituents. If my constituents do not want me, they can replace me with someone else, and we all stand on that basis.
This is a golden opportunity. I hope that this debate will show the British people that this is the one chance probably in their lifetime to get back their powers. I do not believe that this renegotiation has changed in any meaningful way the sovereignty of this House. It will not give us back any powers. We do not have time to examine these documents in detail, but I have looked at them and I am sure that they do not give us back any more powers, which is why I hope, in my heart of hearts, that the British people will ask themselves from where they want to be governed—from here in Westminster or by the foreign powers in Brussels.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
If the British people miss this unique opportunity to reject the undemocratic EU superstate project, it will be the fault of people such as me—not me as I am today, but me as I was in 1975 when I had the chance to vote to withdraw from the then EEC and I wasted it. Why did I waste that chance? Well, it was very simple: I was intimidated by the establishment. My instincts were to vote to leave, but all around me, in Oxford—in that home of lost causes—the great and the good were saying that it was beyond question that the prosperity of the United Kingdom depended on remaining in the EEC. I thought, “What do I know about it?” After all, in those days, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) pointed out, it was only about an economic community. It was not about my pet subject of the defence and security of the United Kingdom. How that has changed, now that it is—and now that we know where we are heading.
When the time comes for me to advise my constituents about what I think they should do, I will give them six good reasons to leave the EU. First, I will tell them that every year the United Kingdom pays £20 billion to this organisation and gets less than half of it back. Secondly, I will tell them, as we have heard today, that the EU wants ever closer political union and that we cannot opt out of that while remaining within the European Union. So-called “associate membership”—the trick they are waiting to give us at the final stage of the great concessionary charade in which we are currently engaged—would make no difference at all. It might even diminish our own powers still further.
Thirdly, I will tell my constituents that the European Union wants a single European population with no borders between EU countries, so that we cannot restrict immigration into the United Kingdom. Fourthly, I will tell them that the EU wants to develop its single European currency into a single European economy controlled from Brussels. Fifthly, I will tell them that the EU wants a single European army, a single European foreign policy—that did a lot of good for the Ukraine, didn’t it?—and a single European justice system, all outside UK Government control. Finally, I shall tell my constituents that all of that is designed to create a single country called Europe under a single European Government, thus finally taking away the power of the British people to govern ourselves.
In his excellent opening speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) gave a long list of statements made by European bigwigs. As he pointed out, some of them did actually stumble across the truth; when they do, however, they usually pick themselves up, brush themselves down and carry on as if nothing had happened, as Churchill once said of a lesser British politician.
One occasion when a European Union bigwig told the truth was on 31 December 1998, the new year’s eve before the introduction of the single European currency. I happened to be up, waiting to see the new year celebrations on television, and on to my screen came the visage of Romano Prodi, who, as we all know, was then the President of the Commission—or, as these people always like to call themselves, the “President of Europe”. He was asked a simple question about the European single currency: “It’s a political project, isn’t it?” Now, remember: this was the single currency that had been sold to people over and over again as being vital for their economic prosperity. So that was what they asked him. And because it was too late for anyone to do anything about it, he told the truth, and he told the truth in an entirely cynical way when he replied, “It is an entirely political project.”
So we know what they are trying to do, and what we have to achieve is to make sure that people, when they come to make their decision, are not intimidated by the great and the good on economic grounds, when the real aim is political, and they should reject the EU by voting to leave.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing this very important debate. The principle of parliamentary sovereignty is the central pillar of the British constitution. In modern history, it flows from the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It is the very fountainhead of our freedoms and democracy in this country, and I believe that every Member of this House should seek to defend it.
I have been concerned about parliamentary sovereignty since 1972; I was a very unfortunate, sad youth. I remember the debate about accession to what was then the European Economic Community, and being told by Edward Heath that we would not be losing our sovereignty, merely sharing it. I felt at the time that that was a nonsensical proposition. Sovereignty cannot realistically be shared; it can either be preserved or surrendered. So in 1975, unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), I voted against remaining in the European Union. My view has not changed since.
My view is that we have ceded—temporarily, I hope—our sovereignty to the supranational entity now known as the European Union. I believe that that sovereignty can be recovered, and that it is not completely lost. But the concern is that the unremitting accretion of power to the European Union, which the EU is clearly intent on pursuing if the Five Presidents report is anything to go by, carries with it the danger that at some stage our parliamentary sovereignty will indeed be extinguished. No one in the House, from the Prime Minister down, should be prepared to accept that.
The Prime Minister said in his Bloomberg speech:
“There is not, in my view, a single European demos. It is national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU.”
That is certainly the case in the United Kingdom. But we must look at the draft decision that the Prime Minister unveiled to the House yesterday. The question is whether that would, if agreed, be sufficient to restore the sovereignty of the United Kingdom that has been ceded to the EU. I have huge concerns that it would not.
In the first place, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) pointed out in his Committee’s report, the legal force of a decision, which is a political agreement of Heads of Government and Heads of State, is open to debate. The draft decision details the various areas of provisional agreement struck between the British Government and the President of the Council. Other hon. Members have referred to freedom of movement and to benefits, and I do not propose to repeat their arguments. However, I would like to refer to what the draft decision says about sovereignty.
The significance of the repeated references in the European treaties to the creation of an “ever closer union” is played down considerably. The decision declares that the words should not be used to support an expansive interpretation of the competences of the EU or of the power of its institutions; instead it suggests that the words are intended simply to signal that the European Union’s aim is to promote trust and understanding among the peoples of Europe.
Sir William Cash
Does my right hon. Friend agree that even if the expression “ever closer union” is taken out in respect of the United Kingdom, that will not change one word of any of the existing treaties or laws? We will continue to remain subject to those laws and treaties.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend is entirely right. In fact, the decision acknowledges that the competence conferred by member states on the Union can be modified only by a revision of the treaties following the agreement of all member states. Although the commitment to ever closer union is stated to be symbolic, the reality is that competences have been transferred from the sovereign nations of Europe—Britain included—to the EU and its institutions. The extent of that transfer is very great indeed, as other hon. Members have pointed out.
The institutions of the EU have become ever more powerful. So powerful are they that even the proposal to limit benefits to EU migrants and the new rules on child benefit, set out in the draft decision itself, would, it seems, be vulnerable even if agreed by all Heads of Government and Heads of State. Today’s newspapers report that Members of the European Parliament will have the right to veto all the proposed reforms, including the so-called emergency brake.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that if we are unable to secure substantive reform now, when the Union’s second largest member, and its fifth largest economy, is threatening to walk away, the chances of our ever getting substantive change that we can be comfortable with are nil?
Mr Jones
I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. That is the direction of travel that the European Union is hellbent on pursuing.
A document circulated in the European Parliament asserts:
“The European Parliament will defend the fundamental principles and objectives of the EU and will be cautious of setting dangerous precedents which could undermine such principles and objectives.”
The issue of parliamentary sovereignty could not be thrown into any sharper relief.
Nor do the “red card” proposals protect British parliamentary sovereignty. They require reasoned opinions to be submitted within 12 weeks of transmission of a draft EU law, and they require more than 55% of the votes allocated to national Parliaments. That is another attempted exercise in so-called pooled sovereignty.
Sir Gerald Howarth
I wonder whether my right hon. Friend can help the House. On this business of voting, are we talking about the number of Parliaments or the weighted votes? Germany has about 16% of the weighted votes and France has about 12.5%, so between them they have 30% towards the 45% blocking threshold.
Mr Jones
My understanding is that it is the latter.
The proposals do not amount to a reassertion of the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament. Yesterday, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the Prime Minister said:
“asserting the sovereignty of this House is something that we did by introducing the European Union Act 2011. I am keen to do even more to put it beyond doubt that this House of Commons is sovereign. We will look to do that at the same time as concluding the negotiations.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2016; Vol. 605, c. 934.]
All hon. Members will be looking forward to the announcement on that, and it would be helpful if my right hon. Friend the Minister could give us an inkling of what is proposed, so that we can achieve at least some comfort.
If what is done is insufficient, the British people will be right to conclude that a vote to withdraw from the European Union is the only way to preserve the valued constitutional integrity of our country.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
More than 70 years ago, our great island nation stood alone against the tyranny of the jackboot and the lash. Our freedom, our democracy and our sovereignty were in mortal peril. Led by Winston Churchill, we did not flinch in protecting them. Hundreds of thousands of our brave men and women—whether in uniform or not—gave their lives to defend our island and everything we stand for. Because of their sacrifice, we have a daunting responsibility to respect what they fought and died for. I must therefore ask: why are we so prepared to hand the destiny of our proud island nation to an unaccountable bureaucracy with barely a murmur? How dare we? How dare we? How would anyone dare to go down that road? I simply cannot understand it.
We have a duty to those who fought and died to stand up for our country and to ensure her sovereignty is kept intact. This sham of a renegotiation does not do that, and we all know it. Sadly, one treaty after another has undermined our will to resist. We have already handed over the UK’s head, torso, arms and legs. Now we propose to surrender our very soul. And to whom? The answer is a group of unelected Commissioners who sit in their multimillion-pound glass towers, surrounded by all the trappings of cars, secretaries and expenses, pontificating over lobster and Chablis about plans to create a wonderful new centralised state—a federal Europe—where uniformity is pressed on an unwilling electorate by guile, persuasion or threat. Democracy my foot!
Sammy Wilson
Is that not the central point about the EU’s unwillingness to devolve sovereignty to individuals—to voters—and Parliaments? The EU cannot afford it. If it is going to centralise functions right across Europe, forcing states and individuals into arrangements they do not want, sovereignty is the last thing it is going to tolerate.
Richard Drax
I could not have said it better, and I will expand on that very point a little later in my speech.
Who will lose out? It is the voters—the man and woman in the street—whom Opposition Members claim to represent, and who will increasingly rail against an authority over which they have no control and no say. Meanwhile, our political elite march on, deaf to the cries of those who elected them.
This madness will continue, at least in the short term—Germany has too much to lose. To control the experiment further, closer integration is not only necessary but inevitable, with more and more power going to the centre, whatever our Prime Minister says to the contrary.
We are told we are safe from all this. We are not. I am sure that the Prime Minister, who is an intelligent man, knows that in his heart. I have watched, appalled and dismayed, as we have ceded powers to the EU in an insidious and gradual erosion of our sovereignty. There was a time when all the laws affecting the people of this country were made in this House by directly elected Members like us. As we know, that is no longer the case. As we have been dragged kicking and screaming down this truly undemocratic path, we have been assured by one Prime Minister after another, “Don’t worry. We have a veto over this, and a veto over that. We have a red card we can wave.” Now, apparently, to block laws we do not like, we have to persuade at least 15 EU members to agree with us. Will they hell!
To me, sovereignty means the ability to govern ourselves free from outside interference. We are not free to do that today. For heaven’s sake, we have to ask 27 countries for permission to change our welfare rules. Meanwhile, our borders remain dangerously porous, permanently open to EU citizens and horribly vulnerable to infiltration by those who would do us harm. What staggers me is how we wandered into this trap.
I have always been suspicious when political parties agree, and with the notable exception of a few Members, our future relationship with the EU is a very good case in point. As a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, I see first-hand the raft of legislation that comes in boatloads from across the channel. It interferes in every single facet of our lives.
Richard Drax
I will not give way.
The arrogance is mind-blowing, the intrusion truly terrifying, the accountability non-existent. We have nothing to fear from leaving the EU except fear itself. That is what the Europhiles are peddling in their genuinely misconceived belief that we are better in than out. I often hear the retort that we are more secure inside the EU than out. Why? As the problems of the euro, unemployment, the refugee crisis and uncontrolled immigration tear the EU apart, I can see no logic in that argument. It is NATO that has held the peace over the past decades, not the EU.
As ever closer union forces more conformity on member nations, the wider the chasm between the electorate and the elected will grow. That is where the wound will fester, and there are clear indications of that already across Europe.
Who would have thought that the biggest threat to our freedom, democracy and sovereignty since the second world war would come from within? I shudder at the implications of staying in the EU and the consequences that that will have for everything that I, and millions of others, hold dear.
What we need is the enterprise, flair, intelligence and determination of one nation to get out there and do business with the world, safe in the knowledge that the country is sovereign, free and truly democratic. Let the lion roar!
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
I pay tribute to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate, which is the right debate at the right time. I fear that during the referendum period we will often hear people say, “The EU is just something about free trade and you needn’t worry yourselves that it’s any different from the institution we joined back in 1973”—or thought we were joining. I very much fear that we will not hear much said about sovereignty, so I am very pleased that we are having this debate today.
Much of the debate, as we heard from Opposition Members yesterday, will be about the idea that we would lose trade through Brexit. Rarely cited, though, are the 5.5 million jobs in the EU that are reliant on trade with us, and the £60 billion trade deficit that we have with the other 27 EU countries. We are a premier market for EU nations’ products. We abide by the rule of law; we are a decent country to do business with. Are we really to believe that on the stroke of our leaving the EU, BMW would not want to sell us its cars? Are we really to believe that a Frenchman would look at a Range Rover and say, “Ah, they’re not in the club any more, so I’m not going to buy their product”?
Peter Grant
The hon. Gentleman is making some valid points. This is why it is important that the “stay in” campaign is positive rather than negative. Does he realise that the arguments he is rubbishing about what would not happen if Britain left the EU were advanced by his party in almost exactly the same terms in relation to what would happen to Scotland if we left the United Kingdom—that nobody would buy our whisky any more? Does he now accept that the arguments advanced by “project fear” at that time were complete and utter nonsense?
Craig Mackinlay
I think the hon. Gentleman would find that 300 years of history makes things rather different. I find the SNP’s arguments really curious, and I really struggle with this one. As for the arguments you make about trade, you are somehow twisting them round to your enthusiasm for the European Union. I tended to agree with you: I did not think that trade would have been at risk if Scotland had left, but you now think that in respect of the European Union.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman keeps using the word “you”. He is a partisan and enthusiastic advocate of the British Parliament, and a key tenet of our debates is that debate goes through the Chair. There is no “you” involved, because I have not expressed any views.
Craig Mackinlay
I apologise, Mr Speaker; it is always exciting when there is an intervention from an SNP Member.
We have to recognise that trade has changed—that the world is now a global place and trade barriers have come down. A lot of these trade areas are good, friendly nations—Commonwealth nations. I always find it very strange that our friends—our kith and kin; our family—extract their wallets and purses and find, lo and behold, a note with a very familiar and loved face on it, but we deny them access to our country, and we are not allowed to speak to them on trade terms, because of course that is done by a Swedish Commissioner—Cecilia Malmström, a former university lecturer. You could scarcely make this up. We have enthused about having the Premiers of China and India over to our country—you entertained them, Mr Speaker, in your House and in this place—and yet it was nothing much more than a charade.
Those on the contra side of this debate will say that the EU is moving in our direction and we have to stay in it to be of influence. Well, I am sorry, but we have tried that argument for 40 long years. We have tried to change things; we have tried to reduce its powers. Try arguing that with the small fishermen in Ramsgate or the small businesses across our country, given all the regulations and red tape! What is the recent history of being at that high table and working from within? In the Council of Ministers, Britain is always on the opposing side. Our PM has been outvoted under qualified majority voting rules 42 times since 2010. It is time, I think, that he was honest with himself and with us that the EU is moving in a different direction.
We will also hear much in the referendum debate about what might be—what could be—with regard to security and justice. I am afraid that that will all just be part of “operation fear” to encourage the electorate merely to acquiesce quietly and gently as we continue the destruction of the sovereignty of our Parliament and this place.
I think we need to go back in time a little. We will go back to 1971—to Edward Heath’s White Paper, in which he said:
“There is no question of Britain losing essential…sovereignty.”
In 1973, he said:
“There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified.”
Papers have been written since by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that, I am afraid, reveal what was really happening.
What has developed since then? Obviously those papers were produced in the very infant days of what the European Union was trying to become. It has since amassed a number of treaties, directives and decisions, and of course the bulk of ECJ law. For brevity, I shall concentrate on a couple of fiscal matters. With regard to VAT, in particular, we are entirely and completely subservient to EU law. Some months ago, we had a rather entertaining debate about the tampon tax. That really did highlight the fact, perhaps accidently, that we in this place are completely unable to enact any changes to a very key stream of national legislation. We merely walk through the Lobbies, supplicant to what Brussels has told us we must do.
When the Chancellor prepares his annual Budget, he has to start with the £20 billion of gross contributions to the EU—some 30% of our current deficit. Across corporate taxes, in dividends and losses, the primary authority is increasingly ECJ cases. When he seeks new rules to enhance Britain’s investment and entrepreneurial spirit—I cite the enterprise investment scheme and, more recently, the seed enterprise investment scheme—he has to seek permission from Brussels in case they flout state aid rules.
The direction of travel of the European Union is very obvious. I merely quote Angela Merkel:
“we need a political union—which means we need to gradually cede powers to Europe and give Europe control.”
We are simply on the wrong bus. If we do not take this opportunity to leave, it is probably just as well that there is a proposal for a major renovation of this palace to be conducted, because dear old museums need care. This referendum gives us the opportunity to restore this place—to restore to the public of the UK that which should never have been taken away from them.
Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
I believe in the primacy and sovereignty of this House which flow from the people who send us here. It is a great honour to follow such rousing and passionate speeches in that regard.
The position that I put to my constituents before I was elected was that I would try to give them my dispassionate assessment of what the referendum choice means in real terms for people and their families, that I would try to explain the logic of that so that others can see it and make their own choice, and that I would make a constructive attempt to approach whatever happens next to make sure that we get the best deal for those people. So if the House will bear with me for a moment, I want to run through a ledger on each side of the argument as to what some of the advantages of leaving or otherwise might be.
First, on an issue that is so important to people—can they get a house? I believe that, on balance, they will be a lot less likely to be able to get houses if we do not leave, partly because there is such an influx of migration from the EU that will not let up because of what is being proposed in the renegotiation. I would score that as a five on a one-to-five scale of effects.
The second aspect is people’s access to services such as school places and hospitals. Again, on balance, unless we leave it will be a lot less likely that they will have that access. Next is whether the cost of living will be manageable. I think that that is less likely, although not a lot less. There will be benefits of less regulation and tax if we leave. I am worried about the proposed VAT impositions on food and clothes, in particular, and potentially fuel duty. I would give a score of four on that aspect.
Will people be able to move in search of work to a big city in this country? I think that unlikely, unless we leave, so I score it five. Demand for housing and jobs in London is massive because foreign demand is crowding out domestic supply. I think that the answer to the question of whether people will be able to get a job where they are is the same either way. There may be one or two surprises on trade, but I think that, at the very least, they would be offset if we negotiated our own trade arrangements.
Will jobs pay better? Overall, I think that would be the case if we left, but not a lot more, so I score that four. Will people be able to go on holiday and work in Europe? That would be marginally less likely if we left, although I do not think it is a particular issue. Visa arrangements with non-EU countries, such as Australia, are perfectly normal and work quite well, so I score that two—a marginal negative—out of five.
Will people be safe under domestic security arrangements? I think that the answer is the same either way. We already share our data with our friends and allies in Europe, and that would not cease to be the case. It is only very recently that we have started sharing passenger manifests for aeroplanes, which is amazing. I think that will continue.
Will we be safe with regard to international security? I think that the answer to that question is also the same either way. As we have heard, we rely on NATO and that would not change. Our bilateral alliances will be constructive, I am sure. Will our environment be secure? I think it might be marginally less secure, so I score that two on my little scale.
Turning to the local level, one of my constituents’ concerns is that big, international exporters such as Westland might run into trouble if we were to leave the EU. Personally I am not too worried about that. We would need to preserve the same sort of regulation with regard to Government procurement of large defence orders. We would also need to consider replacing some of the science and technology research investment money that the EU currently provides, but that is certainly not beyond the wit of man. Those things are doable. We would also need to look at farming subsidies, which have been mentioned.
Sir Gerald Howarth
My hon. Friend is making a very good case. Does he agree that if we no longer had to pay about £10 billion net to the European Commission, we would have an awful lot of money to be able to institute a proper arrangement for support for, and investment in, the research he has mentioned?
Marcus Fysh
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is scope for that. Clearly, we would need to spend a lot, so I do not buy the argument that we would have lots of extra money.
In summary, in respect of the 10 things I have listed, my score is 36 out of 50. By my logic—it is not an emotional logic to do with sovereignty, which I will come on to in a moment—I am leaning towards thinking that it is in our interests to leave. I would need to feel a fairly strong emotional attachment to the EU project and its institutions in order for it to outweigh that inclination. Although I do not have that emotional attachment, I realise that others do and that they might also make slightly different assessments of their interests. They will happily be able to choose for themselves. On the question of whether a sovereignty clause would make a major difference to the renegotiation, that is not clear, particularly with regard to restriction of immigration.
I do not think we can reform the EU dramatically by staying in. Clearly, the devil will be in the detail, which I will certainly look at. I have not made up my mind fully, but I believe in Britain and its people. The emotion I feel at the moment is for them. Personally, at this stage, I would be inclined to leave.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my near neighbour in Somerset, my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Marcus Fysh), who gave a fantastic calculation as to why, on balance, it would be right to leave. I know that the people of Somerset will respond warmly to the lead he has given them.
I want to pick up on a couple of threads mentioned by the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) relating to parliamentary sovereignty. We sometimes get into the idea that parliamentary sovereignty comes out of a vacuum, but in fact it is a means to an end; it is not an end in itself. It is the way we represent the sovereignty of the British people. They delegate to us, for five years, the right to make laws in their name, but at the end of those five years they expect to have the sovereignty returned to them intact, so that they can decide how it should be used in future.
In that sense, I am very close to the Scottish understanding of the sovereignty of the people, because it comes from them and belongs to them. It is not ours to give away; it is ours to protect, return and operate within. It is not about us as individual Members of Parliament or these grand rooms; it is about the rights of the British people and their ability to achieve through us the things that they have expected to achieve for centuries. I am thinking primarily of redress of grievance and the right to hold the Government to account.
That is why the issue is so difficult. Although it is possible to hold a Minister to account and to seek redress of grievance through this House in those areas that remain a domestic competence, as soon as an issue goes beyond these shores and becomes a European competence, it is impossible to obtain redress of grievance through this House. Indeed, in my correspondence with a Minister on behalf of a constituent, I was told that, although the Minister was sympathetic to my constituent’s plight, if he were given the redress he needed the British Government would themselves be fined. He could not, therefore, get that redress. That is a fundamental attack on parliamentary sovereignty which is there for the right reason.
On the renegotiation, the hon. Member for Glenrothes made an interesting point. He said that he thought many of us would vote against anyway, because we are so desperate and gasping at the bit to leave, and that, whatever happened, we would not have been willing to accept what the Prime Minister came up with. I do not accept that. I think that this was an opportunity for fundamental reform, but that has not happened. I do believe that the Government have acted in good faith—I do not believe they have got it right, but I do accept their good faith.
The Government have, however, negotiated around the edges. They are, perhaps, so steeped in the ways of the machinations of the European Union that they have failed to see the big picture and think that, when negotiating with 27 other countries and the Commission, it is an amazing achievement to get the right to hold a discussion on the difference in view between the Euro-outs and Euro-ins. It is like dealing with a brick wall—for want of a better cliché coming immediately to mind—so even being allowed a discussion results in them thinking, “Whoopee! We’ve achieved something very important that we can present to the British electorate.”
If we look from a further distance at what the Prime Minister has said over a number of years, what he promised in his Bloomberg speech and what we put in our manifesto, we see that they were not about pettifogging changes around the edges; they were about fundamental reform and the reassertion of sovereignty. Because the renegotiations were in that sense so narrow, so weak and so uninspired, the status quo is not an option in the referendum. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) said, the choice is not between leaving and staying exactly as we are; it is between leaving and remaining in a Union moving towards ever closer union.
If we look at our past opt-outs, we will see that that is true. The Prime Minister said yesterday that the social chapter no longer exists. It is incorporated in the treaty, so our opt-out came and went, as frost on a winter morning might disappear as the sun comes out. Our opt-out on Schengen is there and it is important, but recently we agreed that we would be part of an EU border force: there is a migration problem, and the solution to it is of course more Europe and more European integration. We are going along with that, although we are not formally part of it. The Dublin treaties on returning people to the place where they first sought sanctuary are coming under threat, which would make our position outside Schengen very difficult to manage.
On justice and home affairs, we got an opt-out under the treaty of Lisbon, but again and again we have given more away. We have given away the arrest warrant and we have given away Prüm, so investigation and arrest are now in the hands of the European Union.
Mr Andrew Turner
Why was there no referendum on the things that were first taken out and then sent back?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The European Union Act 2011 was a protection, but it was also part of a coalition deal, so it ensured that things that the Lib Dems were quite keen on would not automatically trigger a referendum. I agree with my hon. Friend that we ought to have had a referendum on giving back the things that we had claimed when we opted out of justice and home affairs matters a little over a year ago. Now that arrest and investigation are determined at a European level, the argument for some European centralised oversight will only become stronger. If a Bulgarian issues an arrest warrant that is effective in the United Kingdom, surely there needs to be some European common standard to ensure that that is done properly.
The direction of travel is towards more Europe. Even in the context of monetary union, we should bear it in mind that we only have an opt-out from stage 3. We are committed to stages 1 and 2. The European Union has not enforced those in recent years, for obvious reasons, but that will not always be the case. We are committed—article 142 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union is relevant to this—to our currency being of interest to the European Union.
Dr Julian Lewis
Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that there is a huge degree of unification among the elites at the heart of the European Union, but there is no such sense of common identity among the peoples of the countries that make it up?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. He is absolutely right: there is no common people, but there is an elite who have this vision that more Europe is the answer to a maiden’s prayer. Let us look at the treatment of Greece, and how it suffered through its membership of the euro, which was forced upon it. Greece was encouraged and egged on by the European Union and the Commission to adopt the euro, partly because it was the birthplace of democracy, and how outrageous it would be if it did not join in this grand political scheme. When it got into difficulties, which economists knew it would get into, what was the answer from the European Union? More Europe, more control over its affairs, more direction over what it does and less domestic democracy. In what happened in Greece, we see the clash that is in the motion before us. We have a choice between moving to a single European state or maintaining the sovereignty that is still ours. To do that, we have to vote to leave. Texas maintained that it had the right to leave the United States; it did not.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I would like the debate to finish at 3 o’clock, if possible, and certainly no later. I do not know whether there will be a Division of the House; we shall have to wait to see, but I would like the debate to finish by 3 o’clock if we can manage that.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
I thank the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for bringing the debate to the House, and for his earlier comments. I will tackle the issue of sovereignty first. I refer those who have come late to the debate, and those who read my comments at another time, to the excellent speech given by my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), who said that popular sovereignty lies with the people. The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) also touched on that in his excellent contribution.
Fundamentally, we think that the negotiations have been a missed opportunity. When we hear people blaming the European Union, we wonder whether we should instead be thinking about how the UK uses its role as a member state. That may be where the fault has lain over the years.
Peter Grant
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his thoroughly unwarranted praise. At this moment, there are no fewer than 16 documents from Europe that the European Scrutiny Committee has asked to have debated in Parliament. Some are scheduled and some are not. Some have been waiting for more than two years. Does my hon. Friend agree that, all too often, people point the finger of blame at the European Union for being unaccountable and not subject to scrutiny, but perhaps we should look more closely at the Government’s unwillingness to be scrutinised over how it interacts with Europe?
Stephen Gethins
My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I know that it is a frustration of his—as a member of the European Scrutiny Committee—and of others that the UK Government appear reluctant for their actions in the EU to be properly scrutinised. Perhaps the Minister can deal with that in his summing up.
We saw this missed opportunity from the very start. There was a lack of consultation with the devolved Administrations, on which the matter will have a significant impact. When it comes to Europe, the Government need all the friends that they can possibly get. The failure to take on board the devolved Administrations, who have done a much better job of making friends and influencing people in recent times in the European Union, was a missed opportunity.
Another missed opportunity was the chance to think about what really constitutes a member state. I was interested earlier to hear Conservative Members trying to compare the debate on Scottish independence with this debate. Let me tell the House this: the European Union could not impose the poll tax on the United Kingdom against its will, the European Union could not send nuclear convoys through the United Kingdom against its will and the European Union could not impose Trident on the United Kingdom against its will. Those are all things that could be imposed on Scotland. The role of a member state and Scottish independence are two totally separate issues.
Mr Baron
I am delighted that my friend and colleague on the Foreign Affairs Committee is giving way. I suggest to him gently that when the Scottish people voted for the Union, they voted for its ability to make decisions on behalf of all the peoples of our Union. That needs to be recognised by the SNP.
Stephen Gethins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, which was thoughtful, as usual. On that point, of course the Scottish people did. It is a matter of respect. We may not have liked that decision, but it is the decision that they made, and it is why we are here in record numbers to make our contribution. Let me draw out the point about respect, because I believe that the hon. Gentleman may agree with it. If we are going to have a referendum, we should not have it too soon. That means respecting the electoral process in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London and the English local authorities. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) and Members from every single party in the House have signed my early-day motion stating that a June referendum would be “disrespectful”, and I think that goes to the heart of the matter. That is why the European Union referendum will be a huge test of the Union that the voters of Scotland voted to remain in.
As well as considering the respect agenda and allowing a long time, the Government—Opposition Members may agree with me on this—should have the courage of their convictions and have a proper debate about membership of the European Union. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon announced the date of the independence referendum 545 days before it was held. I am not quite suggesting that we should wait 545 days before we sort this out, but I am suggesting that June is too early and that if, as the Government suggest, this is a once-in-40-years decision, we should make it properly and have the courage of our convictions. I fully believe that the case for remaining in the European Union stands up to that scrutiny, and I look forward to making that case. I know that Conservative Members have different views, and I respect them, but let us have a proper debate on the matter.
As my right hon. Friend quite rightly said, and the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay mentioned this point as well, we do not want another “Project Fear”. I have been concerned by some of the arguments that have been made. Do not get me wrong, Mr Speaker, because I believe—I will say this to put it on the record—that the United Kingdom could be a successful independent country outside the European Union and that it could stand on its own two feet. The question is whether or not we are better off by doing so. Let us not have another “Project Fear”.
There is the issue of Scotland being taken out of the European Union against its will. While we have been in the Chamber this afternoon, an opinion poll has been produced by TNS. It shows that 44% of Scots want to remain within the European Union, and 21% want to leave, with the remainder undecided. We look forward to that debate, but the poll shows that the overwhelming majority of the people of Scotland want to remain within the European Union.
Sir Gerald Howarth
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that serious vested interests in the European Union will in no way allow Scotland to accede to the European Union? If he does not see that, he need look no further than Spain.
Stephen Gethins
If the hon. Gentleman seriously thinks that the European Union would somehow vote not to have its most energy-rich country and the one with its longest external border as part of its union, I think he seriously misunderstands the European project. I have never heard anything so ludicrous. In the same sense, I have heard Conservative Members say that Scotland would somehow be in a queue behind Albania. I think that that is disrespectful, and I hope he will not continue the debate in that tone of disrespect.
Mutual respect, which is the reason why Scotland should not be taken out of the Europe, also extends to respect for immigrants, which has also been raised in this debate. Immigration is and has been good for this country, and I want it to continue. It is good for my constituency and the businesses within it. We need to be careful how we conduct the debate on immigration.
I am wondering whether the Minister will comment on the principle of subsidiarity. I do not know what difference this deal will make to strengthening Scotland’s national Parliament, or indeed the Parliaments and Assemblies elsewhere in the country. Does the principle of subsidiarity end in this place? It most certainly should not do so.
Let us make the positive case for membership of the European Union. I want to see a long and proper debate, as I am sure do Members from both sides of the House. I hope that they will vote with us when it comes to setting the date of the referendum. Let us talk about where we should have more Europe. I do not think that we should be afraid of that on issues such as climate change—yes, it does exist—as well as security policies and so on. Let us also talk about having less Europe. We have raised the issue of fisheries. Let us bear in mind that Scotland’s fishermen were described as expendable not by the European Union, but by the United Kingdom Government who sought to represent them. On that point, I will sit down. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
This has been a very long debate, and I have sat through the whole of it. I counted 14 speeches in total, not including the winding-up speeches, and it started with that of the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). The speeches were all passionate and eloquent, and we have heard some very strongly held views. The last Back Bencher to speak was the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who is always eloquent and entertaining—so much so that, on occasions, I find myself nodding along, even though I do not agree with a single word he says.
It is depressing that we have heard a rehash of many of the same, often ill-informed, myths and stories about how Britain no longer has control over its own sovereignty, having yielded everything to Europe. What I found most disappointing is that, for people outside Parliament watching the debate in the Chamber, the speakers have largely been older, grey-haired men in grey suits—
Pat Glass
I said “largely”.
I do not believe that that represents the country we are here to serve or the views of the people outside Parliament. It has been yet another debate—I am sure there will be many more up to the referendum—in which members of the Eurosceptic right wing of the Tory party have been able to grandstand, while positioning an ice pick firmly in the back of their own Front Benchers and lining up to rubbish their own Prime Minister’s negotiations. Two of my Labour colleagues have joined in enthusiastically, but given that over 96% of the members of the parliamentary Labour party, including every member of the shadow Cabinet, are members of the PLP pro-EU group, it is absolutely clear that Labour is a pro-Europe party and that it is campaigning actively for a remain vote in the referendum.
I am conscious that the debate has been very long and that we have heard an awful lot from one side of the argument, but I want to be respectful of the House and to give the Minister time to sum up, so I intend to be brief.
Right at the beginning, the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay said that the electorate got very exercised about our sovereignty. Not in my experience: people in my constituency are concerned about jobs, youth unemployment, housing, the bedroom tax, tax avoidance by large companies and, yes, immigration, but the people I speak to never talk about the sovereignty of the EU, EU bureaucracy or Britain’s rebate. That just does not happen on the doorstep.
Pat Glass
No. I am sorry, but we have heard an awful lot from one side of the argument.
People in the Westminster bubble, particularly Conservative Members, are exercised about all those things, but given that I have no reason to believe that the people of North West Durham are any different from people across the country, they are simply not the top priorities of people working hard outside Parliament.
Pat Glass
No.
This is largely a Tory party drama—a blue-on-blue issue—with very little relevance to the lives of ordinary people who are struggling to pay their rents and mortgages, and to get their kids to school. The Prime Minister has repeatedly given in to his own right wing, seeming not to understand that they will never be satisfied on these issues. In doing so, he has risked this country’s future prosperity, safety and place in the world.
I will not go over them in great detail, but there are many reasons for remaining part of the EU. There is the economic case and the environmental case, as well as issues involving this country’s future safety and security and our place in the world. The Labour party is committed to keeping Britain in the European Union, because we believe it is in the best interests of the British people. For us, it is simple: Britain is a stronger, safer and more prosperous country as part of the European Union.
The world is becoming more and more globalised. The problems that we face are complex and they need complex international responses. We cannot solve the problems of climate change, international terrorism, international crime, people trafficking or mass migration across the world on our own; we can tackle those issues only by working with our partners in Europe. We are part of NATO and the UN, as well as of other organisations across the world, which means that we have given up some of the things we used to do ourselves for the greater good, the safety and sometimes the prosperity of our country. I do not see a problem with any of that.
I will move quickly on to what should happen in the future. I want our sovereignty to be enhanced through seeking democratic reform that will make EU decision makers more accountable to its people and not so metaphorically and physically distant from our communities. I want economic reform that will put jobs and sustainable growth at the centre of European policy, and that will bring in labour market reforms to strengthen workers’ rights in a real social Europe. I believe that we enhance our sovereignty by negotiating with our EU partners for policies and agreements that benefit us as a country and improve the lives of our citizens.
Ultimately, the referendum will come down to a decision to remain or leave, and I believe that the people of this country will vote for the future and not for a past that only ever existed in the minds of the Eurosceptics on the Conservative Benches.
Mr Speaker
Order. I should say to the Minister that I would like to call the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) to wind up no later than 2.58 pm.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) said that this had been a long debate. I confess that for me it passed in a twinkling of an eye. As the hon. Lady gains in experience of these occasions, I think she will find that this was quite a brief encounter with some of the arguments about this country’s place in Europe.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on obtaining the debate. I shall move straight to addressing the central arguments that he described in his speech. He is right that parliamentary sovereignty lies at the heart of how the United Kingdom thinks about its constitutional arrangements, and it is true that Parliament remains sovereign today. As I think he himself said in his speech, there is only one reason why European law has effect in the United Kingdom at all, and that is because Parliament has determined that that should be so and has enacted laws which give European law legal effect here.
To avoid any misunderstanding about the fact that any authority that EU law has in Britain derives from Parliament itself, we wrote into the European Union Act 2011, in section 18, that the principle was clear—that European law has direct effect in the United Kingdom only because of Acts of Parliament. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday, if there is more we can do to make that principle clear, we would be keen to do that. It is open to Parliament, too, to pass laws to rescind the European Communities Act 1972 to end Britain’s membership of the European Union. If that were not the case, if ultimate sovereignty did not continue to lie here, there would be little purpose in our having this national debate about a referendum on British membership.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) is right that standing alone in 1940 should continue to be a source of pride and inspiration to everybody in this country from whichever political family they happen to come, but let us not forget that that was never a situation that this country or Winston Churchill sought. It was one forced upon us by defeat, and only a few days or weeks before Churchill’s speech about fighting on alone, he had gone to France and offered France a political union with the United Kingdom in order to try to maintain the struggle against Nazism. If we look back at our great history, we can see how leaders such as Marlborough, Pitt, Wellington, Castlereagh and Disraeli sought to advance the interests of the United Kingdom and the British people through building coalitions of allies and of support among other nations on the European continent.
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend will forgive me—I have very limited time. Many colleagues have spoken and I want to respond on behalf of the Government.
As a number of hon. Members said, there is concern about the question of ever closer union—about Britain being drawn against its will into a closer political European Union. There are a number of clear safeguards against that. As the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) pointed out, we remain opted out of such things as the single currency. We can decide for ourselves whether to participate in individual justice and human rights measures. There are issues such as taxation and foreign and security policy where the national right of veto continues.
We wrote into the European Union Act 2011 a requirement that a referendum of the British people would be needed before this or any future Government could sign up to treaty changes that transferred new competencies and powers from this country to Brussels—to the European institutions. That referendum lock also applies to any measure that moves the power to take decisions at European level from unanimity, with the national veto, to majority voting.
What the draft documents from President Tusk this week explicitly recognise is that there should be different levels of integration for different member states, and that the language and the preamble to the treaty about ever closer union does not compel all member states to aim for a common destination. The fact that this is a draft declaration by the European Council is significant, because the treaty itself says that it is for the European Council to set the strategic political direction of the EU as a whole.
We need to recognise in this House that there are other European countries for whom the objective of ever closer union may be welcome and in line with their national interests. Ministers from the Baltic states have said to me, “When you’ve been through our experience of being fought over by Soviet communism and Nazism, when you’ve lost a quarter of your population to those tyrannies and to warfare, when you’ve lived under Soviet rule for half a century, and then you get back your independence and your democracy, you grab any bit of European integration that’s going because you want that appalling and tragic history not to repeat itself.” We should respect their wish for closer political union, in return for their respecting our clear wish to remain outside such a process.
My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay asked whether we would reinvent the EU today. I say to him and to the House very plainly that if we were starting from scratch, I would not start with the treaty of Lisbon, but we are where we are. The debate both in this place and in the country, when assessing the results of the Prime Minister’s renegotiation and the wider issues at stake, should be about whether the interests of the British people whom we represent—their security, their prosperity, their hopes and ambitions for their children—are better served by remaining in the European Union, which I hope will be successfully reformed, but which will still not be perfect, or by leaving and attempting from the outside, de novo, to secure some kind of new arrangement with that bloc of countries. That is the context within which we should consider the specific issues that have been raised in this debate.
I will take trade as an example, because a number of hon. Members have mentioned it. Outside the European Union, we would have the theoretical freedom to negotiate free trade agreements on our own behalf. However, it is not just a matter of speculation, but what leading trading nations say to us, that they are much more ready to negotiate trade deals with a European market of 500 million people, with all the leverage that gives us as a player in that single market, than to negotiate with even a large European country on its own.
Mr Lidington
No; I apologise to my hon. Friend, but time is very limited.
The reality is that the World Trade Organisation and other international organisations are largely directed by blocs of countries and very large nations such as China and the United States. I believe that the interests of the British people are better served not simply by having a separate flag and name plate on the table, but by playing a leading role in shaping the position of the world’s biggest and wealthiest trading bloc, using its leverage to advance our national interests and winning new opportunities for businesses and consumers in this country.
I am disappointed by the pessimism of some hon. Members. Look at what we have achieved through positive British action at the European level. It was Margaret Thatcher who built the single European market that has made possible, for example, affordable aviation for ordinary British families in every part of this country. It was Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Labour Prime Ministers who made possible the entrenchment of democracy, the rule of law and human rights in central European countries where those things were crushed for most of the 20th century. We did that through support for the enlargement project. The work that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is leading to strengthen co-operative European work against terrorism and organised crime is doing more to aid our security and defend the safety of the British people than we would be able to achieve through unilateral action.
I want us to be in a reformed European Union and in the single market, playing a leading role in creating a safer and more prosperous Britain and a safer and more prosperous Europe. We should be in the things that matter to us and that benefit us, but out of ever closer political union—out of the euro, the European army and Schengen. There is a real prize available to us. That is why I am supporting so enthusiastically the work that my Prime Minister and this country’s Prime Minister is doing to secure that future for the United Kingdom in a successful and reformed European Union.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) must certainly have a couple of minutes in which to wind up the debate.
Mr Baron
Many thanks for remaining with us during the course of this debate, Mr Speaker.
I suggest that we are approaching a seminal point in our history, when we will either choose to remain inside the EU and continue down the road of ever closer union, at the expense of our sovereignty, or vote to leave the EU and, thereby, regain our ability to have the final say on issues such as the primacy of our laws, the integrity of our borders and the extent of business regulation. The fact that No. 10 seems now to be talking about a sovereignty Bill clearly illustrates that the Government’s so-called red card system, or watered-down, washed-up lottery ticket, and the emergency brake controlled by an EU backseat driver, is unravelling as we speak.
Such measures will not stop us being drawn into ever closer union with the EU should we remain, and they certainly will not restore our parliamentary sovereignty. The British people want to be represented by their MPs, not governed by the EU. Sovereignty is ours to cherish, not to sacrifice. I am afraid that the Minister and the Government have been unable to answer our questions, so I therefore intend to press to a vote the motion which clearly says that the Government’s EU renegotiations must encompass Parliament’s ability to stop any unwanted legislation, taxes or regulation.
Question put.
A Division was called, but no Members being appointed Tellers for the Ayes, the Speaker declared that the Noes had it.
Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Speaker
The Division is off. Perhaps the hon. Members were locked in a room by somebody. Good heavens. Well, there we are. I was all ready to sit in for the Division—I have been here for the last two and a half hours for the debate, so I was perfectly prepared to be here for the Division, but a Division must take place in an orderly way, or not at all.
Yemen
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the conflict in Yemen.
I am very pleased to have secured this important debate. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it to take place here today.
We meet against a background of continuing conflict and death, with further reports of Saudi-backed strikes on populated areas, most recently a cement factory in the city of Amran. That resulted in reports of further deaths, including of people inside cars parked nearby, of shopkeepers and of residents going about their daily business. This is a very pressing issue. The humanitarian situation in Yemen is dreadful and it is getting worse. Recent estimates by the United Nations suggest that over 8,000 people have been killed in Yemen since March last year. At least 1,500 children are reported to have died. Much of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed by air strikes and armed fighting on the ground, effectively cutting families off from essential services, including clean water, sanitation and medical treatment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) has already raised in this House the incident in which a Médecins sans Frontières hospital in Saada was hit by missiles. That was the third MSF facility to come under attack in recent months. People are dying there from what should be preventable diseases because there are not the hospitals, medical supplies or infrastructure to prevent it. With hospitals reduced to rubble, thousands of children are at risk of malnutrition. In fact, Save the Children has reported a 150% increase in cases of severe acute malnutrition among children. Some of its facilities, which should be safe havens, have been destroyed.
It is no surprise, therefore, to see Médecins sans Frontières and others declare that the conflict in Yemen is being played out with total disregard for the rules of war. The UK Government have been aware of mounting evidence of civilian deaths and of the destruction of civilian infrastructure. Among other growing voices, Amnesty International has raised concerns about air strikes targeting heavily populated civilian areas with no military targets nearby. That would clearly constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.
The numbers of civilians dying as a direct consequence of the conflict are stark. According to the UN, 73% of child deaths and injuries during the second quarter of 2015 were attributable to air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition. Some 60% of all civilian deaths and injuries have been attributed to air-launched explosive devices. Increasing numbers of children are being pressed into military service, used as pawns by both sides in the conflict, and placed in increasingly dangerous and vulnerable situations. More than 3 million children are now out of school. Education has fallen by the wayside, setting the children of Yemen up perfectly to be another lost generation, with significant long-term consequences for the country and the region.
More than 21.2 million people in Yemen, including 10 million children, are now in need of humanitarian aid. This staggering figure gives Yemen the dubious distinction of being the country with the highest number of people in humanitarian need in the world. Yemen relies almost entirely on imports for its food, so the de facto blockade imposed by the Saudi-led coalition at the start of its military intervention in March 2015 has had an extremely damaging impact. There is a very high level of food insecurity. According to the UN, 14.4 million Yemeni people are in this situation. In basic terms, that means one in every two people is not getting enough to eat.
One of the most distressing features of the conflicts that have plagued the middle east for too long is the re-emergence of the barbaric practice of siege as a weapon of war. When I raised the issue in the context of Syria, I was pleased to receive confirmation of the UK Government’s position that the imposition of starvation and deliberate destruction of the means of daily life for civilians may be a matter for the International Criminal Court. The practice must be stopped. It is vital that support be given to ensure that supplies and humanitarian aid can enter the country and be safely distributed to the population, including in the southern city of Taiz, where humanitarian access has been extremely constrained. Parties to the conflict must be pressed to allow this access. Unless we address those issues, we should not be surprised to see continued outflows of refugees from countries that are being bombed back into the dark ages. Such an outcome is exactly what Daesh is working towards. Those who claim the status of legitimate Government cannot continue to act like medieval warlords and expect to receive the backing of the international community.
It is important to acknowledge the brave and tireless work of many non-governmental organisations working in the area, despite the huge dangers they face in this volatile situation. The conduct of the war means that NGOs are having to put their workers in peril. This raises significant questions about how much longer they will be prepared to do so, and about the consequences for Yemeni civilians if they decide they cannot continue. The Government must now listen to these organisations and consider the evidence. They must acknowledge what is happening and the scale of the issue. It is vital that they put pressure on all parties to allow humanitarian agencies a safe space in which to operate.
I acknowledge the important and welcome role of the Department for International Development in supporting the Yemeni population. Its response has been flexible and responsive and would appear to provide a constructive way forward, were it not for the astonishing mismatch between its welcome work and the Government’s military dealings with Saudi Arabia, which severely impact on life in Yemen and the country’s future prospects.
World attention on difficulties in the middle east is focused on the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and sadly the catastrophic situation in Yemen is often overlooked. Yemen’s status as only a minor oil producer—it is not even a member of OPEC—perhaps makes the country less likely to feature on the western news radar. The International Red Cross described Yemen as one of the world’s forgotten conflict zones. While the world looks elsewhere, economic and political power-plays in the middle east cause ever more chaos and destruction to the country. The UK cannot continue to look the other way or sit on the fence. If it does, it must accept that its foreign policy is morally bankrupt and that its lack of action is both knowing and deliberate.
Yemen is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Meanwhile, the daily intensive use of explosive weapons, often in populated areas, continues to rain down death on the civilian population. Many of these civilians have been killed by air strikes conducted by the Saudi Arabian air force, using British-built planes flown by pilots trained by British instructors, including at RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland, dropping British-made bombs—they are probably made in Scotland—and with operations co-ordinated by Saudi Arabia in the presence of British military advisers.
Figures from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills show that in the third quarter of last year, the UK granted more than £1 billion of arms export licences for Saudi Arabia, despite overwhelming evidence of human rights violations committed by the Saudi-led coalition in its aerial bombing campaign.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Government consider that there have been breaches of international humanitarian law, the Government should investigate and report to the House?
Kirsten Oswald
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend.
Through their substantial support for Saudi Arabia, the Government are exacerbating the desperate plight of the people of Yemen. Since the conflict reignited in March, there have reports of serious violations of the laws of war by all sides. Human Rights Watch has documented several apparently unlawful coalition airstrikes between April and August. In all these cases, it either found no evident military target or considered that the attack failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives. There are legal questions to be answered about the UK supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia in support of its military intervention and indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen.
It is important that we take stock of other UK interventions in this part of the world. Not only in Yemen but across the region, we have a very chequered past. The UK has a history of subjugating the interests of the population in the region, who are bit players in UK conflicts with other powers. Although we still have significant relationships with the rulers and leaders of the region, the UK is, perhaps unsurprisingly, mistrusted for its failure to deliver on promises. As Tarek Osman says,
“the wave of Arab uprisings that commenced in 2011 is this generation’s attempt at changing the consequences of the state order that began in the aftermath of World War One.”
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an interesting speech. The World Food Programme made the point that both sides in the conflict—not just one—are impeding the distribution of food aid to those millions of people who desperately need it. Does she agree?
Kirsten Oswald
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid and important point, but what we need to do is to ensure that everyone engaged in that region co-operates, wherever possible, to ensure that people get the food and other support that they need.
This new generation in Yemen, who are searching for a better future, have been abandoned to a conflict influenced by others, none of whom have the needs of the Yemeni people in mind.
The Minister said in a speech last week that Saudi Arabia should do a “better job” of trumpeting its human rights successes. What an astonishing statement to make. I think we can safely assume that the civilians in Yemen suffering as a result of this terrible onslaught will feel that they have no human rights whatsoever. Human rights, and particularly those of the people of Yemen, evidently did not loom large in that statement—but they must. The UK Government must admit that they have been front and centre of the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, and that yet again we are putting profit before basic human rights and international law.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
I agree that the hon. Lady is making a powerful and pertinent speech. However, I ask her to be cautious in quoting from The Independent, which used a Google translator to translate a press release of a statement that did not accurately represent the meeting I had in Saudi Arabia. I did make that point last week in response to the urgent question and I repeat it today—I would never use such language. I made it very clear to the Saudi Arabians that they have a long way to go, and that we wanted to work with them on improving their human rights.
Kirsten Oswald
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I echo his sentiment that there is a significant way to go in respect of human rights, which is a matter of great concern. I was in the Chamber last week, so I am pleased that I can recall the sentiment, if not the words, that the hon. Gentleman said. I will be interested to look back at the discussion, because I thought the sentiment was quite clear.
The UK Government must fully consider the situation in Yemen. There is no doubt that it is challenging in many ways, but this does not mean that we should disregard either the credible evidence coming from the area or the realities and scale of the problem. A UN panel of experts has documented 119 coalition sorties relating to violations of international law in Yemen—including the targeting of civilians. It is worthy of note that the International Development Committee, while observing that this UN report was leaked, did not consider that this affected the credibility of what it was asserting.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
Does not the hon. Lady agree with the representative of UNICEF who appeared before the International Development Committee—chaired by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg)—who said that he did not believe that there was “deliberate targeting” of civilians?
Kirsten Oswald
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and it is important to hear from as many organisations as possible. I must tell him that in the research I conducted, I encountered many organisations that have indeed suggested that there was targeting of civilians, which gives us all the more reason to have a proper investigation into the situation.
I must ask the Minister today whether he doubts the credibility of the UN panel of experts, and if so, why he feels that way. As in other parts of the region, we must do all we can to facilitate and support a peace process. We should be encouraged that the parties have previously come to the table, but it is disappointing that these talks have so far been delayed. One issue that needs to be addressed—this can come only with good first-hand information, as was suggested—is just how much control those who claim leadership really exercise over the myriad groups in conflict across the country. The leaders of al-Qaeda and Daesh-linked groups have no interest in peace, and we must not let them scupper every peace effort by destroying attempts to bring about a ceasefire. We know that, across Yemen today, chaos reigns. Disparate forces and agendas clash and bombs rain down from the air, destroying infrastructure, homes and lives.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady accept, however, that the Yemen conflict is spilling over the borders from Yemen and outwith?
Kirsten Oswald
I think that conflict in any area is cause for concern, but today we must focus on this particular conflict, and on the question of where the United Kingdom Government’s responsibility lies. I believe that it is inconsistent for them to give aid to Yemen with one hand while, with the other, selling weapons that will be used to bomb the country to smithereens.
The Minister and the UK Government need to come clean about the specific involvement of the UK military in arms sales, training and logistics in relation to Saudi Arabia’s military operations in Yemen. I do not think that conflict by proxy is the policy of the Conservatives, but given what is happening in Yemen, it is difficult to see how that is not the case. The Belgian Government have felt able to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, yet we continue to ignore human rights issues both in Saudi Arabia and in respect of Yemen, and continue to sell arms.
The delay in the establishment of the Committees on Arms Export Controls may have had an influence on the position. The Committees should have been established months ago, as has been highlighted by the continued pressure exerted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson). Let me ask the Minister this: what has been the cost to human life of that delay?
I agree wholeheartedly with the Chair of the International Development Committee, who said in his letter yesterday:
“It is a longstanding principle of the rule of law that inquiries should be independent of those being investigated.”
It is very disappointing that the UK Government did not take the opportunity in September 2015 to endorse the proposal of the Government of the Netherlands for the establishment of an international fact-finding mission to investigate the conduct of the war. That would have provided the information sought by the Minister, who recently said that if weapons systems had been abused and genuine intelligence was available to verify that, action would be taken in relation to export licensing.
It is time for the UK Government to stop running away from scrutiny, and to take urgent action to suspend all sales of arms to Saudi Arabia until it can demonstrate that they are not being used against civilians, and not being used in violation of international law. The UK must do more to alleviate this humanitarian crisis and ensure that there is access to areas where people are besieged and starving, and every effort must be made to ensure that the delayed peace talks begin. We cannot stand by any longer as Yemen descends further and further into terror and chaos. It is time for the UK Government to step up and do the right thing.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing this important debate, although I did not agree with every word that she said. I must say that I believe the British Government are more than open to scrutiny: the presence of this Minister in the House on numerous occasions, responding to questions and debates about Yemen, is testimony to that.
It is with some sadness that I speak in a debate about a country that is very close to my heart, but is suffering the horrors of conflict so eloquently described by the hon. Lady. The current war in Yemen has been described as the “forgotten war” by, among others, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) during a recent debate. The hon. Gentleman will be reassured to know that, while I agree with him about very few things, I do agree with him about that.
Sadly, the war in Yemen is still the forgotten war today, despite the work of many non-governmental organisations and many Members of Parliament. I think particularly of the work of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), and of all that he has done to ensure that the House remains cognisant of what is happening in Yemen. I should add that he and others have always sought to highlight the joys of the country, and to explain why it is such a wonderful country. I know that Yemen is also very close to the heart of my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), who knows it very well.
As well as being vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Yemen, I have had the pleasure and privilege of visiting and travelling around the country on a number of occasions, and seeing such wonderful places as Sana'a and Aden, but also Taiz, Ibb and Hadhramaut. I fear that, sadly, my visits to Yemen will not be repeated for some years, but they gave me an insight into this complex, ancient land and its generous, hospitable and fiercely loyal people. Along with, I am sure, many other Members, I am proud to declare myself a friend of Yemen and its people; and, of course, the United Kingdom has a long-standing friendship and an historical and trusted relationship with the country.
All that makes it even sadder to see what has become of Yemen. Its former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, described ruling the country as akin to
“dancing on the heads of snakes”,
so complex are its history and its religious, tribal and political make-up.
Yemen faces many challenges, as we have heard. It is the most populous country in the Arabian peninsula, with a population of almost 30 million, but it is also one of the poorest, with an annual income per head of less than $1,500. Yemen does not have the advantage—although these days perhaps it is a diminishing advantage—of oil revenues to swell its coffers and budget, and it has historically relied heavily on imports of food, goods and, crucially, diesel fuel in order to function. All this is compounded by the challenges of a burgeoning young male population with limited economic prospects. Those conditions, overlaid with a fractured polity and a security situation that is fragile at the best of times, mean that Yemen has always been in a precarious situation, even before the current conflict.
Yemen has always been more of a loose confederation of tribes than a nation state with strong central control on the Westphalian model, and for centuries its location has placed it at the centre of proxy wars waged by other powers. Today, in some ways, it finds itself in that situation again, with an Iranian-backed Houthi militia fighting a Saudi-led coalition supporting the legitimate Government of President Hadi, with regional and dynastic geopolitics also playing their part in the conflict.
The conflict and its consequences are clear and stark, and I shall reiterate just a few of the comments made by the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire. More than 20 million people are at risk of starvation and humanitarian disaster, with 82% in need of some assistance, according to Save the Children. Of course it is often the children, the most innocent, who are the most likely victims of any conflict.
Our effort to play our part in helping to end this ruinous conflict has a number of major component parts. The most immediate is of course the provision of humanitarian relief. The witness from Oxfam at a recent hearing of the International Development Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), said that the support by DFID had been “really profound and fundamental”. UK aid already totals more than £85 million, and its scale is constrained only by the situation on the ground and the ability to distribute it safely. The UK’s aid contribution is not in doubt, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), will convey to his counterparts in the Department for International Development the expressions of support from me and the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire for the work that it has done. I sincerely hope that that work will be built upon so that we can build an international coalition of aid givers. As we look across Parliament Square today, we see that there is rightly a focus on the situation in Syria, but we must make every effort to ensure that the situation in Yemen receives the same priority.
After food and medicines, getting fuel and water into Yemen remains one of the biggest challenges. Ports such as Hodeidah are barely functioning, and when they do, ships sometimes have to wait offshore for weeks before being able to offload. For a country that was already reliant on imports for its food and fuel needs, this is a disaster. Getting supplies into and around the country is vital, and I hope that the Minister will be able to update the House on that work later.
The humanitarian response and the UK’s continued role in it are vital, but we are to a large degree tackling the consequences rather than the causes of the problem, and we must strive to tackle both. The Minister has made it clear—in statements to the Select Committee, I believe—that the UK is not a party to this conflict, and he is right. The UK is not an active participant in the coalition, although we rightly support it as a reflection of our support for the legitimate Government of Yemen headed by President Hadi. We must make it clear, as was mentioned earlier, that it is unhelpful to focus on only one party to the conflict as being responsible for the civilian casualties. Both sides bear responsibility for the consequences of the conflict.
Kevin Foster
Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that there is a UN resolution that the coalition of states is seeking to enforce?
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and displays his usual erudition and eloquence on this topic, as on so many others.
It is vital that renewed impetus is given to peace talks to find a lasting settlement to bring stability to the country. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) and to this Minister for their work on this issue. I alluded earlier to the fact that Yemen could have no greater friend in the British Government than this Minister. I know he cares passionately and personally for the plight of the people of Yemen, and is working day and night to do what he can to alleviate it and bring peace to that country.
We must always remember that a peace settlement that is imposed from outside or that does not recognise and heed all voices in Yemen is doomed to fail. We in the UK have the potential to continue to play a significant role in bringing all sides together, but any settlement to bring lasting peace must emerge from within Yemen itself. I am reminded of what I believe is an old Arab proverb, “Me and my brother against my cousin, but me and my cousin against a stranger.” We must always remember that peace must come from within the country. The final element, in the longer term, must be support and a clear commitment over a prolonged period to rebuild this shattered country and its infrastructure, primarily its fuel and water infrastructure.
Before concluding, let me briefly deal with the comments made by the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire about the need for any suspected or reported abuses of human rights or civilian casualties to be investigated. The Minister has always been clear that where allegations of civilian casualties or about the consequences of actions are made, he and others have raised them with the Saudi Arabian Government, as appropriate. What was agreed in September at the Human Rights Council by all those there represents the right way forward: the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, working with the legitimate Government of Yemen—that is important in terms of access—will investigate, as appropriate, any such allegations. I believe it is due to report in March. That agreement, built on a consensus at the HRC, represents the right way forward. These things are always confusing through “the fog of war”—I believe that is the title of a well-read piece of research by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling in respect of broader legal challenges sometimes faced by our armed forces, in which he highlighted the complexity of conflict situations. There are competing versions of events and competing understandings of what actually happens, so I strongly urge all Members of this House to support the proposals agreed in September and see what the High Commissioner for Human Rights concludes in March.
As the hon. Lady has said, it is time that the international community gave the crisis and conflict in Yemen the focus and priority they deserve, as we quite rightly do with Syria. I know that the British Government are doing their bit, and I hope that today’s debate helps to raise the profile of this forgotten war and that peace will soon be a reality for all the people of that suffering country.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. It will be obvious to the House that we have very little time for this debate and a lot of people want to speak. I would like to try to do this without a formal time limit. If people could keep to five or six minutes, everyone will be able to get in. If not, we will have a time limit, be it three minutes, two minutes or whatever is necessary, later in the debate.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). We share a border in Leicestershire and now we share a cause, and it is good to see someone who was elected only last year become passionate about an overseas country and become such an expert on it. I know that his interest in Yemen preceded his election, and I am glad to see him as a strong and effective vice-chair of the all-party group on Yemen. I speak not just as a Yemeni by birth, but as the chair of the all-party group for the past 27 years. I must rival President Saleh with the years that I have spent in office—that is not a good comparison, I know. It has been a huge honour to serve in that capacity and to be joined recently by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), both of whom are Yemenis by birth.
We now have three Yemenis sitting in the House of Commons. That should help everyone to understand that for us this is not just business; it is very personal. The situation matters greatly. My fondest memories of my childhood were watching the boats coming in. They went past Steamer Point as they were about to enter the Suez canal. Indeed, only Leicester beating Liverpool last Tuesday could match that kind of warm feeling that I had as a child. Sadly, those wonderful memories of our childhood have gone, and we face in Yemen a roll call of catastrophe, which was set out so eloquently by the hon. Members for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and for Charnwood.
I know that the Chairman of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), will have more horrifying statistics that we will struggle to understand—some 21 million in need of aid, millions of children without food and people starving to death. We hear such figures as if this is a piece of fiction, but it is fact.
I thank the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) who came on one of the all-party group’s last visits to Yemen. He caused us a lot of worry. He had been told to stay in the Sheba hotel, but, as everybody knows—especially the Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State who worked with him in Government—he cannot be told what to do. When we got up one morning and found that he was missing, we thought that he had been kidnapped. In fact, he was out in Sana’a, a world heritage centre, taking photographs. Like all visitors to Yemen, he had fallen in love with the country.
What is this country now? It is a country in poverty; a country facing the possibility of civil war; and a country that is being fought over by other foreign powers. It is not the people of Yemen who want this conflict. The conflict arises because those from outside want to topple the democratically elected Government of President Hadi, and because of that there is outside intervention.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I was touched by the care that the right hon. Gentleman showed for my welfare. It was indeed an extraordinary trip. Talking about children, at the time, the British Council was matching 1,000 schools in the middle east with schools over here. On our journey, I was able to twin a school in Worthing with a school in Aden. Does he agree that, as well as the killings and the injuries, one of the biggest tragedies is the fact that about half of all children in Yemen are not in education? So much is being done to ensure that Syrian children have some continuity in their education, but the situation in Yemen is so much worse. If we do not have the future in mind for those children, the future of the whole country will be in peril.
Keith Vaz
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He is the House’s expert on education. When he talks about the need for education, he is absolutely right, because it offers a life chance. Some 1,500 people have died, and 9.9 million people are in poverty. The fact that the children cannot go to school will affect the rest of their lives, and childhood passes so quickly. They will not have the advantages of education, and we need to concentrate on that.
I join the hon. Member for Charnwood in praising the Minister—Members on the Opposition Benches do not tend to do that very often—because he deeply cares about the situation in Yemen. Whenever the all-party group has asked him to address us, whenever we have made suggestions, and whenever the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) has made suggestions, which I am sure that he does on a daily basis, the Minister responds. If he had half a chance, he would be on a plane via Dubai to Sana’a international airport to try to stitch together the patchwork of international diplomacy that now exists.
Much mention was rightly made by the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire of the involvement of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s involvement has been important; had that not happened, I believe that the country would have been overrun and that President Hadi would not have returned to Aden. We now need to pause. The all-party group, individual Members and the Minister have been clear that there has to be a ceasefire. The airstrikes have to stop, and we have to find other methods of trying to secure the country without the scenes that have taken place. Civilians may not have been targeted, but they have died. We need to make sure that we work with the Saudis, who are the regional power—we cannot do this without them—to make sure that we get peace in Yemen. They have a big responsibility to ensure that that happens. If Yemen falls, that will affect every other country in the middle east.
As the Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions, the frontline in Sana’a is the frontline in London. Many of the terrorist plots that I have come across as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee have come from people plotting in places such as Yemen. Indeed, many of the Paris bombers were involved in some way with what was happening in Yemen; I think one of them was trained there. We are not talking about a country far away that we do not need to care about; it really matters to our future, not just because of the humanitarian crisis but, more importantly, because of how it will affect Britain and the rest of Europe.
I thank this Minister and the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne), who has also listened carefully to what we have said. One of the great things about how the Government have approached Yemen is that they have continued what was started by the previous Government. There is no party politics in this; the whole House is united, as were the previous Prime Ministers, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, in ensuring a focus on Yemen. The current Prime Minister is also very focused on it. I have written to him on numerous occasions and his responses are detailed and relevant. He wants to make sure that peace is restored. We are all on the same side.
As I conclude, I have a few asks. First, as he also supports the ceasefire, will the Minister give a commitment to intensify the support of the UN to try to bring peace to Yemen and to ensure that we continue the dialogue with all sides, especially with Saudi Arabia? There has been a lot of criticism about the use of British weapons by the Saudis in this conflict. That will go on, of course; we live in a parliamentary democracy and we have to raise these issues. The Government have to respond, and they have.
However, we need to work with the Saudis and the Omanis. Oman has not been mentioned enough in these debates, but the Sultan in particular has a big role to play. Here is a border in the Arab world: to the north, Oman is as peaceful as a country can be but to the south is the turmoil in Yemen. The Gulf Co-operation Council also needs to be involved. It cannot be absent from the table.
It is not the Minister’s job to chase up debts, but I remind him of the great donor conference in London before the last but one general election. Billions were pledged but very few countries have paid up. We should go back to the countries that pledged and make sure that something is done.
Let me end by saying this. We still have a lot of friends in Yemen. My two children were very friendly with the son of one of the Yemeni ambassadors who came here. His name was Salman, and we have lost touch with him. The last time we saw him, he had come up to Leicester to see a football match with my young son. I think of that bright young boy and his sisters, who came to this country for a short time as the children of diplomats, and the bond of friendship that we formed with them. To think of them in a house in Sana’a without electricity, schooling or food is terrible. I hope that, if Salman is listening to this debate or hears about it in some way, he will contact us so that we know that he and his family are safe.
My real worry is that Yemen is bleeding to death. Unless we are prepared to stop the bleeding, the consequences will be horrendous.
From the bottom of my heart I beg the Minister to continue doing what he is doing, to make sure that this issue is centre stage. I thank parliamentary colleagues from all over the country, who have so much on their agendas, for coming here in such numbers to think and talk about Yemen. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who has just joined the Front-Bench team, for coming. He will be a wonderful shadow Minister. I hope he makes this issue a priority. I know we talk about the big countries, but Yemen matters to us. Please let us not allow Yemen to bleed to death.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I make no criticism of the right hon. Gentleman, who has spoken with passion and taken lots of interventions, but we will now have a formal time limit of five minutes. I call Kevin Foster.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will bear in mind the time limit. It is a great pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), given the passion he brings to this issue as a result of his background.
The first point for me is this: why does this conflict matter to us in the UK? Why has the MP for Torbay taken time on Thursday afternoon to come along to this debate? For me, there are three clear reasons. The first is Yemen’s geographical location. Back in Victorian times—I made this point recently during an urgent question on this issue—Suez was one of the key trade links for the then British empire, and it is still one of the seven key maritime pinch points. Therefore, stability in Yemen matters to global trade. Given that Aden was, for many years, a British protectorate, there is also a moral duty on us to retain an interest in the area and how it has developed. In many ways, as the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) touched on, we have played quite a significant role as a country over the last 100 years in shaping what governance on the modern Arabian peninsula looks like.
The second point is that problems do not stay within one nation’s borders. We have seen that dramatically illustrated in Syria, with the refugee crisis. The UN warned back in December that 14 million people are what it terms “food insecure”—an interesting way of describing people who may starve if they do not get assistance.
The third point is humanitarian concern. My predecessor in Torbay brought to my attention on social media today some of the heart-breaking images coming out of Yemen as a result of the conflict. Those very much reminded me of a statement by Robert E. Lee:
“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”
The right hon. Gentleman very personally illustrated the impact on people on the ground.
It is also worth remembering the security threat that exists in the midst of this conflict, and that is what I will focus my brief remarks on. In the middle of the battle between the Houthis and the forces loyal to President Hadi is al-Qaeda. Both President Hadi and the Houthis oppose al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has staged numerous deadly attacks from its strongholds in the south and south-east. Western intelligence agencies now consider al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula the most dangerous branch of al-Qaeda because of its technical expertise and global reach.
Wendy Morton
Does my hon. Friend agree that regional instability makes this issue even more urgent? We need to find a peaceful solution to the problem so that we do not create a bigger vacuum, into which organisations such as al-Qaeda can move.
Kevin Foster
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Where we have spaces in conflicts—especially spaces where no Government and no system of law and order exists—these groups are able to fester, grow and develop their abilities. We saw that in Afghanistan during the time of the Taliban, and we are seeing it in Syria, where a civil war has allowed Daesh to grow, fester and build its capabilities. As we have seen in Yemen and other parts of the middle east, having these spaces where no Government exist creates a danger to our security and global security, and we cannot just ignore that.
With President Hadi’s co-operation, the US has been carrying out operations, including drone strikes, but the advance of the Houthi rebels has seen that US campaign scaled back. Therefore, a quarrel between two enemies of al-Qaeda is making it easier for al-Qaeda to develop and become more of a threat. As we have heard, there is the prospect of the fighting spilling over into neighbouring countries, not least into Saudi territory. While we all have our views about some of Saudi Arabia’s bluntly appalling domestic policies, such as the lack of religious freedom and the use of the death penalty in a way that we in this country find unacceptable and certainly would not contemplate, we must sometimes be careful what we wish for, because some of the potential alternatives in that country are not those of a modern, liberal, western democracy.
Looking back to the Arab spring of 2011, many of us, perhaps naively, hoped that it would be very much like the 1989 “velvet revolution” that swept through eastern Europe, sweeping away dictators and despots and replacing them with the relatively modern democracies that we have today. Yet experience shows that some of the forces that have been unleashed since 2011 have not been those of freedom and tolerance—in fact, quite the opposite.
It is therefore right that we work with the Saudi Government and the wider coalition to try to bring peace to Yemen based on a United Nations resolution. With regard to our supporting the Saudi armed forces, I have to say—this may be a point of difference with some Opposition Members—that I would rather that is done by our forces, who have human rights and international law ingrained in their operations, than potentially by some other countries’ forces who have within the past 30 years engaged in things that we would find unacceptable.
We cannot just ignore this situation. We cannot turn a blind eye while we see children being dragooned into fighting for rebel groups and terrorist organisations, and a three-way war threatening to spill over and threaten the security of some key maritime routes and the stability of the wider region. It is not for the UK to do this on its own, and we are not doing it on our own. We need to make sure that international law is applied and that all parties to the conflict respect their obligations. I think that ultimately, working with our partners through the United Nations, we can bring peace. I welcome the interest in this subject expressed in this debate.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on bringing this very important and timely debate to the Chamber today. The International Development Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into the situation in Yemen. Last week, we heard such powerful and convincing evidence that DFID’s excellent humanitarian response is being undermined by the wider Government approach to Yemen that this week we felt compelled to write to the Government setting out our serious concerns, to which I will refer in turn.
Let me start by addressing the scale of the humanitarian crisis. Every speaker has described the horror: more than 21 million people—over 80% of the population—are in need of assistance, more than 14 million people are struggling to find enough food, and 2.5 million people are displaced. The effects of this conflict are devastating. Atrocities have been committed by both sides. We heard evidence that 62% of the killings and maimings have been caused by the Saudi-led coalition, and that Houthis have recruited over 700 children to armed groups that have laid siege to cities such as Taiz, denying their populations access to humanitarian aid and medicines.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
As a Member who was born in Aden, I was concerned to hear that a church in Ma’alla where I used to worship was hit, along with a hospital. What steps are being taken to ensure that aid will be allowed to get through? Access to aid is very important.
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In evidence from DFID itself we were told that the very welcome UK aid of £85 million could have been more, but that it is simply proportionate to what can currently be spent by our partners given the difficulties of access. She is absolutely right that that is one of the major considerations.
Let me turn to the need for an independent international inquiry into alleged abuses of international humanitarian law. We received overwhelming evidence that is contrary to the position that the Government have taken on this matter. The UN expert panel report documented 119 alleged abuses. There is evidence from Amnesty International, from Human Rights Watch, and from Médecins sans Frontières. Saferworld told us in its evidence last week:
“In other contexts, the Government will cite”
the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty reports on Syria, Libya and Sudan to support a British Government position, but
“they are referred to as not good enough to be considered evidence compared with a reassurance from the Saudis, one of the belligerents to the conflict, that there are no violations of international humanitarian law.”
It is true that a resolution was agreed at the UN Human Rights Council last September, but the original wording of the motion tabled by the Government of the Netherlands was much stronger. In my view, the British Government should have stood with our Dutch partners, rather than with Saudi Arabia in watering down the need for an independent inquiry. We do not have that independent inquiry. Once again, I urge the Minister to reconsider the UK’s position, so that we support a genuinely independent, UN-led inquiry into the serious allegations of the violation of international humanitarian law.
Let me finish by talking about the central issue of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia. DFID is consulted when arms are sold to a country in receipt of DFID assistance. Saudi Arabia does not receive such assistance, so DFID is not consulted on the question of arms sales to that country, even though those arms are being used in Yemen, which does receive DFID aid. The scale of our arms sales to Saudi Arabia is eye-watering. The £3 billion received in just six months last year represents 40% of total UK arms sales for that period, with £1 billion of it received in just three months for bombs. The Royal Saudi air force has more UK planes than our Royal Air Force.
United Kingdom, European and international arms trade law is clear that licences cannot be granted if there is a “clear risk” that they may be used in the commission of violations of international humanitarian law. That is all that is required—a clear risk—and we have a very powerful legal opinion from Matrix Chambers that the UK has breached its obligations under international arms law.
I urge the Government to think again on this central issue. As has been said, the Committees on Arms Export Controls will be established when we meet next week. The issue must be on their agenda. It is absolutely vital that we take seriously our responsibilities under our own law as well as international and European law. The International Development Committee met members of this country’s Yemeni diaspora two weeks ago and their voices were very powerful on that question. The evidence that we heard from the UN panel of experts and international humanitarian organisations last week, and from the diaspora, is very strong that the UK should support a truly independent inquiry into what is going on, and in the meantime we should suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I welcome this debate and the inquiry by the International Development Committee, of which I am privileged to be a member. The suffering of the people of Yemen is acute, and the world needs to know about it. I urge people who have knowledge and can provide an account of the situation in Yemen to contribute to our inquiry. As the Chairman of the Committee has just said, we heard some powerful accounts during a meeting with members of the diaspora just a couple of weeks ago. I hope to refer to some of them in a moment.
I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) for his excellent speech, because of which I shall have to remove substantial parts of mine. I will, however, reflect on some of the points that have been raised during the debate. As several Members have said, 21.2 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen, making it the country with the highest number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in the world. Forty per cent. of the country’s population are under 15 years old, so the children really are suffering substantially. Since March 2015, 1,012 grave violations against children have been documented; the figure is now likely to be much higher. Forty-one schools and 61 hospitals have been damaged and, as has been said, more than 700 children have been recruited or used by armed groups. As we heard from those in the diaspora, those youths join extremist groups simply to feed their families.
Not only are 47% of schoolchildren in Yemen out of school but, as a university professor from the diaspora group told us, higher education has been affected. He taught in a university that once had 4,000 students; there are now only 400 left. Those statistics will have a significant bearing on the long-term development of the country. We were told that there had been outbreaks of dengue fever and measles, and that they fear polio. They told us that health facilities have been gutted, and that there are 2 million people in an area that is at grave risk of a malaria outbreak.
Those who are in business told us that the banking system, which is vital if people are to survive, is crippled. One businessman said that before the conflict, there were 15 banks that he could work through, but now there is only one left and he worries that it will close soon. Will Ministers do what they can to try to ensure that what remains of the banking system stays open, so that those involved in business can continue to trade? That is vital.
Much of the food in Yemen—80% to 90%—is imported. We were told, however, that the economy is crippled and cannot function. Manufacturing and what food production there is in Yemen have stopped. Products, including medicines, which are in short supply, now cost on the black market 300 to 400 times more than they used to. Major cities have had no electricity for six months. The UN report of last August stated that 26% of private businesses had closed in a five-month period, but the diaspora representatives told us that the true number was much higher. On their estimates, 77% of private sector businesses have closed and 71% of private sector workers have lost their jobs. That is critical because, as they told us, although aid can help, it will never be enough to feed and support the more than 20 million people we are talking about. A healthy economy is what is needed.
Finally, I pay tribute to all who are working in Yemen, including Save the Children and the UN workers, for the sterling work that they are doing in such difficult circumstances. Let us hope that the world continues to hear and take note of the suffering of Yemen. For too long, too little information has been put out, and I congratulate all Members of the House who are determined to ensure that that changes.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I am glad to be able to participate in this debate on the situation in Yemen, which is clearly not getting the international attention that it should. I commend to Members the coverage that Scotland’s newest newspaper, The National, has given the conflict over the past few months. The newspaper has consistently endeavoured for some time to get the matter into the consciousness of the Scottish public.
My interest in Yemen was sparked by my constituent Fahim, who came to see me last year on the day the exam results came out in Scotland. He passed the courses that he had been studying, but his pride in doing so was overwhelmed by the devastating news that his application to stay in the UK had been rejected and the Home Office had decided that he had to return to his native Yemen. This adoptive Glaswegian has been in the UK since 2009. He was a pharmacist back home, and since coming to Glasgow he has participated in voluntary groups and tried to make a life in the city. He would love to be able to go back home but, as he explained to me, it would be incredibly dangerous. He has no certainty about what has happened to his family in Yemen, so he could not even return to the people he knew, never mind the place he knew.
Since I spoke to Fahim he has been made destitute by the Home Office, and he has been sleeping in shelters and on sofas. Today the Home Office tried to contact him at an address that it evicted him from in August. I have been fighting for him to be able to stay here, because the more he told me about the situation, the more worried I became. I discovered that UK citizens are advised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that if they find themselves in Yemen, they need to get out. Its website says that the FCO
“advise against all travel to Yemen. This includes the mainland and all islands. If you’re in Yemen, you should leave immediately.”
There has been no British embassy in Yemen for over a year, and the FCO has advised people against travelling there since 2011.
But what of the citizens of Yemen? If Yemen is not safe for you, Mr Deputy Speaker, or for me, it is not safe for Fahim and it is certainly not a safe place for the citizens of Yemen. The last figures I obtained from the Home Office show that, for the first half of last year, only 14—I repeat, 14—asylum claims by Yemeni nationals were successful, while 31 were refused and 221 souls are still awaiting a decision. I hope, when the new figures come out, that they will have improved, but I urge the Government to give some certainty to those in the same situation as Fahim who are ill with worry about their future. If we can keep more Yemenis safe in this country, we have an absolute humanitarian duty to do so.
I attended the excellent meeting of the all-party group on Yemen last week, but I was absolutely shocked by the stories told by the representatives of Oxfam, Save the Children and Saferworld. They reported on a broken country, with severe shortages of fuel, water, food and other resources. Save the Children says that 21.2 million people, including 9.9 million children, are in desperate need of humanitarian aid. They are among the most desperate in the world.
The aid agencies tell us that they do not have all the funds they require. They are very much asking for their partner agencies in other parts of Europe to get more money from those countries. It has been mentioned that the UK has been generous, and we have been generous, but we need to get more aid to those agencies. The agencies cannot get access to all the people who need their help. People have been displaced in the country multiple times, and much of the infrastructure is struggling to cope.
The situation in Yemen is deteriorating daily. Twitter brings me news today of more bombs dropped on civilian areas. The Yemen Post reports today that, in the past 24 hours, 25 civilians have been killed by air strikes, 45 have been injured and 17 homes have been destroyed. Yesterday, 16 were killed and 31 injured when a factory was attacked in Amran. If such a level of carnage was happening in this country, we would be outraged and we would act. If a hospital here got hit by bombs or missiles, as no fewer than three Médecins sans Frontières medical facilities have been in the past three months, we would find that unacceptable.
As well as those struggling with the humanitarian crisis, medics in Yemen are struggling to do their job of patching up the people hit by bombs and injured in conflict, because they are coming under attack themselves. It is clear that the conflict in Yemen is being carried out with no respect for international humanitarian law. Hospitals are supposed to be off limits. Dr Joanne Liu, the international president of MSF, has stated that,
“the UK Foreign Secretary claimed that there have been no deliberate breaches of international humanitarian law in Yemen…This implies that mistakenly bombing a protected hospital would be tolerable.”
It is not.
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Lady makes a very important point. She is illustrating the horrors of war, which largely occur in populated areas when one adversary chooses to hide within such populated areas. Unfortunately, that leads to casualties. We are not in any way saying that when a civilian area or facility is attacked or destroyed that is somehow acceptable; it absolutely is not. When there is collateral damage of that form, it is important for whichever side has done it to put its hand up and say that it will conduct an investigation. We are not saying it is right, but we are making it clear—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. In fairness to the Minister, he cannot take advantage of the situation. We are struggling to get everybody in, and interventions are meant to be very short. He cannot make a speech now, given that he will be making a speech later. That is unfair to everybody.
Alison Thewliss
The point is that such bombings have now happened three times, and those involved in the conflict are not taking responsibility for their actions. Médecins sans Frontières is struggling to get the support it needs when it says that such a situation is unacceptable. People being taken to hospital in ambulances have been hit in this conflict, so it is clear that huge errors have been made in the conduct of the conflict. We could say that such hospitals are not being targeted, but what is worse is that bombs are being dropped in crowded areas, which is where the danger arises for many of the people living there. Cluster bombs, which are illegal, are being used in the conflict, as we can see from the pictures that appear on Twitter and other media sources. Who would bomb a hospital? It is completely wrong, and it is completely against all the rules of warfare. We should challenge that on every possible occasion.
If we have troops embedded with the Saudis, they should be making that clear and not allowing such attacks to happen. The Saudis are getting their bombs from us, so we could stop this happening. We could suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia today, and we could be an honest broker in bringing peace to the people of Yemen. I ask the Government to act, and to act now.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I thank colleagues in the Chamber for securing this important debate. As has been said, the conflict in Yemen has been described as the forgotten war. In recent weeks and months the conflict has escalated significantly and has begun to attract international attention.
In the time available, I shall focus on the humanitarian situation. It is a privilege to be a member of the International Development Committee. It is estimated that some 21 million people in Yemen—more than 80% of the population—are in need of life-saving assistance and protection. Recently at the IDC we heard evidence from a number of NGOs—Oxfam, Save the Children, UNICEF and the Yemeni diaspora. We heard about the difficulties in getting humanitarian aid into the country and into the areas where it is most needed. We heard that in Taiz people need food, water and medical supplies. They even need oxygen. Many civilians have been displaced and are forced to live on the edge of the city.
In these circumstances it is the children who are among the most vulnerable. It is estimated that more than 9 million children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. There are reports of grave violations against children and of schools being attacked or destroyed. The indirect consequences of conflict such as children falling ill who would not otherwise have fallen ill, are often worse than the conflict itself. It is vital that the UK continues to play its part in the humanitarian aid effort. I am always grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister and his colleagues from DFID for taking the time to come to the Chamber, answer questions and update us on the dreadful situation in Yemen.
DFID has doubled its aid and recently the Secretary of State announced a further £10 million of aid. We must recognise the very difficult conditions in which DFID and FCO staff are working. One of the biggest challenges is getting that humanitarian aid to where it is most needed. It is therefore vital that the international community does all it can to secure safe humanitarian corridors so that aid relief can pass through unimpeded. Those who work tirelessly on the ground in those difficult circumstances have to manage and mitigate the risks on a day-to-day basis.
I shall touch briefly on defence and defence co-operation. Politically, the UK supports the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention. It is important that we remember that that came at the request of the legitimate President, President Hadi, to deter aggression by the Houthis and the forces loyal to the former President, and to allow the return of the legitimate Yemeni Government. Nevertheless, it is worrying to hear of airstrikes on civilian targets. With all that is going on in Yemen, I urge the Government to continue to monitor the situation closely and to take seriously the allegations of violations of international humanitarian law.
With conflict in the wider middle east region—Syria, Iraq—and Daesh continuing to make the headlines, it is easy to see why Yemen’s has been described as the forgotten war. Let us hope that after today we can play a part in changing that. The situation in Yemen is different from that in Syria, but that does not make it less important. I urge the Government to continue to do all they can to secure a comprehensive and peaceful solution for Yemen, as that is the only way to bring about the long-term stability that the country, the wider region and the world want.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on bringing about this important debate, particularly at this time. Given the time pressures, I shall focus on the humanitarian situation in Yemen.
Recent figures reported by the United Nations indicate that the conflict claimed 2,795 civilian lives in 2015, and that there have been thousands more casualties. Nearly 1.5 million people have been displaced by the conflict, and many thousands may die from malnutrition and the impact of the humanitarian crisis.
Even before the conflict, Yemen was the poorest country in the Arab world. Poor governance, poor human development indicators and rapid population growth meant that millions of people were suffering greatly and already experiencing poverty and hunger. The country is now experiencing a significant humanitarian crisis. It is reported that more than 80% of the population is in need of humanitarian aid. That equates to approximately 21.1 million people, including nearly 10 million children.
In Yemen, it is the civilians who are bearing the brunt of the conflict. Many public facilities have been damaged or destroyed and people have lost access to essential services, including clean water, sanitation, energy and medical services. It is reported that nearly 600 health facilities have closed, and, as we have heard, hospitals have been hit. Food prices have soared, creating a desperate situation for millions of people, including particularly vulnerable groups of children. Of the 10 million affected children, nearly 8 million do not have enough to eat on a daily basis. UNICEF estimates that 537,000 children, or one in eight under-fives, are at risk of severe acute malnutrition.
Many children have been forced out of school by the conflict. Although differing figures are quoted, it appears that the number of children who need access to education may be between 2.9 million and 3.4 million. Furthermore, with medical centres being shut down and supplies diminishing, children are at risk of dying from treatable diseases. That is in addition to the risk of death or injury in the conflict itself. Save the Children has reported that since the start of the conflict, at least seven children have been killed or injured every day.
On human rights issues, it has been highlighted that there has been a significant recent increase in the recruitment and use of children in conflict in Yemen. I have spoken in previous debates about the impact of using children in combat. The effects are often felt long after the physical scars have healed. It psychologically damages them for life. In addition, it has been highlighted that children, particularly refugee children, are falling victim to human traffickers and are at risk of trauma, such as physical and sexual violence.
As we have heard, Yemen relies on imports for the majority of its food and fuel supplies. The blockade has had a significant impact on the quantity of vital supplies that are able to enter the country. The unpredictable and dangerous situations that agency staff on the ground have to work in have severely impeded their ability to distribute crucial humanitarian supplies around the country to affected populations. I pay tribute to the work of aid agencies in the area. Substantial obstacles continue to impede the passage of essential goods into and around Yemen. Much more needs to be done to create a humanitarian corridor.
I want to focus on the need to place increased diplomatic pressure on all parties in the conflict to support UN efforts to find a political solution. We must pressure those who are involved to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, to take all possible measures to protect civilians and to ensure that humanitarian agencies are given a safe space in which to operate. The UN declared Yemen a level 3 crisis on 1 July—a category reserved for the most severe and large-scale humanitarian crises. We need to put pressure on all those involved to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches vulnerable people, such as women, children, the disabled and those in need of medical aid and oxygen, as well as the general population. I beseech the Minister to do everything possible to increase the pressure for a ceasefire, an independent inquiry and a political solution, and to ensure that the ordinary civilians in Yemen who are affected, many of them helpless children, are protected and supported.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and the Backbench Business Committee for initiating this debate.
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate following our earlier discussions in Westminster Hall. As the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) said, I was born in Aden, and I have always taken a close interest in the affairs of the middle east. It is regrettable that the crisis in Yemen has been carrying on in different ways and far from the attention of the rest of the world, and even since our last debate, the situation has deteriorated and the civil war in the country has carried on into yet another year. I am hopeful that through diplomatic means the conflict can be resolved, but that depends on the willingness of external powers to make that happen, just as much as it does on the willingness of the two sides in Yemen.
This current civil war is the latest in a series of conflicts that reach back centuries and are one strand of the wider conflict between Sunni and Shi’a in the Muslim world. Whatever our aims to restore peace, we must understand that there is a problem at the heart of that issue, which very few settlements in the middle east have managed to resolve. Any settlement in Yemen is likely to require the engagement and attention of the outside world for a long time.
Whatever we say about our involvement as an arms exporter to the region, it is clear that we have an historical and moral role in the affairs of that part of the world. Almost since 1945, the situation in Yemen has been one of civil war of some sort. The coalition includes Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries—those countries are our friends; we have influence with them, and we must work with them closely to stop this humanitarian catastrophe.
Throughout this period, Yemen has been one of the poorest areas of the world. Save the Children has been working in Yemen since 1963, and it is a damning comment on the lack of political progress and commitment to solve the conflicts there that it is probably helping the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of families that it worked with more than 50 years ago. The humanitarian position is one of deep crisis, and I am reassured that it fully engages the attention of the Government through DFID, and that that engagement is respected by non-governmental organisations working in Yemen. We are a leading donor, along with the US and the UAE, and I welcome the Secretary of State’s recent announcement of an additional support package.
Kevin Foster
Does my hon. Friend agree that the humanitarian disaster presents the biggest risk of the situation spilling over into neighbouring states as people try to escape?
Mrs Drummond
Absolutely, and there is also the fear of al-Qaeda and Daesh getting into a country that is failing.
However desperate the crisis is in Syria, that country benefited from a degree of infrastructure, education, and general health of population that was miles ahead of the Yemeni equivalents. The poor of Yemen have no resources of any kind to fall back on except for external aid, yet there has been a blockade of Yemen across all routes by the coalition engaged in the war. The impact of that on a country that depended on imports for 90% of its food has been significant, despite the best efforts of relief organisations.
Edward Argar
Does my hon. Friend agree that the impact of the blockade on the fuel supplies on which Yemen depends for its water and energy needs is a huge problem for that country?
Mrs Drummond
I thank my hon. Friend because he has just saved me from reading out quite a lot of my speech. I totally agree with him, and I can now move on quickly to the next bit.
The role of the Saudi-led coalition has come under scrutiny because of the alleged human rights violations during their involvement. Those allegations are balanced by equal concerns about the attempts of the Houthis to overthrow a legitimate Government by force. The coalition is in a position of moral authority to call a ceasefire. The Government are securing Aden against al-Qaeda, and are moving towards Sana’a and the Houthis. I am concerned at reports of large casualties already as the push to Sana’a gets under way, with news outlets talking of “dozens” of deaths last night alone. Saudi forces have entered north Yemen for the first time, and I hope that we can get an assurance from the Saudis that their presence on the ground is temporary, and operates under clear rules of engagement.
The role of Iran in this conflict also needs to be addressed. The west has engaged with Iran in the hope that the Iranians will contribute towards pacifying the middle eastern situation, but we have yet to see evidence that they are willing to do so. There are already widespread concerns about human rights breaches, which the Government so far seem to believe are confined to the rebel side. Evidence on the ground suggests that the air campaign has been carried out with little regard for target verification by some coalition pilots. Our allies may well assure us that they do not mean to harm civilian targets, but it is fair to question whether they have operational control over sorties, and the discipline that we expect from our own forces. We are in danger of being found in breach of international law unless the coalitions control its forces.
I hope we will also learn about how breaches of international law by all sides will be independently investigated. We have heard assurances from several Ministers that the Government support investigations, but we have not yet heard any details of how we will support them in practice. In the discussion following the urgent question on 28 January, the Minister indicated that discussions with the Saudis about human rights concerns would take place this week at the Syria donor conference. I hope that those discussions will take place, and given that the Iranian Foreign Minister is also in London, I hope that discussions with him can take place as well. I hope the Minister will update the House on those discussions once they have taken place.
I want to add to hon. Members’ comments on the help of NGOs and others with the humanitarian crisis. I did have a longer speech and have had to take the part relating to this out, but that is not to say it is not incredibly important. I am very pleased that DFID has long had an operational plan for channelling aid to Yemen. I am confident that further stepping up our commitment will be efficient and effective. I am sure other hon. Members will support calls from NGOs and charities for our continued and increased involvement. I agree with them.
Finally, I hope the Syria conference this week will provide the opportunity for meaningful talks. The only way we will ever get a settlement in Yemen is by talking, not fighting. I hope that, with our long history with Yemen, we can be a major contributor to the peace process.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I have to bring the time limit down to four minutes. I call Mike Wood.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
With the humanitarian situation deteriorating, we must ensure that all sides in the conflict are clear about the urgent need for a political solution. Yemen has descended into widespread armed conflict since March and is classified by the UN as a level 3 emergency. Despite that, this in some ways remains a neglected crisis. Government institutions are no longer able to deliver basic services to people in need, including basic healthcare and nutrition services, water and electricity. According to Amnesty International, four out of five Yemenis today rely on humanitarian assistance to survive. There is no access to essential services and food prices have soared, creating a desperate situation for millions of people.
According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, women and girls in Yemen face entrenched gender inequalities that limit their access to basic services and livelihoods. The conflict has exacerbated the impact of those inequalities. By October 2015, an estimated 52% of internally displaced persons were female and 22% were girls. Displaced women often bear the burden of supporting their families despite challenges in accessing assistance, especially outside their communities. These challenges are even more acute for female-headed households, which assessments have found comprise over 30% of the displaced households in some areas: conflict and displacement; increased gender-based violence, especially sexual violence; domestic violence; early marriage; and trading sex to meet basic survival needs. Despite uneven reporting, recorded instances of gender-based violence show a clear upward trend since March. Overall, women are also more acutely affected by a decline in living conditions and service availability. Even before the recent conflict escalation, Yemen had the second-worst malnutrition and stunting levels globally, with half of all children malnourished and one in 10 dying before the age of five.
The United Kingdom cannot stand idly by. This is why it is not only morally right but essential that the UK has more than doubled its humanitarian funding to Yemen in the past year, with new funding announced last week bringing the annual total to £85 million. The new £10 million emergency support package announced by the International Development Secretary will provide much needed help for people affected by a conflict that has disrupted the delivery of essential food, fuel and medical supplies to those most in need, putting millions of lives at risk. This new aid, which will go to UN and NGO delivery partners on the ground, will include critical medical supplies and rehabilitation of health centres to improve the health of children in particular, with 320,000 children suffering severe malnutrition. It will include emergency food assistance and the protection of livestock to help people who are facing critical food shortages. Thermal blankets will keep displaced families warm during winter as 2.5 million people have been displaced by fighting. The aid also includes treatment for potentially fatal diseases, such as diarrhoea, cholera and malaria.
The UK can be proud of its humanitarian effort, but there is more to be done. I welcome the unity displayed today and the clear commitment from the Minister to ensure that further assistance is provided.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate, which I thank the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for organising, because Yemen is an important country to many of us.
Yemen is important to me personally because I studied my Arabic there some 20 years ago. Though I was not born in Khormaksar, as some of my hon. Friends were, and though I did not grow up overlooking Crater lake, as so many did, the country has marked itself on me. It has done so because it is a country of such wonderful contrasts. It is a very rich, green and beautiful land. It grows some of the world’s finest coffee, as well as khat, which, although banned in this country, is very popular in certain parts of the world. It is extraordinary in its richness. It is the place where the Arabic language was formalised and the domestication of the camel happened and therefore the place from which the colonisation of the deserts of Arabia and the rest of al-Jazeera al-Arabiya began.
Yemen is, then, at the heart of Arabia, and that is one reason why the conflict matters so much. For the Saudis, it is not some minor adjunct to their territory or some neighbouring state that they can ignore. It is a country with which they have such close relationships of blood and history that they cannot cut it off. Many tribes that now live happily in Saudi Arabia have cousins and links across the border. I remember as a soldier watching as convoys of donkeys crossed the Saudi border—forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, for taking a slight diversion. They would load up donkeys with hay and take them on the route five or six times, and when the donkeys knew where they were going, they would remove the hay, take away the donkey driver and load them up with heroin, and the donkeys would follow the same route. And so these self-propelled donkey caravans of drugs would come straight out of Yemen.
The Saudis have a real and personal interest in Yemen, and we should recognise, therefore, that they are defending their own interests. I will not argue, however, that they are doing so in the most humane way; they are not. They are behaving in ways that frankly call into question the training they have received from some of the finest pilots and servicemen in the world. I would urge them, therefore, to remember the lessons and doctrines they learned at Shrivenham and Cranwell and to remember that civilians are not a target.
This is an extremely important moment for Saudi Arabia. It is just beginning again to assert its presence in the region, as it has the right to do, being an important country. It is also right to do so given the expansion of the Iranian empire into traditionally Arab areas, such as Iraq, the eastern seaboard of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where the Iranian influence is growing. The Iranian encirclement of Saudi Arabia is certainly a threat. I welcome the fact, therefore, that the Saudis are reacting and that Britain is playing her role, as a good ally, in supporting her, but I urge them to think hard about how it conducts this campaign.
The campaign, in the heart of Arabia, is being played out perhaps not in our broadsheets, but in the broadsheets of the cafés of Cairo, Algiers and Baghdad. People are watching the leadership of Riyadh and its conduct, and they are thinking, “Are these the allies we want? Is this the example for Arabia and the post-Arab spring generation?” I ask the Saudi Government to think hard about the human rights and lives of the people they are affecting, not just in Yemen, but around the Arab world.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I suggest that the Front Benchers take eight minutes each.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and others on securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on allowing us the time. It has been an important and timely debate, and we have heard some powerful and personal speeches, not least from the hon. Members for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and for Charnwood (Edward Argar), the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond). We have also heard useful contributions from the members of the International Development Committee, whose recent report and letter I strongly endorse. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to it.
This is not the first time that Yemen has been discussed on the Floor of the House recently. On 20 January, my right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) asked the Prime Minister to explain why the use of UK built planes, with pilots who are trained by instructors from the UK, dropping bombs made in the UK and co-ordinated by the Saudis in the presence of UK military advisers does not add up to UK complicity in this conflict and potentially, therefore, in the war crimes allegedly being perpetrated. That is perhaps the single most important question arising from today’s debate. Others have expressed it in different ways, but I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answer. This also speaks to bigger issues that I shall explore briefly such as the humanitarian situation, the need for a peace process and the broader question of the use of weapons and the UK’s human rights record.
We have heard in moving detail about the humanitarian situation. Yemen has the highest number of people in humanitarian need of any country in the world right now, and the impact on children is particularly worrying. The right hon. Member for Leicester East spoke about the lifelong and generational consequences of denying children their education. Much of the humanitarian situation could be preventable, or at least be capable of being mitigated, even in the face of the conflict, because the threats of food insecurity and the challenges to infrastructure are a result of coalition restrictions on shipping and the damage that has been done to infrastructure, severely limiting the ability of commercial deliveries such as food and medicines, stopping them getting through.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) made the point that the Foreign Office advises against travel to the country, which starkly illustrates the humanitarian situation, yet the Home Office is trying to deport people back to it. It would be good to hear a response from the Minister on that. It is important to have a sustained return to pre-conflict levels of commercial supplies and humanitarian aid, and the establishment of a UN mechanism to simplify and streamline that. It would be helpful to hear how the Government are supporting that at the UN. Allowing a humanitarian response is, of course, the first step to a peace process.
We heard from the hon. Member for Charnwood that peace must come from within the country. That is correct, but it needs to be supported by an international process. The right hon. Member for Leicester East was right to say that the bombing has to stop. Now is the time for a ceasefire—first to allow humanitarian access and then to provide time and space for negotiations. The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) was right to point to the geographical and geopolitical significance of Yemen and the real risk of violence spreading elsewhere.
Peace across the middle east is a complex and inter-related process. If we are going to build peace in Syria or anywhere else, we must have peace in Yemen, and the UK Government should not undermine their position and their credibility as peacemakers across the region by their links to this conflict. As I have said, that is one of the crucial issues. A major characteristic of the conflict has been the use of explosive weapons, especially in populated areas, intensive aerial bombardments and ground attacks, destroying not only military but civilian targets—and there is real concern that that is deliberate.
Yesterday, my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow Central and for East Renfrewshire met Yemeni human rights campaigners who told us of destruction and showed us horrific images of civilian death and destruction in the country. They rightly say that this is no way to restore the legitimacy of any Government, let alone by a foreign power such as Saudi Arabia. That reflects the findings of the UN report.
There is a bigger and more serious concern about the influence of the United Kingdom. Serious allegations have been made in a comprehensive legal opinion commissioned by Amnesty International, Saferworld, Professor Philippe Sands, QC and others in Matrix chambers, which concluded on the basis of the information available that the UK Government are acting in breach of their obligations arising under the UK consolidated criteria on arms exports, the EU common position on arms exports and the arms trade treaty by continuing to authorise the transfer of weapons and related items to Saudi Arabia within the scope of those instruments.
Several times the Minister has asked to see the evidence and asks us to give him the evidence and information on which to launch an inquiry. If this legal opinion by some of the most respected human rights lawyers in the United Kingdom is not the basis on which the Government can act, what is? As we have heard, the Government of Belgium have suspended its arms trade, and why the UK Government cannot follow suit has yet to be made clear. As has been expressed, we hope that this will be high up on the agenda of the Committees on Arms Export Controls when it meets next week.
I want to leave time for Front Benchers, especially the Minister, to respond to the debate. This has been described as a forgotten conflict. I hope that today’s debate has helped to change that and that the Yemen conflict will not be forgotten. Serious questions are being asked of the Government about their humanitarian response, their role in the peace process and, above all, their possible complicity in military action by Saudi Arabia and thereby their connection to alleged war crimes. The Government now have a chance to respond to all those issues. They should heed the questions asked by Members and by many of our constituents. Let us hear some answers and see some action.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
Some of what the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) said slightly cut across some of the things that I was going to say, but I shall say them none the less.
Let me begin by thanking the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for securing the debate. We have heard some passionate arguments and some important facts and statistics, but, above all, we have heard that this conflict will continue to have profound effects, not just on the region but on the rest of the world, unless peace can be secured. That is not to ignore the terrible desperation and the terrible death and destruction of the people of that country, including so many children.
As for the Labour party’s position on the conflict, we recognise the legitimacy of President Hadi and the coalition. In particular, we note that the coalition’s action is backed by a United Nations resolution, and that Saudi Arabia has been attacked by Houthi rebels from northern Yemen. However, it is clear to us that both sides should be doing considerably more to reduce the humanitarian cost. Ultimately, as many Members have said this afternoon, peace talks are the only way to bring about an end to the conflict, and a negotiated settlement must be the priority for everyone.
In her opening remarks, the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire said that Yemen was being bombed back into the dark ages. She also quoted the Red Cross as saying that this was a forgotten conflict, a phrase that many other Members repeated. My right hon. Friend—my good friend—the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) observed that the conflict was having an effect in the United Kingdom. He should know, because, as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, he will have seen much evidence that that is the case.
Keith Vaz
I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend on his promotion to the Front Bench. I was very moved by the case that was raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). Bearing in mind what she said, does my hon. Friend agree that we should think very carefully about sending people back to Yemen when they have committed no criminal offences, but are here legitimately, and would be returning to a country in great conflict? Does he agree that the Home Office should look at that policy again?
Fabian Hamilton
If I had had a little more time, I would have responded to the main point that was made by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who wondered how we could even consider sending vulnerable people who have been here—in the case of her constituent for more than six years—back to a conflict zone that we will not allow our own citizens to go anywhere near. That seems to me to be totally inhumane. I know that it is not strictly the Minister’s responsibility, but I hope that he will at least shed some light on whether the Government will reconsider the position of those vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers from Yemen, as well as that of the Syrians whom we are already taking in. I thank my right hon. Friend for making that important point.
Many Members have referred to the humanitarian crisis, and that is the issue that really upsets and depresses so many of us when we hear statistic after statistic about the effect of conflict and war on our fellow human beings. As would be expected, the Opposition are deeply concerned about it. A number of Members cited statistics showing that 14 million people currently rely on food aid, and that more than 2.3 million—four times the number of people who were displaced at the beginning of 2015—have fled their homes in Yemen in search of safety. Peter Maurer, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross—whom I was privileged to meet, along with Members who are present today, when I was a member of the International Development Committee, as I was until last month—has said that the situation in Yemen is
“nothing short of catastrophic.”
That sentiment was echoed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East when he spoke about the humanitarian effects of the conflict.
The hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) praised DFID’s efforts in Yemen but said that we needed a coalition of aid givers to ensure that sufficient aid was received. However, as the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) pointed out, aid cannot resolve the problem. The economy has to be rebuilt and that can happen only if there is peace. That peace agreement has to be negotiated.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East said in his passionate contribution that Yemen was a catastrophe, with 21 million people in need of aid. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is no longer in his place, emphasised the effect that the conflict is having on children, as did many other hon. Members. The children in Yemen are in a worse position than the children in Syria at the moment. To echo something that my right hon. Friend said, Yemen is bleeding to death.
The Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), pointed out that terrible atrocities were being committed by both sides. He said that evidence had been given to the Committee that DFID’s humanitarian effort was being undermined. He also told the House that hugely respected non-governmental organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had provided overwhelming evidence of human rights abuses.
Let me turn now to the role of Saudi Arabia. I want to mention cluster munitions, because widespread reports from NGOs state that such munitions have been used in this terrible conflict. The response to a written parliamentary question from the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), suggests that the Government might be conceding that that is true. The reply from the Foreign Secretary stated:
“We are aware of reports of the alleged abuse of cluster munitions by the coalition in Yemen and we have raised this with the Saudi Arabian authorities. The UK does not supply cluster munitions to any members of the coalition in Yemen. In line with our obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions we will continue to encourage Saudi Arabia, as a non-party to the Convention, to accede to it.”
I hope that the Minister will give us further information on that terrible situation.
The SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North quoted Philippe Sands, and I should like to quote something equally relevant from his important opinion given on 11 December 2015. Philippe Sands is not only a professor of law but a Queen’s Counsel. In his concluding paragraph he said this of the UK’s trade in weapons with Saudi Arabia:
“In the current circumstances we can be clear in concluding what the UK is required to do to bring itself into full compliance with its legal obligations: it should halt with immediate effect all authorisations and transfers of relevant weapons and items to Saudi Arabia”—
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I have been struck by the recent words of the international president of Médecins sans Frontières, Joanne Liu, who said:
“Is this the new normal: an MSF hospital bombed every month?”
We do not know that these are British munitions, but we do not know that they are not. Until we know the answer, should we not be stopping these arms sales completely?
Fabian Hamilton
Clearly there is a strong case to stop the arms sales immediately. I am pleased that the Chair of the International Development Committee and the Chairs of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, the Defence Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee have now re-formed the Committees on Arms Export Controls, which we used to call CAEC. I served on it during three Parliaments, so I know how it works, and I believe that it could examine carefully how British munitions and arms are being used by Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, I believe that the sales should be stopped.
I shall give the House the complete quotation from Philippe Sands:
“In the current circumstances we can be clear in concluding what the UK is required to do to bring itself into full compliance with its legal obligations: it should halt with immediate effect all authorisations and transfers of relevant weapons and items to Saudi Arabia, pending proper and credible enquiries into the allegations of serious violations…that have arisen and that could arise in the future, as addressed in this opinion and the sources here referred to.”
In other words, those sales should stop immediately.
I wish to conclude by making two more points. First, I have three key questions that I would like to put to the Minister. As we have heard, there have long been serious and credible allegations of war crimes against both sides. Now that these reports have been corroborated by a UN report, the Opposition have called for the suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia while that is being investigated. As we have heard, that has been backed by the Select Committee on International Development. Last week, the Minister said he was yet to read and study the UN report. He has now had the time to do that, so what does he make of it? Last week he promised to raise the report with the Saudis at the “highest level” this week, either at the counter-Daesh meeting or at the Syrian donors’ conference, which is taking place today. Has he had the chance to do so? Thirdly, the Government have consistently said that the reports must be investigated. What would he consider to be an adequate investigation?
Finally, we have heard some remarkable speeches today, not just from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby and the hon. Members for Congleton, for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), and for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), all of whom I had the privilege of serving with on the International Development Committee until last month, but the hon. Members for Charnwood, for Torbay (Kevin Foster), for Glasgow Central for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and, of course the Yemenis in this House—those who were born in Yemen—the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East. I hope that the Government can take the hints, listen to what has been said this afternoon and play a vital role in securing peace for the people of Yemen and the rest of the world.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
I have just under six minutes to answer this too short debate, and I cannot do justice to the quality and the detail of the questions and concerns that have been raised. As I have done in previous debates, I assure hon. Members that I will write to them to give them my best answer. This debate, short though it is—I join others in saying that we should have longer debates—has shown that there is interest, concern and expertise in this House.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for securing this important debate. As many hon. Members did, she started by talking about the humanitarian devastation in Yemen and said this was the forgotten war. I had the opportunity at the current conference on Syria to speak to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. I said, “Look at the support that Martin Kobler is given in Libya and that Staffan de Mistura is given in dealing with the Geneva talks, and compare that with the support given to Ismail Ahmed, the UN special envoy for Yemen. They are not on the same scale.” There is an acknowledgement that more needs to be done by the international community because of the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe taking place there.
The hon. Lady also mentioned concerns about oil and other assets needed to keep people alive getting into the country, as did others. She said that the UK is looking the other way, but, as we have heard in passionate speeches from Members on both sides of the House, Britain certainly is not looking the other way. We are one of the largest donors and supporters of the country. We are working to support the UN envoy and we are working towards a political solution. She touched on the 119 incidents mentioned by the UN report, and I intervened on her to qualify my own comments. The Opposition spokesman, whom I welcome to his place, asked me about that. I did raise the issue with the Saudi representatives at the Syria conference, and I also spoke to President Hadi on the phone today, raising the concerns about what is happening in Yemen. I also had the opportunity to speak to the UN envoy to raise the concerns about the scale and profile of what is happening. I am sorry that there has been a delay in the talks following the ceasefire that took place in December, and we are working hard to establish what needs to come first, before the ceasefire. I am referring to the confidence-building measures, which are the prelude to then making sure that the ceasefire can last.
My hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) gave a passionate speech, again calling this the forgotten war and talking about Yemen being a complex and ancient land. He also commended the role DFID is playing and our contributions there, and I concur with him on that.
The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) articulated his own experience of Yemen. Indeed, there are others in the House who have lived in or who were born in that country as well. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words of support. He touched on the wider concerns of extremism in the Arab peninsula, not least with al-Qaeda, which was responsible for a number of attacks on the mainland, and he made an important link between what is happening in the region and the security that we have in our own country as well, and that should not be forgotten.
The day before yesterday, I met the culture Minister of Oman and raised some of those concerns with him. It was a private meeting, but it was very helpful to have such a frank conversation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) stepped back and looked at the wider regional picture. He reminded the House that, from a maritime perspective, Yemen is one of the seven global pinch points in the world. He also talked about the threat from other extremist organisations, such as Daesh, which recently killed the governor of Aden. Indeed, al-Qaeda runs the town of Mukalla, which is a port on the southern coast. He also mentioned the effect of change by asking what would happen if the Administration in Saudi Arabia were changed. It is a liberal wing that is running that very conservative country. Of course we want change and modernisation, but it must be done at a workable pace.
Let me turn now to my friend, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), whom I have known for a couple of decades—we used to represent different student unions at university. It was a pleasure to stand in front of the International Development Committee, of which he is Chairman. I offer on record to meet him in private to talk about some of the detail, as I appreciate that he and his Committee members were a little frustrated in my not being able to answer all their questions. He talked about the city of Taiz. Sadly, President Hadi has confirmed that the city has again been cut off and that humanitarian aid cannot get in. The hon. Gentleman again raised the matter of the report of the UN expert panel. I can confirm that we are looking into its findings, but there is a UN process as well, which was pre-empted when the report was leaked. None the less, there is a process, and we will be following it and looking at the findings.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the formation of the Committees on Arms Export Control. It is absolutely fantastic. Why has it taken so long? It is an important aspect from a legislative perspective of holding the Executive to account. I am pleased to see that it is to be reformed. He also touched on the Human Rights Council resolution in October. There is a consensus there, and he will be aware of that. As much as any individual would want to push forward a particular line, we have to leave the room with what will actually work, and it was decided that the resolution would work. I should make it clear that the council then determined that it would provide assistance to Yemen’s national independent commission of inquiry, which will look into the details. It will then report back to the Human Rights Council. If it is felt that the inquiry is not independent enough, then that is the vehicle that can be used for that to be recognised, rather than having a general call for an independent inquiry.
Time is against me. I have so many other comments to make and answers to provide. As I have said, I will write to Members with my response to this debate. I can say that this Government take what is happening in Yemen very seriously. I personally have devoted an awful lot of time trying to remain at the forefront so that I have some influence. I recognise the concern that this House has over the human rights issues, and I will take them away with me. I am grateful that we have had this opportunity to debate these matters. I certainly hope that, the next time we do so, we are not limited to a 90-minute debate.
Kirsten Oswald
I thank everyone who has taken the time to come here and speak today. It is very heartening to see such a high turnout on a Thursday afternoon, which reflects, I think, the importance of the subject. There have been some very impassioned speeches, some of which reflected a great knowledge of Yemen. However, we are talking about a forgotten war, and I hope that our debate has had a positive impact in that regard.
I reiterate my calls for the UK Government to consider very carefully our position in relation to the arms that we sell and the training that we offer to Saudi Arabia. Humanitarian aid, access, and the need for a consistent and coherent peace process are key to providing the stability that Yemen and that whole area of the world need in order for it to move forward for the benefit of the people of Yemen and for the wider benefit of the global community.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the conflict in Yemen.
Delay Repay Scheme: Rail Commuters
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I thank the Rail Minister for being here to respond to this debate. I am going to speak about many painful personal experiences of delays on the trains; the Minister can share some of those with us as well, as I am sure that she has also had experiences of train delays. Like her, no doubt, I have received a huge quantity of emails, letters, Facebook messages and tweets from various constituents unsatisfied or very unhappy with the services currently provided by Southern and Thameslink, the two major train operating companies that run in my area.
The companies are providing a completely unacceptable standard of service. As the Rail Minister knows, they are consistently among the three lowest-scoring train operating companies in the national rail passenger survey carried out by the watchdog Transport Focus; it covers issues such as overall satisfaction, value for money, punctuality and reliability.
Delays and cancellations are often announced at the last minute, and overcrowded trains and bad customer service are a daily occurrence for suburban London commuters. We now have to add to the list of excuses the wrong kind of sunlight—a novel one for me. In the past, I have heard the excuse of a pheasant having been stuck in the shoe of a train brake; that was another novel explanation for a train delay. Combine those problems that passengers face with yearly rail fare hikes, and we see that there is a lot of pressure on commuters, who have not only to pay for the shambolic service but suffer lost time and increased stress.
The passenger compensation schemes are not fair and are largely unknown to passengers, which means that the train companies are getting away with a shocking service. How bad are things? The public performance measure gives the percentage of trains that arrived at their final destination within five minutes of their scheduled arrival time. Five years ago, over a period of one month in 2010-11, more than 1,000 Thameslink trains were delayed. Move on five years and the figure is 5,000 trains. In 2010-11, more than 2,000 Southern trains were delayed in one month; five years later, the figure is more than 8,000. I accept that part of that will simply be down to the fact that train companies are running more services, but to see train performance going down rather than improving over five years is a cause for concern.
The Minister knows about the current compensation schemes. The old-fashioned passenger charter is being phased out. Most train operating companies now operate the newer Delay Repay scheme, which is included in all the new franchise contracts. The scheme works in different ways for different train operating companies, but broadly speaking the one operated by Govia is representative. Passengers delayed by 30 minutes or more are entitled to 50% compensation of the single-fare price, which goes up to 100% for delays of 60 minutes or more. Compensation usually takes the form of rail vouchers to be collected from the relevant operator’s ticket office, but it can be paid out in cash if requested by the passenger—that is also not widely publicised.
What are the problems with the scheme? First, the compensation threshold is too high. For many suburban commuters the typical journey will be 30 to 45 minutes, so receiving compensation after a delay of 30 minutes, with full compensation for a delay of over 60 minutes, is an insult because that often means that the delay has to be the same length as, or longer than, the actual journey.
There is also a complete lack of standardisation. The only common element of Delay Repay schemes across the train operating companies is the 30-minute threshold for compensation—everything else differs. The circumstances in which compensation can be paid vary; some compensation schemes include the weather and planned engineering works, whereas others exclude them, so there is no clarity about what passengers will get.
The ways to claim compensation also differ from one train operating company to another, with compensation sometimes paid as vouchers and sometimes as cash. The preferred method—at least some train operating companies are moving towards this, and the sooner the better—would be for companies automatically to compensate passengers through their Oyster cards, smartcards and contactless cards or through the other electronic means that passengers use to pay for tickets.
The variety of ways in which compensation is paid, and the different schemes in operation, are clearly a source of confusion for staff as well. Which? is doing a lot of good work on this issue, and when its researchers looked into it at stations, 37% of them were given no information, or only part of the information they needed, about how long a delay needed to be before a refund was due. If even the staff in the station do not understand how or when compensation is payable, what chance do commuters have?
Compensation schemes are badly publicised, and it is hard to claim. A 2013 survey by Transport Focus, the independent watchdog, found that 88% of those eligible for compensation did not claim. A 2014 survey by the rail regulator showed that 67% of respondents knew not very much, or nothing, about their rights to compensation. A Which? survey revealed that only 36% of passengers remembered being informed of their rights after their last delay.
That points to a significant problem with train operating companies’ passenger information policies. It implies an unwillingness on the part of companies to make claiming compensation as easy as possible for their customers. On many occasions I have called on companies to make sure that, for every train that is delayed, where passengers would be entitled to compensation, that should be announced on the train. Preferably, as passengers get off the train, there should be members of staff handing out leaflets so that everyone knows they are eligible and everyone is certain how they can claim. Indeed, now that there are electronic displays on trains, they could also be triggered to ensure that passengers know.
The procedures for claiming compensation vary, and passengers can use different forms. Some companies offer email claims with a photo of the ticket. Others require an original ticket to be sent in—an option that I have used.
As to the forms of compensation, rail vouchers are the standard form, but train operating companies fail to advertise the fact that cash compensation is available on request, as per condition 42(d) of the national rail conditions of carriage. The Which? survey I referred to carried out an anonymous investigation at 102 stations, revealing that 63% of the time during the investigation people were not told they could receive compensation in an alternative form to vouchers, even after staff were prompted—perhaps to encourage them to remember that that was the case.
The fact that vouchers need to be picked up from ticket offices is another hurdle, and it means that passengers cannot necessarily get the best fares, given that online tickets booked in advance are often the cheapest.
There is currently a lack of enforcement. There is no ombudsman for rail companies, and that makes it very difficult to hold the train operating companies to account. Transport Focus, the independent watchdog, has no powers to make TOCs pay a refund. I am not alone in expressing concern about these issues. A super-complaint has been presented to the Office of Rail and Road outlining evidence of the consumer detriment in this market and inaction by train companies in making customers aware of their rights, with unnecessary complexities and barriers within the system. We expect the ORR to respond to that complaint by mid-March. I hope the Minister will say what she expects to come out of that and what action she might expect to take.
What is my proposal? Perhaps surprisingly, it will not necessarily encounter the degree of resistance, certainly from some of the train operating companies, that one might expect, as I understand that some are willing to entertain it. I propose that the delay threshold should be reduced such that commuters are entitled to compensation after 15 minutes of delay, when they would get 50% compensation, and after 30 minutes, when they would get 100% compensation. Rather than 30 and 60 minutes, the thresholds would be 15 and 30 minutes. Season ticket holders’ rights to compensation would have to be adapted accordingly.
What other things need to happen? As I have said, much better publicity is needed about the existing Delay Repay scheme, even if the scheme is not improved in the way that I suggest. I recently signed up to the email notifications that Southern and Thameslink give when there is disruption on their services. I do not know whether there has been a case of a train falling foul of the current 30-minute delay threshold since I have been receiving those emails—presumably many other passengers will now be receiving them—but I hope that if that happens in future they will make it very clear that people are entitled to claim compensation and include a link and an explanation about how they can do so. As I said, we need electronic announcements on trains. We need staff at stations handing out information. We need a degree of standardisation so that commuters, many of whom use different train operating companies, understand that there is a simple, standard process that they can follow, with the same claims procedure in every case. That would also help staff, who will often move from working for one train company to another. If they do not understand how the system works at the moment, then at least if there was only one system in place, there would be a better chance of their doing so.
Given the volume of rail complaints, we need to establish an ombudsman with real teeth to impose sanctions on the train operating companies. It was suggested to me in an email—I have no clear view on this at the moment, so I would be interested to hear the Minister’s view—that we should allow nominee companies, which are now active in the field of claiming compensation for airlines, to operate in the rail market as well, to get economies of scale and help passengers with associated charges. Perhaps if that happened, more passengers would claim, but we would not want to get lots of phone calls from them saying, “Have you had a train delay? Would you please call this number?” which would be very frustrating.
What are the advantages of my proposals? First, there is no doubt that a scheme where compensation kicked in at 15 minutes and 30 minutes on any train service anywhere would put more pressure on the train companies. If they knew they were going to get financial pain from running trains late or not having enough drivers, which is the usual excuse in the Southern area, they would make sure that they had more drivers, and so on. It would put more pressure on them to improve their performance. As I said, better advertising of the scheme would ensure that far more passengers were able to take advantage of the compensation. Although that would not necessarily reduce their stress levels on delayed trains, at least it would give them a bit more money in their pockets through part-compensation for the very poor services.
I will finish where I started by asking the Minister whether she will support my call for Delay Repay to kick in at 15 and 30 minutes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)
I thank the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) for securing this debate. Some people say that I seem to have drawn the short straw by having to participate in Adjournment debates on successive Thursdays, but I am always happy and keen to talk about the railways and what this Government are doing to try to improve them.
I agree with many points made by the right hon. Gentleman, including the fact that the compensation system is not working as well as it should and his comments about performance issues. Indeed, I chair a taskforce comprising the operators, Network Rail, Transport Focus and anyone who might be able to help us drive up performance in this crucial region.
May I crave your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker, and put on the record my personal thanks to the Network Rail team that has managed to fix the Corbridge landslip, which had completely disconnected the vital east-west line between Newcastle and Carlisle? The team has moved 35,000 tonnes of soil, the line is open and trains will run from next week. That is proof that the orange army really can deliver, and I want to make sure that that happens in the right hon. Gentleman’s region as well.
It might be helpful if I set out some of the improvements that are already happening. Delay Repay is a universal, standardised offer of compensation that has been adopted by 80% of rail companies. That addresses the right hon. Gentleman’s point about variability in what people are entitled to. As he has said, under Delay Repay passengers can claim 50% of a single fare for delays of 30 to 59 minutes; 100% of a single fare for delays of more than 60 minutes; and 100% of a return fare for delays of more than two hours. Ten operators use the scheme and it is being introduced nationally, along with franchising.
Interestingly, the scheme is among the most generous compensation schemes for rail passengers in Europe. I know that sometimes it does not feel like that, particularly if there are persistent delays, but there are countries that do almost nothing for customers who are delayed.
Claire Perry
The right hon. Gentleman anticipates a very important point—on which I also agree with him—that I will come on to address.
It is not enough to rest on saying that a general scheme is in place and being rolled out. The right hon. Gentleman raised two main, vital issues. First, he asked what passengers can do if there are shorter delays. I have had a look at journey times from his constituency. The average journey time for constituents of his travelling from Wallington to London Victoria is about 38 minutes, and for those travelling from Carshalton and Mitcham Junction it is 25 to 29 minutes. Clearly, it would be a bad day if the delay lasted as long as the journey time. That is why the Chancellor made it absolutely clear in the autumn statement that we will introduce a compensation level starting at 15 minutes. I want to do that quickly. We are, of course, working through the numbers. I cannot yet say what percentages will be paid and when, but the right hon. Gentleman can have an absolute assurance that in the near future a compensation scheme will be introduced right across the Delay Repay franchises, including the Govia Thameslink Railway: the clock will start ticking, quite rightly, at 15 minutes. That is absolutely appropriate.
Improvements were made to the scheme last year. The right hon. Gentleman is right to ask what other industry pays us in travel vouchers. We need to pay people in their own currency, to demonstrate respect for the time they have lost. Three main changes were made to the GTR compensation scheme last year, to the benefit of his constituents. First, when calculating compensation, it used to be assumed that a season ticket holder travelled every single day of the year. Now, holiday entitlement has been included in that. The net result of all those calculations is that if annual season ticket holders claim compensation, they will get £3.70 per journey instead of £3.30, which is a 12% increase in the compensation level. If they experience a 60-minute delay, which would be unlikely, and, indeed, catastrophic, the compensation will be substantially more—an additional 10%.
The second change that the right hon. Gentleman rightly focused on is that the industry now pays compensation in cash, not in vouchers. He will share my disappointment that there is not widespread knowledge about that, certainly among staff. I will talk a little about my expectations of the ORR super-complaint in a moment.
The third change is, I think, the most important. People do not have time to faff about trying to claim compensation. These are busy people, trying to get to work and home to their lives and families. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the introduction of automatic compensation. It is already happening. Certain operators offer automatic compensation if passengers buy a ticket online, so it can be linked to a specific journey. Others, including GTR, are linking automatic compensation payments to the use of a smart card, which has been rolled out for season tickets.
C2C, which, like GTR, has benefited from the south-east flexible ticketing programme—the Government’s great investment in smart ticketing in the south-east—will, from this month, provide automatic compensation of 3p per minute for every minute’s delay after two minutes. If someone is sitting on that train, even if they are only delayed for five minutes, their time is worth something. That is exactly the sort of scheme that works well for constituents such as those represented by the right hon. Gentleman, who take shorter journeys and for whom those persistent minutes of delay are very annoying. That is something that we are monitoring and we would like to see it rolled out, particularly across the metro franchises.
The right hon. Gentleman raised an important point: it is completely unacceptable that all these measures are being put in place but, as Passenger Focus found, only 12% of passengers claim the compensation to which they are entitled. That is made doubly annoying by the fact that train companies receive compensation from Network Rail and from each other if delays are created—the so-called section 8 compensation payments. Money is flowing into those train companies, and it should be flowing out to all passengers who are entitled to compensation.
Southern and GTR have a “reasonable endeavours” clause in their franchise about making announcements. We are determined that they should meet that, and one of the measures I am looking at is whether to get all the train companies to publish their numbers for compensation claims so that we can see, relative to the number of passengers they are carrying, which ones are doing well. As the right hon. Gentleman says, making announcements is not rocket science. Indeed, some companies do so, particularly on their Twitter feeds, where they say: “This is a delayed train, and you are entitled to claim compensation. Here’s how you do it.” By the way, rather than having people muck about with bits of paper, the claim forms now can generally be downloaded or completed online. In fact, GTR has an app that enables passengers to submit their delay claims straight from their mobiles.
The right hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about nominee companies and airlines. Such companies exist in the rail sector. I do not know whether I am supposed to say this, but companies such as Delay Repay Sniper will do all the work and take all the hassle out of the process. I want people to get the compensation that they are entitled to. I mentioned the smart card, on which GTR will offer an automatic refund by 2017. We will not stop here; we will keep pushing for better compensation.
The right hon. Gentleman made a suggestion about announcements on trains. The new fleet of class 700 trains that will start running on the franchise this year have lots of onboard information, and it is perfectly reasonable to have an electronic message that states, “You are entitled to compensation if you are on this train.” Those are all good suggestions.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned performance. In an ideal world, compensation would be zero, because the trains would all get there on time. I am sure that we all want that. There might be an element of apples and pears in the statistics that he cited about historical cancellations, because the franchise was re-let in a very different form two years ago. It is now the biggest in the country, with about 20% of Britain’s passenger journeys, and that may have something to do with the big increase in the cancellation numbers.
I would be the first to say that the performance level is not good enough. I have pulled out the performance statistics. They show that about four out of five trains on the Southern metro service, which serves the right hon. Gentleman’s lines, arrive on time according to the public performance measure, which is about 77%. I am interested in trains arriving at the right time, for which the figure is 51%, and that is substantially better than what it was last year.
The point that so many people have collectively missed is that the impact of a crowded train of 1,000 people arriving late on the British economy is very substantial in terms of the productivity of that train load of passengers. My view is that performance on that very crowded part of the rail system should be driven up and made substantially better, because the aggregate level of human misery created by delays is higher and the hit to the productivity of the British economy caused by delaying millions of people is also higher.
I have therefore challenged the entire group of people operating that part of the railway, from the head of Network Rail downwards, to drive it back on to a high-performance route by the end of 2018. By then, the London Bridge works will be substantially complete; we will have the new class 700 fleet, which will offer so much relief in terms of better trains and increased capacity; and we will largely be through the Thameslink programme, which has created disruption for so many people. We must stay focused on how we can deliver a high-performance railway at that time. However, it is not enough to wait until then. I have made it absolutely clear to the operators and Network Rail that performance needs to improve now, so that although people can claim compensation, they will not necessarily need to do so because their trains will be on time.
Tom Brake
Will the Minister clarify one point? She said that at some point in the future—perhaps she will speculate on when—compensation might kick in after 15 minutes. Given that only 80% of TOCs have currently signed up to Delay Repay, does she expect 100% of them to sign up to that new, enhanced system for 15-minute delays?
Claire Perry
The current intention is to put Delay Repay in the franchising commitments. Delay Repay may cover 80% of the TOCs, but the vast majority of passengers are covered by it.
I want to say a few words about the ORR super-complaint. It is absolutely right that something that is clearly not working for consumers is picked up by Which? —a great organisation—and I have met Which? to discuss the super-complaint. My expectation of what will come out of it is that there will be a clearer understanding of who is ultimately responsible for sanctioning companies that do not pay compensation. Companies do pay compensation: there is very little evidence that they do not pay customers who are entitled to it, but the process is tortuous and much more difficult than it should be. We absolutely expect that, through a combination of the ORR, the Department for Transport and normal consumer measures, the situation will improve. Compensation will continue to improve, and pressure will be applied to ensure it is paid to those who need it. We are absolutely committed to driving up performance on this vital part of Britain’s railways.
However, I want to say a final word about the cost of rail fares, which the right hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned. In fact, a season ticket from Carshalton costs £1,676 a year, not including a travelcard. That is only £6.45 a journey, which is not necessarily a huge amount, but people need to feel that that is money well spent and that they will have a reliable journey for that amount.
By the way, that is why we have frozen rail fares at RPI plus zero for the duration of this Parliament, which is the first time that has happened in many years. While the disruption is going on, we do not want rail fares to outstrip wage inflation, as has happened for the past few years. For the first time in a decade, wages are rising quite a lot faster than rail fares.
Fundamentally, we are making a record level of investment in the railways, but unless passengers see and feel the benefits, both in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency and right across the country, that investment is not delivering. We are determined to make sure it delivers.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Corrections
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Treasury
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Harriett Baldwin
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster spoke up for his constituency. He mentioned a problem with interest rate swap claims running out of time, which I would like to take up with him on a separate occasion, if I may. I want to clarify that the power to appoint deputy governors is not the Governor’s alone; it is actually an appointment of the Queen, with the consent of the Chancellor.
[Official Report, 1 February 2016, Vol. 605, c. 699.]
Letter of Correction from Harriet Baldwin:
An error has been identified in my winding-up speech on the Second Reading of the Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [Lords] on 1 February 2016.
The correct response should have been:
Harriett Baldwin
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster spoke up for his constituency. He mentioned a problem with interest rate swap claims running out of time, which I would like to take up with him on a separate occasion, if I may. I want to clarify that the power to appoint deputy governors is not the Governor’s alone; it is actually an appointment of the Queen, on the advice of the Chancellor.
Financial Conduct Authority
The following is an extract from the debate on the Financial Conduct Authority on 1 February 2016:
Harriett Baldwin
The FCA has established a redress scheme for small businesses that were mis-sold interest rate hedging products to ensure that eligible businesses are compensated. So far the scheme has paid out on 18,000 cases, and more than £2 billion has been paid in redress, including £464 million to deal with consequential losses.
[Official Report, 1 February 2016, Vol. 605, c. 747.]
Letter of correction from Harriett Baldwin:
An error has been identified in my response to the debate on the Financial Conduct Authority.
The correct response should have been:
Harriett Baldwin
The FCA has established a redress scheme for small businesses that were mis-sold interest rate hedging products to ensure that eligible businesses are compensated. So far banks have sent more than 18,000 determination letters, and more than £2 billion has been paid in redress, including £464 million to deal with consequential losses.
Energy BILL [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 11 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 11 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 10—Carbon capture and storage strategy for the energy industry—
‘(1) It is the duty of the Secretary of State to—
(a) develop, promote and implement a comprehensive national strategy for carbon capture and storage (CCS) for the energy industry to deliver the emissions reductions required to meet the fifth and subsequent, carbon budgets at the scale and pace required;
(b) develop that strategy in consultation with HM Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Oil and Gas Authority, the National Infrastructure Commission and other relevant stakeholders including the CCS industry; and
(c) have that strategy in place by June 2017 and report to Parliament on the progress of its implementation every three years thereafter.
(2) The strategy provided for by subsection (1) shall, amongst other things, include—
(a) the development of infrastructure for carbon dioxide transport and storage;
(b) a funding strategy for implementation including provision of market signals sufficient to build confidence for private investment in the CCS industry;
(c) priorities for such action in the immediate future as may be necessary to allow the orderly and timely development and deployment of CCS after 2020.”
Callum McCaig
The future of carbon capture and storage became a lot more opaque following the Government’s decision just after the autumn spending review to scrap the £1 billion of funding for the competition to deploy CCS at Peterhead and White Rose. That has caused a not unsubstantial amount of consternation within the nascent CCS industry, which thought it had a clear path to developing a viable proposal that would enable the industry to get off its feet, with support from the Government to develop something that would be to the advantage of British industry and have the potential, according to the Committee on Climate Change, to deliver the carbon reduction targets in a cost-effective manner. That decision has been made, and however regrettable it is, we are where we are.
The new clause calls on the Government to bring forward a strategy in conjunction with relevant Departments and, importantly, the devolved Administrations. I know the Scottish Government have worked closely with industry and indeed the Department of Energy and Climate Change on the phase 2 projects, including joint funding of research into the proposals on Grangemouth. That proposal was important. As for the timing, June 2017 may seem a little far away, but I think that timescale is required, given where we will be by the time the Bill becomes an Act. Considerable discussions will be required—ideally at the next carbon budget—to establish what the UK Government are going to do on carbon reduction as a whole, and in particular to allow a CCS strategy to be developed appropriately. I see no reason why we should not all wish to do that, and I urge hon. Members to support the new clause.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
I rise to speak to new clause 10. Hon. Members may observe that new clause 10 is remarkably similar to new clause 4; alternatively, one could say that new clause 4 is remarkably similar to new clause 10—it depends on one’s point of view.
We hope to see a comprehensive carbon capture and storage strategy developed to put in place the various structures and arrangements necessary to enhance the CCS industry and open the possibility of development over the next 20 years. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen South mentioned, the abrupt ending of the CCS pilots in Peterhead and White Rose, with very little notice, forms a sad background. It was widely assumed that not only was it the end of those two pilots, but carbon capture and storage was dead. I would argue that that is certainly not the case. Notwithstanding the ending of those pilots, it is vital that we make solid progress toward making carbon capture and storage a central part of our energy strategies for the future, particularly up to 2050.
The Committee has discussed how the North sea might play a role in that strategy. At the storage end of carbon capture and storage, not only could the North sea provide a storage facility for some schemes in the UK, but it has the capacity to accommodate easily substantial deployment of CCS across the UK and Europe; in fact, it could be a world-class carbon repository. We have also discussed how best to ensure that decommissioning in the North sea is undertaken with due regard to what carbon capture and storage might require in the future. I observe that several sentences relating to carbon capture and storage that were inserted in the Bill in another place have not been removed by the Government in the Commons, so I imagine they will remain in the Bill as it completes its stages in both Houses of Parliament. There are therefore elements in the Bill already that suggest a requirement for greater strategy where CCS is concerned.
In addition to our commitment to the strategy, I suggest that Government Members should support it, given its appearance in that apparently flexible friend, the Conservative manifesto. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South said in a previous sitting that we should look very carefully at the wording of the manifesto and immediately do whatever it says about the future of wind, particularly onshore wind, and I imagine that Conservative Members are keen to do the same for other elements of their party manifesto. The manifesto stated that the Government would support carbon capture and storage by putting £1 billion into a pilot project, but that has not really been carried out yet. I imagine that Conservative Members want to make up for that bump in the road—the Government’s failure to deliver on that part of the manifesto—by ensuring that the manifesto’s wider commitment to carbon capture and storage is fulfilled. That strongly implies that the Government need to set out a proper CCS strategy.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I rise to speak in support of new clause 10, which stands in the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Southampton, Test and for Norwich South, and new clause 4.
No one doubts—at least, I hope not—that carbon capture and storage is accepted as a crucial element if we are to keep total global emissions within safe limits and avoid irreparable harm to our planet. As the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Maria van der Hoeven, says, it is essential. Different projections give slightly different numbers, but the broad scientific consensus is that the sequestration process should account for between a sixth and a fifth of the net reduction needed by 2050 if we are to keep global warming below 2° C, let alone the 1.5° C that emerged from Paris as a result of the efforts of the high ambition coalition, in which the UK was a leading player. I give the Government due credit for their role in that.
I do not wholly endorse the view expressed by Sir David King, the former Government chief scientific adviser, who argued that
“CCS is the only hope for mankind”
but the consequences of not making sufficient progress are stark. As the Prime Minister put it in 2012 during an appearance before the Liaison Committee, if CCS is not available,
“you are in quite serious water, because you would be only relying on nuclear and renewables. If carbon capture and storage didn’t come forward and you had a very tough carbon target, you would have no unabated gas at all.”
Lack of sufficient progress on CCS will therefore result in either the UK failing to meet its climate change objectives or the Government’s planned expansion in gas-fired generation being obsolete by 2030.
We know that the technology works. The Prime Minister no longer holds that view, I believe, given his recent remark that he did not think the technology stacks up, but witness after witness who came before the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change during its recent hearings on CCS said that that was plain wrong. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test outlined, 22 projects across the world show that CCS is working. Statoil’s Sleipner West project, now in its 20th year, captures 1 million tonnes of CO2 a year, and Exxon Mobil’s Shute Creek gas processing plant in Wyoming started in 1986 and captures 7 million tonnes of CO2 a year. Despite teething problems, the world’s first major commercial power plant to employ CCS, the Boundary Dam project in Canada, will capture 90% of the emissions from that 110 MW coal unit. We know that the technology works. The problem is that, once those 22 projects are up to speed, they will shave only 0.1% off global emissions each year, so we need a strategy for transportation and storage in particular to bring CCS to scale quickly.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
I gently point out to the hon. Gentleman that the reference to CCS in the Conservative party’s manifesto was as an example, not as a manifesto commitment.
Matthew Pennycook
We will have to agree to disagree again. I am probably one of a handful of people who have read the manifesto in the name of which so much is being enacted. I think that is just another example of the Government trying to have it both ways and to interpret what I and, more importantly, industry and commercial funders took to be a clear statement of the Government’s intent.
It is worth bearing in mind—the Minister touched on this—the context in which the decision was made. Funding was abruptly withdrawn at a time when a number of companies had been working tirelessly for many years to progress their projects, and just weeks before they were expected to submit their bids. Business and investors were given no notice. We heard evidence in the Select Committee that the industry first got wind of this through the Financial Times, when it reported expectations of the Government about that settlement. That was just a few hours before Department of Energy and Climate Change officials posted the notice on the London Stock Exchange and a week after the “reset” speech in which CCS was mentioned as a central part of the Government’s energy policy. To say it was unexpected is an understatement. As a witness in the Select Committee said, it was a shabby way to treat those involved in trying to further this technology.
It is important to bear in mind that millions of pounds of public money have already been wasted, for example, in proving up the Goldeneye store for the Peterhead project through two competition processes, or in the White Rose projects. Those are public investments and public money has been put into them, but they are now at risk of abandonment and sterilisation. Like the Government’s decisions on onshore wind and in a host of other areas, it reflects incredibly badly on their relationship with business and their ability to drive long-term investment in this area.
As Richard Simon-Lewis, financing director of Capture Power Ltd told the Committee, the decision had
“the effect of taking the wind out of our sails. I think the cancellation by UK Government of the competition signals to the market that there is a question mark in the UK Government’s mind over CCS.”
I think the only thing captured here is UK energy policy by Her Majesty’s Treasury. The justification given that in a tight spending review—we all accept that it is tight—now is not the time for this simply does not stack up.
Waiting or buying in technology from other parts of the world will have an impact and costs down the line. It is important that the Government come forward with a strategy for carbon capture and storage. We do not have one in place as things stand. We have uncertainty and muddle.
Philip Boswell (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
I should state an interest, having previously been involved in the carbon capture project at Peterhead—I moved it from Longannet to Peterhead—so I know something about the issue. I have been on record a few times exactly anticipating this reduction. Matthew Bell, the new chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, when asked what we would have to do without CCS to hit our targets replied:
“You really need to virtually completely decarbonise your transport sector and completely decarbonise your heating sectors, in order to deliver on the 2050 ambition, without being able to benefit from the CCS.”
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is extremely unlikely?
Matthew Pennycook
I know it is extremely unlikely. As we touched on at our previous sitting when discussing onshore wind, the Secretary of State has admitted that the Government do not have the right policies in place to meet their targets on heat and transport. From what I can see, they do not even have any institutions within Government to make it happen. We have been told there is an interministerial group on carbon growth but we do not know how many times it has met or what its terms of reference are to drive forward progress in this area. The implication of that, as I will come to, is that we will see greater costs down the line if we do not get serious about CCS.
We need a strategy. The Minister has explained why she believes the Oil and Gas Authority’s function should not be extended to incorporate the regulation of CCS activity. I disagree with the case she made, but I hope she does not dispute the need for more clarity in this area and for some kind of strategy. In the absence of an effective carbon price, we need to have a comprehensive strategy from the Government on CCS development and deployment. Such a strategy would be formed in consultation with a number of Departments, including the Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the OGA and the CCS industry itself, as the clause makes clear.
The strategy would have to include some of the following elements, which I mention in the hope that the Minister will take them on board. It would need a strategy for maintaining those strategically important pieces of UK-critical infrastructure, such as Peterhead, that have been put at risk by the recent decision to withdraw CCS funding. It would need provisions for the development particularly of transport and storage, to incentivise what we know we need, which is large clusters of CCS, where multiple operations are linked into a single plant, because that is how to get the economies of scale. It would need a strategy to facilitate the industrial application of CCS, particularly in the iron and steel industry, cement production and petrochemicals. Those three sectors account for 45% of CO2 emissions that need to be captured by 2050.
Above all, we need a strategy because the private sector needs some certainty about funding, so that it can build confidence, investment and support for CCS projects, importantly where the finances in such projects do not rely on carbon being reinjected to maintain reservoir pressure in producing oil and gas fields. That happens in a large majority of the CCS projects that are up and running, and is, I think, questionable in terms of its long-term impact on climate.
Why do we need to do this for funding, to touch on the point made by the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill? If we do not get a strategy soon, not only will the UK lose direction, but it will cost us a great deal of money. As I said, a significant amount of UK taxpayer money has already been wasted as a result of the abrupt decision to withdraw the £1 billion CCS funding. That is why the National Audit Office is going to look into the matter, and why the companies involved are now seeking to recover the costs they have sunk into the projects. There are other greater and more significant long-term costs at stake: the costs of avoiding dangerous climate change if CCS does not come forward to scale.
Let me put on the record the assessment of the Energy Technologies Institute. According to the ETS, delays in deployment as a result of the CCS competition cancellation have
“a high chance of significantly increasing the cost of carbon abatement to the UK economy. Delay adds an estimated £1-2 billion per year throughout the 2020s to the otherwise best achievable cost for reducing carbon emissions.”
While delays in CCS infrastructure are still likely to mature, the legacy effect of the Government’s decision will in the decades ahead
“still result in an additional cost estimated to be around £2–3 billion per year”.
From a public interest perspective we have to get this right. We need a comprehensive strategy and now is the time to do it. I urge the Minister seriously to consider the new clauses.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
May I say what a pleasure it has been to serve under your chairmanship over the last couple of weeks, Mr Davies?
As the Opposition Whip in this Committee, I would not normally speak at any length, but I hope Members will forgive me for making an exception to speak in support of new clause 10. I do so as an MP from Yorkshire, where the decision to cancel the £1 billion CCS competition fund has been a real blow for the region, as I have no doubt it was for Peterhead and for other hopeful projects and their surrounding areas up and down the country.
Earlier in the week, we heard from the Minister, the hon. Member for Daventry and others about the tenacity with which this Government are committed to delivering an end to any public subsidy for onshore wind. I heard the Minister’s intervention earlier and perhaps that is the very crux of the issue. I hope that Members will not mind my quoting from a sitting earlier in the week, when that commitment to end subsidies for onshore wind was referred to as an absolute “manifesto commitment”—no ifs, no buts—and I think people might be forgiven for assuming that the commitment to end the £1 billion fund may have come with the same terms.
Holly Lynch
I think people would be forgiven for making that assumption, having read the manifesto.
The White Rose project at Drax was set to be the first CCS project of its kind in Europe and it had been awarded Government funding to carry out a feasibility study, as has been mentioned. The project, once it was up and running, was expected to generate enough low-carbon electricity to power 630,000 households, with hopes that up to 2,000 jobs would be created, bringing much needed investment, jobs and growth to Yorkshire. If Yorkshire had been the first region in Europe to get CCS up and running on this scale, the economic benefits of exporting the expertise, the skills and the transferrable technologies all over the world could have been such a boost for the local and wider economies. With the cancellation of the £l billion fund, we also sent €300 million euros from the European Commission back to the Commission. That sum had been awarded to the White Rose project in match funding, because the project was the Commission’s preferred option in its NER 300 competition.
Getting to this stage has involved years of hard work and missed opportunities. The Energy and Climate Change Committee published a report in 2014 urging the Government to reach a final investment decision on the two projects that had made it through to the final stages of the competition by early 2015, which was in line with the Government’s original timetable. The report stated that it was critical that the Government did not waste any more time on unnecessarily delaying the start of the first CCS projects, stressing that we had already lost a decade. It has taken years to bring viable schemes such as the White Rose project into alignment with a Government commitment to invest in the technology and into alignment with the European Commission’s NER 300 timeframe, in order to secure match funding. With the cancelling of the scheme, we are now much further away from bringing those projects online than we were in 2014.
Against that backdrop, I urge the Government to consider the future for CCS, to commit to a strategy and to recognise that new clause 10, and new clause 4 for that matter, present the opportunity to do just that. I think we all agreed earlier in the week about the importance of investor confidence and we have talked about it again today. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South made a great analogy about picking the furthest point on the horizon and getting our troops there as fast as we can. In CCS, it is fair to say that investor confidence could not now be any lower. The chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, Dr Luke Warren, said the announcement to axe the fund was “devastating”. He went further, saying:
“Moving the goalposts just at the time when a four-year competition is about to conclude is an appalling way to do business.”
I confess that I am still confused about what the Government strategy now is. Ministers have spoken about a future for CCS, but the Prime Minister’s suggestion that there are doubts hanging over both the technology and the economics has really left potential investors with nowhere to go. That is why I ask the Committee to consider supporting new clause 10, to give Members, but most importantly the sector, a much clearer picture about what the future for CCS now means.
Andrea Leadsom
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Davies.
New clauses 4 and 10 would place a duty on the Secretary of State to produce and implement a CCS strategy by June 2017, and to report to Parliament on progress every three years. I very much welcome the debate on CCS today. I recognise that the spending review announcement last year confirming that the £1 billion of ring-fenced capital funding to support the CCS competition was no longer available has led to questions regarding the Government’s CCS policy, but I can assure the Committee that the Government’s view remains that CCS has a potentially important role in the long-term decarbonisation of the UK’s power and industrial sectors.
The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich raised the issue of bidders’ costs; I can tell him that the competition rules were clear that the Department would not meet bidders’ costs and that the competition was subject to value for money considerations.
Andrea Leadsom
Let me make some progress.
As hon. Members have said, the matter was subject to a very difficult spending review where all capital infrastructure costs were reviewed and measured against clearly set out value for money targets, and the competition did not meet those targets, but that is not to say that CCS does not play a part; it certainly does.
The Prime Minister is regularly accused of saying that CCS does not work. In fact, he said that at the moment it is not economic where it is already working, so it does not represent value for money. Hon. Members have asked whether we are effectively turning out back on CCS and not preparing ourselves, and they have asked about when we bring on new gas as part of new policy reset. I can assure hon. Members that any new gas plants for power generation will be CCS-ready, so there is no sense that, by not doing certain things now, we are closing the door for the future.
The Committee on Climate Change argued that meeting the 2050 targets would cost more without CCS, but we are absolutely not ruling out CCS. I want to make that clear.
Callum McCaig
The Minister mentioned that the competition was clear that the companies involved would not have their risks or costs mitigated by the Government. The problem that the companies have, and that I and other hon. Members have, is that the competition did not conclude. The rules of the game were ripped up at the 11th hour. Does the fact that the competition was incomplete change the Minister’s interpretation of the competition’s rules?
Andrea Leadsom
No, it does not.
The Government continue to invest in the development of CCS. This includes investing more than £130 million in CCS research and development since 2011. For example, in October last year we invested £1.7 million to support three innovative CCS technologies—Carbon Clean Solutions, C-Capture Ltd, and FET Engineering Ltd—and there is the potential to reduce costs. We have continued to support, jointly with the Scottish Government, the CCS developer, Summit Power, with £4.2 million in funding to undertake industrial research and development at its proposed CCS Caledonia clean energy plant in Grangemouth in Scotland.
We have invested £2.5 million in a project to investigate a suite of five stores for the storage of carbon dioxide in the North and Irish seas. We have continued to invest in the development of industrial CCS, providing £1 million to Tees Valley for a feasibility study on an industrial CCS cluster in Teesside. We remain committed to exploring with Teesside how to progress its industrial CCS proposals as set out in the area’s devolution deal, published last October, and in the context of the Lord Heseltine-led taskforce on Teesside.
Through our international climate fund, we have invested £60 million in developing CCS capacity and action in priority countries, including Indonesia, South Africa, Mexico and China, and we work with CCS partners, including the United States and Canada, through the international carbon sequestration leadership forum.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
I do not think anyone would argue that the Government have not made financial commitments to the specific technologies. I am looking at the manifesto again—I know we are obsessing about this—but it says,
“We will protect our planet for our children”,
and it mentions
“committing £1 billion for carbon capture and storage.”
Most members of the public would see that as a straightforward commitment of £1 billion, and yet it has been taken away. The point is that a thread seems to be running through the Bill and the rest of the Government’s actions, whether on community energy, on the subsidies and tax exemptions for solar tariffs, on ending the renewables obligation a year early, or on carbon capture and storage. They are making it more difficult and more expensive for investment to come into renewables by pulling the rug from under the feet of these nascent industries. The important thing is that the Government are making investment in this country’s renewables sector less attractive and forcing up the price of low-carbon technologies.
Andrea Leadsom
Only yesterday, in a debate in Westminster Hall, the hon. Gentleman and I were discussing the very real issue of fuel poverty in this country. We were discussing the plight of people who cannot afford to heat their homes, yet today he is advocating more subsidies and more billpayer investment in technologies when I have already made it very clear that we have not gone ahead with the competition project because of the relative value for money versus other infrastructure projects. This is about protecting consumers. The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways.
Similarly, the hon. Gentleman talks about cutting subsidies, but although we continue to support the renewables sector, which is absolutely amazing and I pay tribute to it for its enormous success, he must see that as its costs come down so should the subsidies that are paid for by people who cannot afford to heat their homes. He must agree with that. I just cannot understand why yesterday he was arguing that we should be cutting costs and today he is arguing that we should be increasing them.
Clive Lewis
I can answer that. Ending the renewables obligation a year early has saved the average consumer 30p a year off their bill, yet we know that the Carbon Capture & Storage Association has concluded that CCS could save the average consumer £82 a year off their bill by 2030. It is a false economy. The Government are either going to be saying in a few years’ time, “We’re not going to meet our carbon targets,” or they will have to go for a more costly way of bringing carbon down and out of our economy. That is the reality. Ultimately, this is about taking a long-term view, not a short-term one.
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman hangs himself with those remarks. He is saying, “Don’t save 30p today; save £82 by 2030.” Yesterday, we were discussing fuel poverty. The Government do see a role for CCS in our long-term decarbonisation efforts, but the point is that people are unable to heat their homes today. He derides 30p off people’s energy bills, but the central case is that it is £30 million saved over a one-year period or, at the most, if we had greater than expected deployment, up to £270 million. Why does he not write the cheque? If he thinks it is a trivial amount of money, I am very happy to accept his cheque and we can see whether we should continue with these things. It is simply unconscionable to try to equate something that you might achieve by 2030, according to some think-tank, with the very real issues today, including the state of our economy and a very difficult spending review, and the reality of people who simply cannot afford to heat their homes.
Andrea Leadsom
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman one last time, but then I will continue.
Clive Lewis
Thank you, Minister; you are being very generous with your time. On fuel poverty, I will say what I think your fellow Conservative Members were saying yesterday, which is that the key thing for them was that energy efficiency has fallen through the floor. The green deal is finished and the energy company obligation has no funding beyond 2017. That leaves a big gap by 2018. On your own estimates, you are not going to achieve your own targets for warming and insulating people’s homes for another century, so I will take no lessons from the Minister or Government Members on energy efficiency and fuel poverty.
The Chair
Order. I hope that in future the hon. Gentleman will not drag me into the debate, because I am not expressing any opinions. If he wants to refer to the Minister, he should refer to her, rather than to me.
Andrea Leadsom
I think we will leave it there. We are straying well out of order in terms of our discussion of CCS. All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that he just put a lot of words into mouths that were not said yesterday. I made it clear from the Front Bench that the Government are absolutely committed, in all our policies, to being the consumer champion and to doing everything we can to keep energy bills down. It is therefore unconscionable to try to tie this in as if somehow spending more billpayers’ money on CCS would save billpayers money in the short term.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister give way on that point?
Andrea Leadsom
No, I think we have had that discussion.
As part of our commitment to the future of CCS, we will continue to engage widely, including with Lord Oxburgh’s CCS advisory group, which met for the first time yesterday. I have also met the all-party parliamentary group on CCS, whose meeting I attended and spoke at last month, and the joint Government-industry CCS development forum, which I co-chair and which met at the end of last year. We are engaging widely with the CCS industry on what more can be done, supporting individual pilot schemes and measures to try to bring costs down, and ensuring that what we are building to maintain our energy security will be CCS-ready.
We need to take this opportunity to get the next steps right. We will then set out our thinking for the way forward for CCS, using the expert advice from industry, Lord Oxburgh’s group and the APPG. I hope that I have reassured hon. Members that the new clauses are unnecessary as the Government are already considering how they can support the further development of CCS.
Callum McCaig
The Minister has spoken a lot. Splitting hairs on what is a commitment and what is not is perhaps interesting for folks watching elsewhere given the voracity of the defence of a Tory party manifesto commitment to end new subsidies for onshore wind that could, in fairness, be read in a multitude of ways. When is a commitment not a commitment? When they do not want to do it. It was clear in the manifesto that it should happen. That it has not is regrettable. I am interested that the Minister believes that there will be no comeback from any of the companies involved in the bidding process. That may essentially be welcome for the sake of the taxpayer, but it is by no means assured and underlines the Government’s atrocious handling of the competition. I want them to make amends and to provide a clear strategy for the CCS industry.
Philip Boswell
Does my hon. Friend agree that there is something striking about the Government’s contradiction? The Minister spoke about fuel poverty, which we all agree must be addressed, but, almost in the same breath, she supports a £92.50 strike price for EDF for a French Government power station. Where was the due diligence when they are now considering a £37 billion debt? With renegotiation probably on its way, the price will only go up over 35 years. It never goes down. At the same time, they have cancelled the RO for electricity when some of the prices for renewable wind are actually much cheaper. The Minister cannot have it both ways. Instead, there is a blind focus on the rash dash for gas and nuclear, and we are walking away from solar, from CCS, from onshore wind and from the green investment bank. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a contradiction?
Callum McCaig
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I agree with my hon. Friend’s assessment. The inherent contradictions and the differing values that are placed on certain technologies, depending on the voracity of opposition from certain Tory Back Benchers, mean that the criteria are perhaps not applied anything remotely near fairly. That lack of clarity, vision and planning is why the Government need to put strategies in place. That is what the new clause and new clause 10, tabled by Labour Members, seek to do. They are remarkably similar because we have engaged in similar manners with the industry, which is crying out for clarity from the Government.
Andrea Leadsom
I assure the hon. Gentleman that Lord Oxburgh’s group on CCS will be advising the Government. We have recommended that the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill be invited to join that group, because we agree that it will be important for Scottish Members to take part, give their thoughts and views and have an input into that.
Callum McCaig
I thank the Minister for that. That would be sensible; my hon. Friend has considerable expertise in this area and would make a significant contribution to that group.
We need to be careful in this House to recognise the difference between Scottish National party Members of this Parliament and of the Scottish Government. It is clear that we have different roles. While we are of the same party, I cannot speak on behalf of the Scottish Government or commit the Scottish Government to things, in the same way that Labour Members cannot commit the Welsh Government to things. Recognition of the different roles and responsibilities of the different Parliaments, Governments and Executives is required, in order for the strategy to happen. New clause 4 would achieve that in a marginally better way than new clause 10, and I hope it will win hon. Members’ support.
Dr Whitehead
Frankly, the Minister’s response to these measures was really poor. She did not speak in a really poor way—as always, she spoke eloquently and comprehensively—but the material she had to deal with in her response was, as anyone can judge, extremely poor in its own right. Giving a few small grants to particular projects, having a working party—useful though it is—and, as the Minister mentioned, an aim for new gas-fired plants, if they are built, to be CCS-ready is not enough. I could easily make my house burglar-ready by leaving the doors and windows open when I go out; that would not necessarily mean I had a great a strategy concerning crime.
The substance of what the Minister had to say about what the Government are doing on CCS only underlined the need for a comprehensive strategy and emphasised Opposition Members’ criticisms that have arisen from about how confused and disoriented industry and the whole sector are at the moment about an appropriate way forward on CCS.
In short, the Minister had no answer to the question of whether there should be a CCS strategy in future. I was sorry that she did not even answer my question about whether she continued to endorse the nearest thing we have to a CCS strategy: the CCS road map of 2012. I hope she will rectify that omission today. Does she endorse that road map? Does she think the Government should continue to operate on the basis of that road map?
Andrea Leadsom
I assure the hon. Gentleman that my Department is looking carefully at our next steps for CCS, and although the specific strategy that he refers to may no longer be the approach that we take, a further strategy for CCS will come from my Department in due course.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 6—Contract for Difference: devolution—
“In Section D1 of Part 2 of Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998, in the exceptions, insert—
“Exception 2: The subject-matter of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Energy Act 2013.””
This new Clause would devolve control of Contract for Difference in Scotland to the Scottish Parliament.
New clause 12—Contracts for Difference—
“After section 13(3) of the Energy Act 2013 insert—
“(3A) An allocation round must be held no less than annually in each year in which the UK is not on target to meet the 2020 EU renewable energy target.””
Callum McCaig
I thought that we were having another vote, so I was not quite ready. You have taken me by surprise, Mr Davies, but I shall soldier on valiantly.
Many of our discussions during the last few days of this Committee have been about subsidies for onshore wind and how they can best be dealt with. I am not sure that we have dealt with them in the best manner possible, but there we are. The Minister has said today, in debate between her and the hon. Member for Norwich South, that as the costs come down, so should the subsidies. The renewables obligation was not perfect in its operation. That is probably widely accepted and why it was replaced with a much better form of subsidy or price control or stabilisation mechanism—whatever one wishes to call it. I am referring to contracts for difference. That model has provided a competitive option whereby energy producers’ projects come forward and suggest a price that they can provide their electricity at. That has brought a greater sense of competition and a greater bearing down on costs. It is an important part of the development of the industries to enable us to meet our carbon commitments and, I would argue, to deal with our security of supply issues in a cost-effective manner.
New clause 5 suggests that there should be a CfD allocation every year in which the carbon intensity of electricity generation in the United Kingdom exceeds 100 grams per kWh. That figure comes from the policy recommendations from the Committee on Climate Change in “The Fifth Carbon Budget: The next step towards a low-carbon economy”. One of its recommendations was that the Government should develop policy approaches consistent with reducing the carbon intensity of the power sector to below 100 grams of CO2 per kWh in 2030. That compares with 450 grams in 2014 and the projection for between 200 grams and 250 grams by 2020. That last point indicates that significant and welcome progress is being made on reducing the carbon intensity of the power sector in terms of electricity generation, but it suggests that there is still a long way to go.
Why is it important that we hold auctions annually, in terms of the CfDs? I think it comes back to what has been another key theme of this debate, the need for investor certainty and investor confidence. I believe that this would provide that. While there is a requirement to decarbonise the electricity sector, there must be a clear path for us to do so and a clear indication given to businesses that scale up their investment, if they put forward the proposals that are required—the research and development, the site appraisal work and all that is needed to bring forward whatever it is, whether it is a solar farm, a wind farm, offshore wind or other technologies, including tidal, perhaps, which is further from the market but I hope will play a considerable part in electricity generation, certainly by 2030, given the potential that we have to do it.
That potential is important. The certainty that this new clause would provide would enable the significant investment that needs to come from the sector following the Paris agreement and in terms of meeting our own climate change commitments. By providing the certainty that there will be a market, that there will be potential for projects to be deployed, provided they are cost-competitive, that will, in itself, drive down costs. So it is good for the Government, in terms of meeting their climate change commitments, but it will also ultimately be good for the consumer.
New clause 6 suggests the devolution of the contract for difference mechanism to Scottish Ministers. The operation of the renewables obligation had been dealt with by Scottish Ministers previously and in discussions I have had with many in the industry in Scotland they were very pleased with how the Scottish Government approached the renewables sector. There was the kind of clarity I have just discussed. We need to recognise that there are differing means and differing desires in the different nations of the United Kingdom about how we are to meet our electricity needs and our carbon-reduction targets. This Government legitimately wish to pursue nuclear, which is not something I advocate, largely on a cost basis. That is their right. I do not oppose the principle of their pursuing that, should they wish. I have issues around costs, which will be borne by GB consumers as a whole, but it needs to be recognised that if parts of the UK wish to pursue one form of energy policy, it is legitimate that other parts should be able to pursue a distinct process.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
It is a national grid, is it not? I am not stating the obvious, but Scotland, for example, cannot cut itself off from the electricity generated by nuclear power in other parts of the country. So we still need a UK-wide policy on the fundamental supply. They may take a different view on onshore wind, but on the fundamentals it is a UK grid.
Callum McCaig
It is a GB grid—I do not mean to be pedantic and split hairs. At this moment, yes, I agree with that. What I am asking for is the replication of what happened previously with the renewables obligation. There was a process by which differing processes were put in to manage that form of support for renewables, and I think that could be replicated in the round. I think National Grid is comfortable with different forms of electricity generation in different parts of the country.
We have heard that National Grid views the concept of traditional base-load to be somewhat outdated: it is about balancing and managing the reserves, providing it knows what there is to be developed in different parts. It would require considerable engagement, should this happen, between both Governments and between each and National Grid in order to work out how it would be developed. I see the Minister champing at the bit to come in.
Andrea Leadsom
On a point of clarification, is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that National Grid could somehow prevent electricity generated from a nuclear power station from going to Scotland?
Callum McCaig
Absolutely not, no. I am talking about how Governments in the different jurisdictions are allowed, in collaboration with each other and National Grid, to pursue different energy policies. It would be unwise to suggest that power generated in any parts of these islands should not sensibly be allowed to flow in any way dependent on need. Through the Irish interconnector there is collaboration with the Republic of Ireland and likewise with the French and Dutch interconnectors. The move is towards greater interdependence, but that still allows a degree of autonomy in how the individual parts pursue their policies.
It will come as no surprise that I would like to see Scotland have greater control over large aspects of our lives. That is my party’s position.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I did not mean to interrupt the hon. Gentleman right in the middle of that point, but earlier he mentioned that his main argument was about cost and in the three contract for difference competitions that will be open, the strike price will be far higher than the cost of nuclear. I believe that the price for offshore wind is about £145 at the moment.
Callum McCaig
The price of offshore wind is coming down and I think the Government have suggested that, if further offshore wind contracts for difference are to come forward, it needs to do so significantly. The curve is downwards and the point of the contracts for difference mechanism and the competitive process is to allow for active discussions and bidding to drive down costs, but I am not clear that that there has been such an open, transparent process in the strike price at Hinkley.
Philip Boswell
Does my hon. Friend agree that that some of the offshore wind strike prices have been as low as £80, which is considerably below £92.50? Does he believe that the implementation of transmission charges differentiated geographically in Great Britain has rendered Longannet uneconomical and its closure effectively some four years early could turn Scotland from being a net exporter of energy to a net importer? That would be to Scotland’s disadvantage, so we should have more local input.
Callum McCaig
I think my hon. Friend was referring to the strike price for onshore rather than offshore wind. On transmission charging, that does not help how we in Scotland would wish to form our energy supply. We have limited control over that and the cost of producing a gas-powered plant in Scotland, as opposed to within the M25, is prohibitively expensive. I do not think that the process is working, because I do not see a whole new fleet of gas plants being built in close proximity to London and if we do operate a GB grid, that should be done on a level playing field.
James Cartlidge
I do not want to labour the point, but I would like to clarify why I asked that question and why I think the Minister is supportive. When we were discussing amendment 14 or 15, whereby the SNP wanted the power to operate the renewables obligation in Scotland, I asked the hon. Gentleman if his party would be prepared to pay for that and he said that it would not. However, on the nuclear price he said that that must be paid for and that balances it. The SNP seems to assume that Scotland can cut itself off from the nuclear-generated electricity coming into the GB grid, to which presumably Scotland wants access. With respect, it seems that the SNP wants to have its cake and eat it.
Callum McCaig
I have been trying to get on to funding for some minutes but I keep being intervened on. I would like to see developed at a much greater level better connections between not only Scotland and England, which are coming on in terms of the grid, but the British Isles and the continent. The way forward has to be much greater interconnection throughout Europe. That argument has been put forward by the Secretary of State, which is welcome, but it should not be seen as interconnection for the sake of getting energy from elsewhere.
We, as a nation, have issues in terms of the balance of trade, and relying more than we do now on imports of energy would be detrimental. If we can unlock the huge potential we have, particularly of renewables and particularly in Scotland, there is the potential to be a net exporter, though not at all times; the new clause would play a part in that. That should be the ambition, in my view. If we are going to have a European grid, we should not limit our ambitions to being an importer.
We need to respect the differing modes and choices of the people of these islands, if we are a family of nations that respects our divergent views. If England chooses to produce nuclear, that is fine. Whatever the relationship between the two countries, I see a point where there will be a need for nuclear from England, but likewise, there is a need for energy from Scotland at times. That is the level of co-operation.
Jonathan Reynolds
I think I am right in saying that the SNP’s position is that even in an independent Scotland, there would be a common GB energy market; it would effectively be the same as it is now. What I cannot quite follow—I am not against the hon. Gentleman’s new clause; I am just trying to follow the logic of it—is why this measure would be in Scotland’s interest. If Scotland is exporting electricity to the rest of the UK, or certainly to England, why have two different support regimes for the subsidy to be paid by the Scottish Government? Surely, if it is one common energy grid, it should have one set of support behind it.
Callum McCaig
I am not suggesting there should be different funding—I am still trying to get on to the issue of financing but am being deterred from doing so. I envisage the pots being one. Let us take the two issues together. If we had an annual CfD allocation, there would need to be discussions. I imagine those discussions being conducted similarly to those we debated yesterday, in terms of the fiscal agreement from the Scotland Bill. Agreements would be made about what proportion of the pots could and should go to Scotland and/or anywhere else. That would give the Scottish Government the ability to tweak that support and tailor it to our specific needs and aspirations.
The UK rightly lauds the success of the deployment of offshore wind. That is a good thing, but because of the technology and the different costs, it is easier to do that in the shallower waters off the shores of England than in the deeper water off the shores of Scotland. The wind resource, I am reliably informed, is greater, but the initial costs and the curve of diminishing returns requires a higher level of support initially.
Should there be a desire in Scotland for greater support for offshore wind in deeper waters—the global potential of that is enormous, given that most coastal waters are deeper than the ones we have here—that would be a benefit for not only Scotland but the UK, in terms of developing a supply chain for it. That can be looked at in different ways. A one-size-fits-all approach to renewables might work in the short term, in terms of deployment, and it has worked well, but we need a more nuanced approach and a long-term vision of the opportunities. New technologies—offshore wind in deep water is one, but there is also tidal and wave energy—are there to be exploited, should the support mechanisms be right.
Jonathan Reynolds
I want to be sure I understand. Is the hon. Gentleman saying there would effectively be different rates for contracts for difference in Scotland and the rest of the UK? There would be different rates for different technologies, depending on which side of the UK they were on.
Callum McCaig
I am saying that there would be a different bidding process, so that we could allocate the contracts differently. The bids may all come in the same. We cannot predict the outcome of a competitive auction before we have held it, but we must allow such nuancing of the competitive auction.
In summary, while we are pushing toward the targets set out in the Climate Change Act 2008 and waiting to see what comes from the fifth carbon budget, we need to provide certainty to industry that will enable it to plan for the future. That is what new clause 5 would deliver. New clause 6 would deliver the ability, through collaboration between both Governments, to unlock what is still a considerably untapped enormous resource in Scotland in the renewables sector. That would be beneficial to Scotland and to the United Kingdom as a whole.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Julian Smith.)
Energy BILL [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 6—Contract for Difference: devolution—
“In Section D1 of Part 2 of Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998, in the exceptions, insert—
‘Exception 2: The subject-matter of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Energy Act 2013.’”
This new Clause would devolve control of Contract for Difference in Scotland to the Scottish Parliament.
New clause 12—Contracts for Difference—
“After section 13(3) of the Energy Act 2013 insert—
‘(3A) An allocation round must be held no less than annually in each year in which the UK is not on target to meet the 2020 EU renewable energy target.’”
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I want to make a short comment on new clause 5. [Interruption.] There is so much barracking, Mr Bailey. It is unbelievable.
Chris Heaton-Harris
That is what my wife says.
I believe that new clause 5 is incompatible with the Government’s stated objective of affordable decarbonisation. I want to take the opportunity to ask the Minister how the Government are progressing towards their goal of having a truly competitive single pot for each of the contract for difference auctions, and how the Government will try to encourage investment in new, consistent and dispatchable renewable energy.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
As we heard this morning, new clause 12 approaches similar aims, though in a slightly different way, from the clauses put forward by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South this morning. It concerns the allocation rounds for contracts for difference and the extent to which they should be held on an annual basis.
I appreciate that the Government have indicated in principle that there will be further allocation rounds, although we are still waiting to see what might be in them. For example, would onshore wind be included in allocation rounds in future? In the context of the levy control framework, which I am pleased to see is now being investigated by the National Audit Office, we are not sure whether there will be any substance in those allocation rounds. We are not sure whether there are any allowances in the pot that can be put into the allocation rounds in order to make them realistic for operators to bid into them.
We also understand that the process for bidding in allocation rounds means, as we heard this morning, that what comes out as the auction strike price will not be the same as the allocated strike price originally announced for various different categories of renewables. While that suggests that there should be an annual allocation round in each year where the UK is not on target to meet the 2020 EU renewable energy target, what those allocation rounds actually cost would be a variable factor. The suggestions that went around a little while ago on the possible emergence of subsidy-free CfDs could mean that the allocation rounds could be held with little or no effect on the levy control framework. Can the Minister say whether subsidy-free CfDs are a current question in her Department? If there are future allocation rounds, might they be a part of the allocations? If no clear answer is forthcoming this afternoon, perhaps it would be easiest for her to consult her departmental adviser who, I know, had a substantial hand in advancing the idea of subsidy-free CfDs before he became an adviser. I am sure his expertise on this issue could be put to good use on CfDs.
The issue with holding allocation rounds annually is not necessarily or even reasonably disposed of by the idea that this is simply about keeping control of how much money goes out under the levy control framework, because there are ways to hold an annual contract round without overthrowing those arrangements. The new clause would ensure that the issue of frequency of allocation rounds was about what it should be about—the extent to which CfDs drive the deployment of renewables towards the goal of achieving our renewable energy targets. That has been publicly stated as one of the goals behind the working of the levy control framework. We have not heard about this yet, but there is also the possible allocation of further targets after 2020, so the proposal could continue to drive forward the deployment of renewables and ensure that those targets were reached.
We have also discussed what we mean by reaching the 2020 EU renewable energy targets. We have emphasised that that means the discharge of the obligatory target agreed by the UK for the provision of 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. In turn, that means that the sub-targets that were set in the UK but nevertheless contribute towards the overall EU target should themselves be either on target or be underpinned by other areas being on or above target. The letter from the Secretary of State to other Departments in October set out precisely what that means and I trust that on this occasion the Minister has a copy easily to hand, which would be a good step forward. It states that the trajectory towards reaching those EU targets “increases substantially” after 2017-18 and
“currently leads to a shortfall against the target in 2020 of around 50 TWh (with a range of 32 - 67TWh) or 3.5%-points (with a range of 2.1 - 4.5% points) in our internal central forecasts (which are not public).”
So the Secretary of State emphasises that the trajectory and the shortfall are not public but goes on to say:
“Publically we are clear that the UK continues to make progress to meet the target.”
I trust that the Minister, now having a copy of that letter, will agree that that is an accurate depiction; the Secretary of State was clear that we are on target not to be on target as far as EU 2020 goals are concerned. Although the fact that we are on target not to be on target has not been made public, nevertheless, that very clear conclusion stems from departmental trajectories and is robust in terms of what the departmental modelling represents.
I take that internal observation as the starting point for this amendment and I hope that the Minister will confirm it to be the case. Secondly, I hope she will be able to change the status of those internal central forecasts, on which this is based, from not being public to being public. That would be very helpful to our discussions in the longer term. The idea that the UK is not on target, overall, to meet the EU 2020 renewable energy targets—and, as the letter makes clear, it is largely not on target because of factors relating to quite substantial failures in heat and transport—suggests, among other things, that in order to make sure that the Government are on target, other areas perhaps need to over-perform, and among those would be those projects which would be in line for contracts for difference through the allocation auctions.
Of course, I remind the Committee that that is not about onshore wind or renewable obligations, it is about a variety of renewables that may qualify for those contracts for difference—biomass, offshore wind, other forms of renewable energy which, together, could make a contribution to getting to the target by overachieving in that area. So it is a mechanism, essentially, to ensure that we are straining every sinew to get to that EU target and using the devices that we already have available to us to get there through a competitive process that ensures best value for money in the process. I therefore commend this amendment to the Committee and trust that the Minister will take it on board.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
New clauses 5 and 12 seek to amend the Energy Act 2013 so as to require contracts for difference, or CfDs, allocation rounds to be held at least once a year. This would be either when the carbon intensity of electricity generation in the UK exceeds 100 grams per kilowatt hour or when the UK is not on target to meet the 2020 EU renewable energy target. I completely acknowledge that it is important that developers and investors have some foresight as to the frequency of CfD allocation rounds. However, this must be balanced with levy control framework budget availability, which, as hon. Members know, is funded by a levy on consumer bills.
I will answer a couple of specific questions. My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry asked how CfDs will include less developed technologies. As the Secretary of State said last November, the current intention is to hold the next CfD allocation round for “less established” technologies, which are defined as pot 2, in late 2016. We are currently working with the Treasury to finalise the budget as part of discussions on the next levy control framework period. We will set out details on that as soon as we can.
The hon. Member for Southampton, Test put the question of whether the levy control framework would be updated post-2020. I can assure him that that is something we are looking at now. He also asked about our work on market-stabilising CfDs, effectively subsidy-free CfDs for onshore wind. That is something that we are continuing to look at and would be delighted if industry or hon. Members want to provide input to that discussion, as it is something we are very interested in.
Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
I welcome that statement from the Minister but I want to ask about the process. What kind of information is she looking for, from whom and when?
Andrea Leadsom
Through normal channels. Discussions on the early closure of the onshore wind subsidy included lots of bilateral stakeholder meetings. Some industry workshops were held. If the hon. Gentleman wanted to submit information to me or my Department, we would be delighted to hear from him, his party or companies he is aware of that are interested. We are very interested to hear views on that, though we obviously want to make progress with it at the same time.
Coming back to the LCF, its function is to limit the amount paid by consumers. It is crucial that the Government are able to take account of the latest evidence and use the LCF budget in light of latest evidence around deployment projections and costs. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South talked a lot about the difference in cost of different types of CfDs. He will be aware that we are talking with the Scottish Government about the remote highlands and islands and the potential for onshore wind projects there, which by nature of their remoteness would have big transmission costs that might make them more akin to offshore than onshore wind.
The hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill mentioned that onshore wind CfDs are around £80 and for offshore wind, as hon. Members pointed out, they are still well in excess of £100, some at £145 and so on. Our hope and expectation is that those costs will come down. That is a key reason why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out in her policy reset speech that we would look to the offshore wind industry to bring their costs down in order to participate in further auctions, which we think is achievable.
Hon. Members have reflected that, when looking at the budget for the levy control framework, which is how consumers pay for all of this, and the CfD pots that add costs to the LCF, we must look at the latest evidence and technologies and have a proper balance.
To answer the hon. Member for Southampton, Test, the UK is continuing to make progress towards the 2020 renewables target of 15% of final energy consumption from renewable sources. Renewables accounted for 7% of energy consumption in 2014, up from 1.3% in 2005. We have exceeded both our 2011-12 and our 2013-14 interim targets.
Dr Whitehead
I am sorry to have to tell the Minister, but that was exactly what the Secretary of State’s letter stated would be said in public on targets. Although I appreciate what the Minister is saying, it does not add anything to the core of the letter that, while Ministers may say something in public, something else is the correct position in private.
Andrea Leadsom
I have to disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The Secretary of State has set out that we are making progress. As Ministers do, she was talking about what needs to be done next. Since then, we have had the spending review, where the renewable heat incentive scheme budget was confirmed to March 2021, rising each year to a total of £1.15 billion.
That is in excess of where we are today and goes a good way towards meeting some of our heat targets, which were referred to in the letter as needing those decisions. Life is not static and for the Secretary of State to write to colleagues saying what needs to be done is not tantamount to saying that we have no plans or efforts in place to meet this. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that.
We are also making progress in decarbonising the power sector. Investors want to know that we have clear, credible and affordable plans for the sector. That is what the Secretary of State set out in her speech in November, highlighting the important role that gas generation, nuclear power, offshore wind and innovation can all play. For example, as we have discussed, we have a world-leading offshore wind industry, with the UK making up about half of all deployed offshore wind in the world. This is an area where the UK can help to make a lasting technological contribution to supply chains, and certainly to the UK supply chain, supporting a growing installation, development and blade manufacturing industry in the UK.
By committing to annual CfD allocation rounds, the new clause would inhibit the Government’s flexibility to apply appropriate mechanisms to achieve renewable and decarbonisation targets. The Government should retain their ability to respond to evidence on technology cost reductions, costs to consumers and of course opportunities in other sectors such as heat and transport. The hon. Gentleman’s proposals would unnecessarily tie the Government into a course of action that may neither benefit the consumer nor provide any certainty to renewable energy generators or investors. We are committed to our energy and carbon targets and continue to make strong progress towards meeting them. For that reason, I cannot accept the amendments but I hope that I have addressed his concern and that he will be content to withdraw them.
New clause 6 seeks to devolve the matter that, when exercising electricity market reform functions under the Energy Act 2013, including in respect of contracts for difference, the Secretary of State should consider matters specifically in respect of Scotland. It also seeks to devolve annual reporting on how the Secretary of State has carried out the functions under part 2 of the Energy Act 2013 during each year. EMR, including CfDs, is GB-wide. That is, electricity market reform, including contracts for difference, is Great Britain-wide––I am sorry, I am trying not to use acronyms––and does not operate in a regionally specific way. That is linked to the fact that we have a GB-wide, integrated energy system on which the CfD scheme relies. The costs of the CfDs are spread across all consumers in Great Britain, which results in a fair distribution of the burden. That means that when exercising EMR functions under part 2 of the Energy Act 2013, it is appropriate that the Secretary of State has regard to the matters in section 5(2) of the Act on a Great Britain-wide basis. Having a GB-wide system ensures that support is directed as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, which helps keep down the cost ultimately borne by bill payers.
Under current energy policies, Scotland has more than proportionally benefited from financial support from all GB bill payers. Around 9% of the UK population is in Scotland but around 30% of UK renewable electricity generation capacity is in Scotland. Of the 25 successfully signed contracts for difference, 12 have been awarded to projects in Scotland. That includes the 448 MW offshore wind farm in the outer firth of Forth and 11 onshore wind farms with a combined capacity of more than half a gigawatt. Transferring the power to Scottish Ministers to award contracts would go well beyond the Smith commission agreement. It was not the intention and nor is it appropriate.
I do not think it is necessary to devolve the publication of the annual report to Scotland. Every year, we publish an update that reflects the scheme’s GB-wide nature and sets out the progress the Government have made over the past year in implementing electricity market reform and how the Secretary of State has carried out functions under part 2 of the Energy Act 2013. Furthermore, the Secretary of State is already required to send the published report to Scottish Ministers, so I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.
Callum McCaig
I have nothing to add to what I have said already.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause relates to the undertakings that were provided in part 1 of the Energy Act 2013 about setting a target for decarbonisation of the energy sector by 2030. Part 1 of the Act makes it clear that the Secretary of State has a duty to ensure that the carbon intensity of electricity generation in the United Kingdom is no greater than the maximum permitted level of the decarbonisation target range. That is a clear undertaking in the Energy Act to set a decarbonisation target range, requiring the Secretary of State to take related actions.
Andrea Leadsom
I do have the letter. On reading it, a power is taken, but we take all sorts of powers in case we need them. Is it not simply the case that, because we are doing well against our own targets, we do not necessarily always want to legislate? I find it completely counterintuitive to say that, just because we have a power, we should therefore legislate to use it. That is just not the case. My noble Friend Lord Bourne made it clear to the shadow Energy and Climate Change Minister in the other place, Lady Worthington, that, in line with our Conservative manifesto, which I am pleased the hon. Member for Southampton, Test quoted accurately:
“We…will not support additional distorting and expensive power sector targets.”
Lord Bourne made it clear in his letter that that is precisely why we will not implement the power, even though we have it. In summary, just because we have a power does not mean that we need to use it. We will only use it if we need to use it, or if there are good reasons to do so.
New clauses 11 and 7—new clause 7 has now been withdrawn—have the same underlying purpose. Both new clauses would require the Secretary of State to set a decarbonisation target range for the electricity generating sector. New clause 11 would also require the target range to be reviewed annually, and amendments with very similar effects were debated and defeated during the last Parliament and during the passage of this Bill in the other place. Lord Bourne clearly set out the Government’s position on this matter, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test has just explained.
We are committed to ensuring that the UK continues to do its part to address climate change, in line with the Climate Change Act 2008 and our international and EU obligations. I think all hon. Members recognise that we have played a leading role in the Paris climate change negotiations and done everything we can. The UK on its own cannot change the future for climate change, but acting internationally we can. We are determined to do our bit as cost effectively as possible to make sure that our own energy is secure and affordable, as well as low carbon. Locking ourselves into additional expensive and inflexible targets relating to the power sector is not the way to do that.
There are too many things that we cannot predict about how the energy system will develop up to and beyond 2030, and the costs of getting it wrong would be picked up by consumers for decades to come. Yesterday we were discussing fuel poverty and how we must do more to keep costs down for consumers, and now Opposition Members are urging us to sign consumers up to a distorting and expensive power sector target. It simply does not make sense, and our manifesto was clear that we will not do that.
Instead, investors want to know that we have got clear, credible and affordable plans—that is what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out in her speech in November—including the role that gas generation, nuclear power, offshore wind and innovation can play in decarbonising the power sector. The Government are now setting out the next stages in their long-term commitment to move to a low-carbon economy, providing a basis for electricity investment into the next decade.
The huge investment that we have seen so far is evidence that our approach is working. Between 2010 and 2014 our policies have secured an estimated £42 billion of investment in low-carbon electricity, including £40 billion in renewables, and we have more in the pipeline for the future.
Dr Whitehead
I take the point that the Minister made. On occasion Governments allow themselves secondary legislation opportunities, which are then placed in a cupboard and never seen again. I deplore the tendency in Bills to provide possible powers that are never acted on because the Government subsequently feel that it is not a good idea to do so. However, the provision in the Energy Act 2013 is not a small power that was put in the back of a cupboard. Part 1, section 1 is the part around which the rest of the Act hangs. Other parts of the Act that refer to other targets make complete sense in the end only if the decarbonisation range is properly put in place by the Secretary of State. It is not at the front of the Act by accident, but because, in order to make sense of the Act overall, it is clearly incumbent on the Secretary of State to set that decarbonisation range at some stage.
If we are doing so well and we want to stand by our Paris commitments, why on earth would we not set a range? What is there to lose? I am more worried about what the Minister says than I am that the Government are unwilling to come forward with a range, because it suggests that—in the light of all these other matters—perhaps there is the beginning of a conscious view that targets will not only not be met, but consciously veered away from in future.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Not only is there nothing to lose, but much to gain. Taking risk out of the investment picture for investors coming into our energy system will be a huge benefit. It comes down to the theme that we have returned to again and again in this sitting, which is that there is a lot of ambiguity about the Government’s position on these issues and a lot of investors telling all Members of Parliament that they simply do not trust the political will behind this.
Dr Whitehead
My hon. Friend makes an important point about how we settle the trajectory that we are on. It is a question not just of what tomorrow’s cost might be, but of the long-term cost and stability of our decarbonisation programme, and indeed the extent to which setting such targets and giving such certainty moves towards, rather than away from, what the Government have said about trying to meet targets in a low-cost way. Therefore, I am disappointed by the Minister’s response to this new clause, particularly as she appeared to give reasons in her own comments why the target decarbonisation range should now be set, but then concluded that it should not. For that reason, we would like to divide the Committee on this new clause.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause adds to the Energy Act 2013 requirements relating to fossil fuel generating plant that is granted a 15-year capacity contract. The plant must adhere to certain conditions if the contract is to be granted—the three conditions are listed in the new clause. Regarding the final condition—the emissions performance standard—hon. Members will be interested to know that section 57 of the Energy Act 2013 contains a target, or, to be exact, a formula that under subsequent secondary legislation led to a performance standard of 450 grams per kWh being established.
To what does that section refer? It clearly does not refer to gas, because new plant for gas comes in at 378 grams per kWh and is below the emissions performance standard. What it refers to is diesel coming in to the provision of electricity, particularly in the context of what has occurred in the previous two capacity auctions, whereby diesel reciprocating engines, historically installed in industrial plants for standby generation, for example, are connected to the network to provide a regular system of electricity generation.
Those diesel engines escape the provisions of the Energy Act, because individually they are below the size at which plants are caught, but in terms of their individual emissions they are the most dirty of the various electricity generation devices. I mentioned that the combined cycle gas turbine plants being considered for commissioning come in at up to about 378 grams per kWh. Coal, which the Government are consulting on taking off the system entirely by 2015, comes in with existing plant above the energy performance standard at 930 grams per kWh. The carbon intensity of diesel generation sets is more than 1,000 grams of CO2 per kWh, so they are probably the dirtiest generating systems possible. However, in the last two capacity auctions, virtually the only type of plant to have obtained a 15-year capacity payment to develop is diesel; virtually every other plant that put in for such a payment failed to clear the auction. Because diesel is exempt from present EPS levels because of the individual size of the reciprocating sets, it has cumulatively obtained a substantial proportion of long-term capacity payments coming into the system.
Perhaps we should dwell for a moment on the supposed purpose of the capacity auction system, which is to bring new generating plant on to the system. The interesting thing about the first two auctions is that they signally failed to bring on to the system any new generating plant that looks likely to be built. From the earlier capacity auction, one plant, Trafford, looks like it will probably not be built, and in the most recent auction there were no plants at all except, mainly, for those small diesel generation sets. The net policy outcome of capacity auctions over the last two periods is that no new plant has come forward. Yet diesel generating sets have run in under the wire and have got a considerable amount of cumulative capacity, which I will come to in a moment, despite being the dirtiest form of generation. That is a completely perverse outcome compared with what one might have thought would be the case with both capacity auctions and the Government’s policy of taking coal off the system in the longer term.
Of course, one reason that diesel sets have been able to get into capacity auctions is that they have succeeded in coming under the clearing price for the capacity auction. When the clock auction comes down to the point at which the right amount of capacity has been procured, everybody under that point gets that payment, and diesel sets have been able to get under the clearing price whereas other plants have not. It is not because diesel sets are particularly cheap to run; it is, at least in part, because they already receive a substantial underwriting from HM Treasury through enterprise investment scheme payments for the establishment of those plants. Originally, it appears, the payments were set to encourage the plants to be established for standby purposes, but they have been used for other purposes in the capacity auction.
Although that route has been changed in the autumn statement, the most polluting generating plants have managed to get two lots of subsidies for generating and have got in through the capacity auction process as well. That is not only bad climate policy but bad public policy in general, and it is certainly a perverse outcome of the capacity auction process. I am sure the Minister agrees, if not publicly then certainly in private, as she is a sensible person. She might even agree publicly; it would be really helpful if she did.
Andrea Leadsom
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman and I can tell him that the loophole has been closed. An HMRC amendment to the Finance Bill has excluded reserve generating activities from eligibility for tax reliefs under venture capital schemes from 30 November 2015, and it has subsequently been announced that all electricity generating activities will be excluded from eligibility from 6 April 2016. We are now considering whether any consequential changes to the capacity market are needed to ensure that this position is reflected adequately. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point.
Dr Whitehead
Indeed, the Minister confirmed what I said: that the EIS loophole was closed in the autumn statement. I am interested to hear, and I previously understood, that the Department was actively considering ways in which the capacity auction could be amended. I am not surprised that the Department is doing that, because so far the capacity auction has completely failed to fulfil its purpose, which was to bring forward new plant. The Department will have to think rather carefully about how it amends the capacity auction process.
It does not seem to me that the EIS loophole has been closed and that that in itself removes diesel sets from future capacity auctions. Although one would hope that the Government, when they look carefully at capacity auctions, will ensure that that happens, it is by no means certain. I remind the Committee that we are not talking about a small amount of generation that has already come on to the system. In the first auction, 375 MW of diesel set generation were given 15-year contracts; in the second auction, 650 MW of diesel sets were given room in the auction. In case we have any difficulty in scaling that, I point out that the one gas-fired power station that is presently under construction and that might produce energy in the near future will come in at an overall capacity of 880 MW. In fact, we have more than one new gas-fired power station’s worth of diesel sets in the capacity auction. That is a substantial amount indeed, even though the diesel sets themselves are fairly small.
Andrea Leadsom
New clause 13 would introduce additional capacity market eligibility criteria for new-build capacity accessing 15-year capacity agreements based on a carbon price, a requirement to fit the best available technologies to mitigate air pollutants, and the emissions performance standard. As the hon. Gentleman says, the new clause targets his concerns on the potential growth of diesel engines participating in the capacity market. Although I do not accept the new clause, I am not unaware of or unsympathetic to his concerns.
I will explain the steps being taken on the issue, but first I point out that we are in this situation in large part because of the long history of inadequate emission controls, which we inherited. Also, there has been a lack of investment in future energy sources over a very long period—that is a matter of record. I assure Members that small-scale diesel and gas generators can offer big security of supply benefits, as they can help to meet peak demand quickly by producing electricity when it is most needed. I know that the hon. Gentleman, who is expert in these matters, knows that that is the case.
As it stands, diesel engines represented just 1.5% of the capacity procured in the capacity market auction that concluded last December. Like other forms of capacity, they will be paid a clearing price of £18 per kW. The capacity market will oblige participants to run in response to stress events, when the electricity system is otherwise tight. Those events are likely to be infrequent and may not occur at all in some years. The generators are there to switch on very quickly at times when we urgently need to meet shortfalls, because of issues such as the intermittency of renewables, unexpected downtime on traditional power plants and so on.
The emissions impact from diesel engines is often assumed to be larger than it is in reality. In fact, they have a relatively small impact on overall CO2 emissions because of the short hours that they run. They are typically used as peaking plant, running for less than 100 hours a year, whereas larger fossil fuel plants will run for 2,000 hours or more. In addition, per unit of generated electricity, diesel emits around 30% less CO2 than coal. Because they start up more quickly than bigger generators, diesel can emit less CO2 than larger gas plants when used for these short periods. The controls proposed on CO2 are not appropriate and are not likely to be effective.
Dr Whitehead
I take the Minister’s point that diesel sets can be used for very rapid start-up under peaking conditions, but does she agree that they are by no means the only device that can do that? There are other opportunities for quick start-up under peaking conditions, including, under certain circumstances, wind. Wind can start up and ramp very quickly. Historically, diesel sets have been used not for peaking purposes but for reserve purposes, should every other system go down; that has been the main use. It is their introduction into the main generation system as a peaking device under the recent capacity auction arrangements that is new, and it is that use we should be disturbed about.
Andrea Leadsom
I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. Wind can ramp up very quickly and it will often be the first choice, but it cannot always be controlled—the wind does not always blow. Unfortunately, diesel generators still have their place. The concern about diesel engines is more relevant in the context of local emissions, particularly oxides of nitrogen, or NOx. I am fully aware of that and I emphasise that we are actively looking into that issue. Diesel engines typically run for under 100 hours a year, so we need to start by improving our evidence base on exactly what their local emission impact is.
I want to set out the steps that are being taken. First, DEFRA will begin transposition of the medium combustion plant directive into legislation this year. The directive sets limits on the levels of nitrogen dioxide that small, sub-50 MW generators can emit, because they fall below the minimum threshold for existing controls. DEFRA will provide more details when it consults later this year and is already building its evidence base to fully understand the risks from diesel engines so that it can take action accordingly.
Secondly, Ofgem is aware that many people are concerned that there may be a level of embedded benefit for these generators and is looking into whether action is needed. In particular, the transmission charging regime has been brought to my attention, as it can account for a significant share of revenues for small generators and so would be partly responsible for encouraging their growth.
Thirdly, we are looking at whether any further direct steps could be taken if there is evidence that future capacity market participants are at risk of subsequently contributing to breaches of local air quality limits. However, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman realises, any measure would need to have state aid clearance, which requires that the capacity market does not discriminate against types of technology. We need to ensure that we do not do anything that creates security of supply risks by depriving the electricity system of a fast, flexible form of capacity before there are reliable and viable alternatives.
For those reasons, I cannot accept the new clause. We need to ensure that we are taking the right action in the right places, where there is clear evidence that it is needed, and without placing our energy security at risk. I hope he is reassured by my explanation and will be content to withdraw the new clause.
Dr Whitehead
Because it is a Thursday afternoon and because the Minister gave me a little bit of reassurance, I will speak briefly. I still think we need to get to grips with this soon rather than later, but if the Minister undertakes the actions she has set out with some alacrity, so that they are done well in advance of the next capacity auction, we may make some progress. In those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 14
Electricity storage
‘(1) Section 4 of the electricity Act 1989 is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (1)(c) insert—
“(d) stores electricity for the purpose of giving a supply to any premises or enabling a supply to be so given,”
(3) At end of subsection (4) insert—
““Store” means the conversion of electricity into a form of energy which can be stored, the storing of the energy which has been so converted and the reconversion of the stored energy into electrical energy in devices with an individual capacity of more than 50MW.”
(4) Section 6 of the electricity Act 1989 is amended as follows.
(5) After subsection (1)(d) insert—
“(e) a licence authorising a person to store electricity for the purpose of giving a supply to any premises or enabling a supply to be so given (‘a storage licence’);”
(6) After subsection (2) insert—
“(2ZA) In addition to holding a storage licence, the same person may be a holder of—
(a) a distribution licence,
(b) a transmission licence, or
(c) a generation licence.
(2ZB) The Secretary of State may by order determine the circumstances under which a person may hold a storage licence in addition to a distribution licence, a transmission licence or a generation licence under subsection (2ZA).””—(Dr Whitehead.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Observant hon. Members will note that this is not only the last new clause to be considered this afternoon but the most helpful clause that we have yet seen in this Committee. I trust that hon. Members, being in the general mood they are in this afternoon, will see the new clause for exactly what it is and ensure that no Division is required by passing it with acclamation. That would be an appropriate way to round up our business.
I will not take an enormous amount of the Committee’s time. The new clause relates to something in which all Committee members should be very interested: the extent to which electricity supply can first, be given most value, and secondly, smoothed out in terms of when it does and does not arise, by the emerging technologies of battery storage. Indeed, a number of the issues we have discussed in the Committee—intermittency of wind, base-load problems and a whole range of other issues—can begin to be addressed by battery storage of electricity.
For example, if a battery storage system is attached to a solar array, the life of that solar array can be extended far beyond the period during the day when the sun shines. Clearly, the power that comes from it can go right through the night. We are already seeing that effect, to a minor extent, with solar arrays on streetlights, but on a much larger scale it could revolutionise the way in which solar is used in future.
Battery storage can also be used in relation to wind. We have heard that wind, quite self-evidently, does not always blow, and sometimes when it does blow, it blows rather a lot. Ensuring that the capturing of that variability is smoothed out into a regular supply through the attachment of battery storage to the wind turbine is clearly a positive step forward as far as wind supply is concerned.
Larger battery storage in distribution network operators can capture what would otherwise be downtime in terms of conventional energy production, inasmuch as that production does not necessarily then have to follow dispatch requirements, but can follow the requirements of filling up a battery associated with that distribution network system. When that power is needed in the system, it can then be released in a way that resists electricity storage arrangements that historically consist of cutting open a mountain, putting a large pond at the top and the bottom of it, pumping up water from the pond at the bottom and storing it in the pond at the top, and then letting it come down again at some considerable electricity value when it is needed. That process is undertaken already, but no new traditional forms of storage have been built for something like 30 years. The most well-known is Dinorwig in north Wales, which provides reasonably regular additional power at a cheap price uphill and a more expensive price downhill, and helps to balance the system.
Philip Boswell (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
I will keep my remarks brief. The issue of storage is underdeveloped in terms of a solution, GB-wide and from a European energy design perspective. We should invest in research and development, and the SNP welcomes any clause that would encourage such investment.
New clause 14 will hopefully open up many more storage projects, traditional and unconventional, as has been well pointed out by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. Adequate storage is a solution to the intermittent nature of several types of energy, including solar and wind, as he also said. He also touched on battery power, so I will skip that and move on to a few other examples, such as compressed air energy storage and pump storage, which is particularly poignant in Scotland, given that we have Cruachan and Coire Glas sitting ready to go, should everything be suitable, as well as the usual hydroelectric solutions.
The only thing about battery power is the need for more research and development, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test pointed out. It is often described as a megawatt solution to a gigawatt problem, in terms of energy generation in the UK. Something like the new clause is needed to open up and encourage further investment.
In compressed air storage, air is compressed and stored when cheap energy is available, such as on a windy night, and then released at peak times when required. The difference between that and current facilities for battery power is scale. The nuances of local solutions and local control touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South during the debate on new clause 6 are relevant. Suitable salt basins are available onshore in England, where a pilot scheme could be run for about £45 million, whereas in Scotland we would need much more investment for an offshore solution. We are minded to support the clause inasmuch as it would encourage, as we sincerely hope it will, the uptake of much more storage.
Dr Whitehead
I should perhaps emphasise that although the clause is headed “Electricity Storage”, it is about storage licences and therefore the particular technologies that the hon. Gentleman mentions, such as compressed air storage, would come entirely within this arrangement. So that no one is under any misunderstanding about that, it is intended to deal with all forms of storage, not just electrical battery storage.
Philip Boswell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; it is most helpful and clarifies the position, should anyone be in any doubt. As such, we are minded to support this clause.
Andrea Leadsom
Since this is our last new clause, I thank all hon. Members. We have had a very entertaining and at times quite feisty debate. I put on record my gratitude to Opposition Members for raising so many different issues. I reassure them that in a lot of areas we are not disagreeing, it is just that the proposals they have made on specific methodology is not what the Government agree is the right way forward. I am grateful to Opposition Members and, of course, to my hon. Friends who have contributed enormously to an interesting debate. On this last new clause, I am as keen as mustard on electricity storage; it has a vital contribution to make to dealing with intermittency and I wish we were five years ahead—it will be interesting to see how much we have managed to achieve in creating this new ability to store intermittent generation.
New clause 14 would create a new licence category for electricity storage operators and allow other licence holders, such as generators and transmission and distribution network operators, to hold an electricity storage licence. The creation of a separate electricity storage licence is an option that is being considered by my Department and one of a number of issues for storage operators to be included in a call for evidence in the spring. This will enable us to test it against other options, which may be less regulatory and burdensome, more targeted and, importantly, faster to implement. So, much as I would love to say, on this very last new clause, that we agree with the hon. Member for Southampton, Test, the problem is that licensing storage now would be premature. Indeed, the Electricity Storage Network, which is a key trade body for the storage industry, has criticised this new clause on the grounds that it
“pre-empts the current work by the Department”
and
“may hinder, rather than help, the progress of well thought-out strategies to support … the storage industry.”
I fear that the new clause could also have unintended consequences. For example, it could put the UK in breach of EU unbundling rules in the third energy package. These rules make it clear that transmission owners, in particular, must not own generation or supply assets, which could include storage. Also, and fundamentally for me, licensing storage is just not a simple or a quick solution. While, as the hon. Gentleman points out, we could include it in the Bill, it would require wholesale changes to the industry codes, which could take up to two years or more from licensing. This autumn, when we respond to the call for evidence, we will set out what actions we will take, and by when. These actions will include measures to address policy and regulatory barriers to storage.
I know that all hon. Members recognise how vital energy storage could be for our system. It is a feeling we all share, but I hope that they will also recognise the wider implications of acting too soon. I hope that hon. Members are reassured that the Government are actively seeking solutions to how best we can deploy storage while keeping an open mind about their proposals.
Before I sit down, I very much thank the Clerks, the Doorkeepers and you, Mr Bailey, for all your efforts in managing this Bill Committee so well.
Dr Whitehead
It is encouraging to hear that we share a sense of urgency about bringing forward energy storage and, indeed, a sense of inquiry about how that can best be done. As the Minister has said, the new clause that I proposed this afternoon appears to be one of the options that the Government might consider. I emphasised that it was not itself the solution, but part of a wider solution, and that it could be introduced in a relatively straightforward way, but the Minister said that there could be some issues with it. Nevertheless, I hope that it is considered with the same sense of urgency as we have heard this afternoon.
I remain concerned that we may miss the boat for legislation as far as the outcome of any discussions are concerned. The Government might introduce an Energy Bill next year, so that might be when such detailed legislation could be made. If that is the case, as the Minister seems to be convinced, that will be a step forward. On careful consideration of what she has said, I am happy to withdraw the new clause, but I hope that its content does not disappear and will be firmly on the table for future discussions.
I thank you, Mr Bailey, for your wise and careful chairmanship of our proceedings, and offer similar thanks to your co-Chair, Mr Davies. I thank the Clerks, the long-suffering—in terms of our proceedings—Doorkeepers, and all who have taken part. I concur with the Minister: we have had a good examination of the issues, and matters have been conducted in a spirit of considerable civility and, sometimes, conviviality. I particularly thank the Minister for occasionally actually laughing at my jokes, which was very helpful. Finally, I thank her for her excellent supply of raisins and associated commodities, which have helped the Committee in its deliberations. With that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
I must inform the Committee that the pleasantries were, to a certain extent, pre-emptive. I am sure Members will be delighted to hear that we must now deal with new clauses 15 and 16.
New Clause 15
Onshore wind power: renewables obligation
‘The power to make a renewables obligation closure order in respect of electricity generated by an onshore wind generating station in Scotland may only be exercised by Scottish Ministers.’ —(Callum McCaig.)
This new clause would return to the Scottish Ministers the power to close the renewables obligation in relation to electricity generated by onshore wind generating stations in Scotland.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Westminster Hall
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Backbench Business
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Preventing Violence Against Women: Role of Men
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the role of men in preventing violence against women.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan.
I am proud to be an ambassador for the white ribbon campaign, which was started by men to help to end the scourge of violence against women by encouraging men to take responsibility for the issue. I am proud that this is the first debate held in Westminster looking specifically at what men can do to end violence against women. I am not proud that in the 21st century, in this highly developed country of ours, a woman suffers an incident of domestic abuse every 22 seconds.
Some 1.4 million women were abused by a partner in 2013-14, and the vast majority of those cases were not reported to the police. In addition, 28% of women report that they have suffered abuse in the home since turning 16. The horrific scale of those figures highlights the size of the problem, so I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting us the opportunity to bring this important issue to Westminster Hall. I also thank the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for supporting the application.
My contribution to the debate will focus largely on male violence against women. I do not wish to imply that men are not victims of domestic violence; they are. However, the vast majority—about 80%—of domestic violence cases are perpetrated by men on women. All of us in the House should be concerned that the incidence of male victims of domestic violence in Scotland is on the rise, increasing from 11% of all victims in 2005-06 to 18% in 2014-15. Parliament may want to debate that important subject in the future, but today we are debating violence against women.
There have been significant positive legislative steps both north and south of the border, and the Scottish Government currently have an open consultation on establishing a new domestic abuse offence. It is hoped that the offence will be similar to, but wider in scope than, the new law recently enacted in England and Wales. Alongside physical abuse, the offence may include acts that are not currently viewed as criminal in the eyes of the law, including abusive behaviour that is likely to cause a victim to suffer psychological harm. That behaviour includes the deprivation of liberty and autonomy; isolating an individual from friends, family and wider society; withholding or controlling access to resources, including money; psychological control and manipulation; threats and the creation of a climate of fear, including threats towards children; and controlling or withholding access to healthcare, education or employment opportunities. The move would be welcome, and it follows on from the introduction of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Bill and of Clare’s law, which allows people to contact the police and request information on a partner’s background if they suspect him of a history of domestic abuse.
I have been asked by some why I am so interested in the issue. The truth is that until a few months ago, I was not. I had not realised that the statistics were so shocking, and I had not even heard of the white ribbon campaign. In September last year, I was playing rugby for Parliament’s Commons and Lords team. I actually only played for three minutes before I was carted off to A&E for what was eventually diagnosed as a bruise, which is quite embarrassing in rugby. When I eventually went back to the ground, we were posing for pictures and someone put a lapel badge on me. I did not know what it was, but it was put on my shirt by a team mate. If I were allowed to say that that team mate is now sitting in the Public Gallery, I would, but I am not allowed to say that so I will not. He put the badge on me and we all smiled for the pictures, but I thought, “I’d better look this up.” I was a new MP, and the Daily Mail does not need any excuses to write stories about Scottish National party MPs so, just to make sure I researched the badge straight away and was pleased to discover the white ribbon campaign.
In further research, I discovered the shocking statistics. Like many others, I had just assumed that domestic abuse was on the decrease, but I was shocked to discover that it was not. The fact was, I had been involved in politics at an activist level for such a long time and I had played rugby—where the white ribbon campaign is fully active—for 17 or 18 years, yet I had not heard of the campaign, so I thought I would use my voice as a new MP.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, and I am delighted to be working with him on this important campaign. I am sorry to hear of his experience with the Commons and Lords rugby team, and I apologise for having to leave the debate early because I am going to the start of the super league season in the other code—rugby league. Does he agree that sports stars such as Ikram Butt—the Leeds, Featherstone and England rugby league star—and strong sporting heroes from all sports are ideal role models for showing that strong men are absolutely against violence against women in all its forms?
Gavin Newlands
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. Later in my speech, I will call on sportsmen, celebrities and MPs—men of all persuasions—to support the white ribbon campaign.
I am a father of two young girls, and I always worry about their futures—about how they will grow up and who they will settle down with when they are much, much older. As a father and as a citizen, I want to do all I can to stamp out the abhorrent use of violence and bullying that puts down and disempowers women, and I will work with anybody from any party in trying to achieve that.
In Scotland, the stark economic cost of failing to address domestic violence is said to amount to £1.6 billion. A 2009 study completed by Sylvia Walby of Lancaster University suggested that in England and Wales, domestic abuse alone costs society more than £15 billion a year in costs to services and economic output. However, regardless of the sums involved, failure to tackle domestic violence is simply not an option. The figures that I have just read out do not quantify the human and emotional cost that arises from violence against women.
At the very heart of it, this debate revolves around the premise and reality of equality. Some argue that we live in an equal society, that men and women are treated equally and that young girls are provided with the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Those people are sadly wrong. We are not living in an equal society, and still today, in the 21st century, too many men think they are in a position to overpower women and treat them as they see fit.
In England and Wales, abusive partners cost the lives of two women every week. Back home, Police Scotland spends 20% of its operational time dealing with instances of domestic violence. Domestic rape almost doubled in 2013-14, with an increase of 81%. Politicians are known to bandy about figures and statistics, and I do not intend to use too many more, but these are not just numbers; they are horrific and often life-changing experiences suffered by women across the country. The statistics show that we do not live in an equal society. They indicate that for too many women, this is still a broken society. With one voice, this Parliament should say, “Enough is enough.”
If there were any doubt that this debate is needed, by chance it falls in the week in which we have witnessed an angry outcry across the UK about the ridiculous and attention-seeking pro-rape blogger Roosh V. This small, pathetic excuse of a man has some of the most abhorrent views that I have come across, and is endangering the lives of women to further his own career. The views he expresses highlight the long journey that we still have to travel to ensure real, not perceived, equality for women.
A lot of good work is being done to tackle the effects of domestic violence and to enable authorities to charge and convict offenders. Efforts to prevent it from occurring in the first place have also increased. Both the UK and Scottish Governments are committed to eradicating domestic violence from our society and have adopted preventive strategies in combating it.
In 2010, the coalition Government launched their strategy entitled “A Call to End Violence against Women and Girls”, which committed to challenging the attitudes and behaviours that cause many women and girls to live in fear. The strategy is aimed at providing the authorities with the tools that they need to bring perpetrators to justice. The desire behind it is to adopt a partnership approach to preventing violence from happening in the first place. That is the correct approach to take—working across organisational boundaries to achieve a common goal. We need to intervene early, preventing violent acts against women from becoming the norm and working with all bodies to help eradicate domestic violence from our society. I will come back to the subject of prevention work.
The UK Government are providing funding to local groups that perform services that help to tackle violence against women. However, earlier this week Women’s Aid informed me that the current crisis funding for women’s refuges in England will come to an end on 31 March. The Minister sidestepped this question in the Chamber this morning, but when she responds, will she commit to a long-term, sustainable funding solution for women’s refuges?
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. He talks about cuts to services. Does he agree that the Government are often clever in defraying those cuts on to local government? In my borough, Southall Black Sisters does very good work for black and minority ethnic communities on issues such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation and the impact of religion and culture. The organisation is being stifled at the moment because the grant to Ealing Council has been cut drastically, which is affecting its ability to deliver those services.
Gavin Newlands
Absolutely. It is often the people who need such services the most who suffer as a result of cuts. I will return to funding, but the hon. Lady’s remarks are welcome.
I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government share the approach of seeking to intervene early and to work with others to help create a society in which women and girls are free from abuse. The “Equally Safe” strategy, launched in partnership with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, is aimed at preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls, and creating a strong and flourishing Scotland where all individuals are equally safe and respected. One positive aspect of the strategy is that it not only sets out to prevent violence against women from ever occurring, but seeks to address the daily inequalities and injustice that women face.
The Scottish Government have supported the strategy with sizeable financial support. In March 2015 the First Minister announced that £20 million would be invested in a range of measures to address all forms of violence against women and girls, in addition to the £11.8 million provided as part of the Scottish Government’s equality budget for 2015-16. More than £2 million of that funding has been allocated to prosecutors and the courts service to ensure that cases involving abuse are heard more quickly. Some £1.8 million has been awarded to Rape Crisis Scotland over the next three years to allow it to expand its advocacy services across the country, including by having rape crisis services in Orkney and Shetland for the first time. Less than a week ago, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights, Alex Neil, announced a further £0.5 million to help build stronger and more resilient women’s support groups across Scotland by helping to improve their infrastructure.
That investment by the Scottish Government amounts to a 62% increase on the previous Administration. Last week, during a hearing organised by the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, many groups raised concerns about funding for the services that they provide. Can the Minister assure those groups that not only will their funding not be cut but that they might see similar uplifts to the ones their Scottish counterparts have received?
I have spoken about prevention and about adopting a joined-up approach to addressing the issue, and I have said that eight out of 10 cases of domestic violence are committed by men on women. That basic premise is what led me to secure this debate. For the past few months I have been proud to be an ambassador for the white ribbon campaign, a worldwide organisation with active groups both north and south of the border. The campaign concentrates on working with men to speak out and challenge male violence against women. It urges men and boys to wear a white ribbon and sign a personal pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women. Some 25,000 men have signed up to that pledge, and last year I tabled an early-day motion calling on all Members to support the work of the white ribbon campaign. I make that call again today and urge all MPs to sign the pledge, but this is not just about increasing the number of pledges; it is about creating positive male role models.
Other MPs have been long-standing supporters of the white ribbon campaign, including the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), who tabled an early-day motion in November welcoming its 10th anniversary. As MPs, we need to show leadership on this issue. As public figures and representatives, we have a duty to lead by example. Not only should we sign the pledge ourselves, but we should recruit others to the cause. I urge all MPs to go back to their constituency and draw up a list of 20 male figures who are influencers in their local community. They could be faith leaders, community activists, business owners, teachers, sportsmen or celebrities. Target those individuals and urge them to support the white ribbon campaign and to pledge to challenge violence against women in whatever form it takes.
Unfortunately, unlike in Australia, Ireland and Scotland, where central Governments have helped to fund the white ribbon campaign, the UK body receives no state funding. The Government might be interested in learning more about the white ribbon campaign’s work, and I invite the Minister to meet me and representatives of the campaign to learn more about its campaigns and to look at ways in which the UK Government might be able to support that work.
Other organisations are working with young boys to prevent violence against women. That is the key battleground in prevention, and one project that I want to spend time talking about involves going into schools and working with pupils on the issue of violence against women. It might shock Members—it certainly shocked me—to learn that police figures suggest that between 2012 and 2015, more than 5,500 sexual offences were recorded in schools, including 600 rapes. That is an appalling state of affairs and underlines the point that much more preventive action is required.
We need to understand the reasons why a young boy grows up to commit such violent acts. I believe that no one is born a violent person, but along the way something happens that makes them become a violent individual. Working with schools is one way that we can help to address that issue. In 2012, the End Violence Against Women coalition published a schools guide to address violence against women and girls, which includes a factsheet setting out the different forms of abuse that women and girls disproportionately experience. The guide helps parents, students and local women’s groups to work with their schools to promote girls’ safety. The coalition also accepts that we need to intervene early to prevent violence against women from ever occurring and, in addition to producing its schools guide, it has called on the Government to commit to long-term investment in public campaigns to change harmful attitudes and behaviours; and to ensure that all survivors of abuse have specialist support, whether or not they report it.
The End Violence Against Women coalition’s young people’s service focuses on interventions with young people who use violence and abuse in close relationships. That work targets young people aged between 10 and 25 years old and focuses on relationship abuse, parent violence and abusive behaviour within the family. That is an important area of work as it helps to change young people’s attitudes and behaviours and create more positive relationships between young men and their peers.
Some fantastic work is being done in schools by teachers and by groups such as Respect, which goes into schools to intervene when there are signs of abusive behaviour. However, a lot of that necessary work is interventional in nature. We should be looking to use the expertise of groups such as Women’s Aid, the white ribbon campaign and others by letting them go into our schools early and often to speak to young children about relationships, respect and domestic violence. There is evidence to suggest that boys’ attitudes harden when they reach their teenage years, so to get through to them, engagement needs to be either early in high school or later on in primary school, or in my opinion, both.
Will the Minister expand on some of the other work going on in schools that is aimed at preventing violence against women? That is an important area, as we want our boys to treat girls with respect and as equals from a young age. Can she assure us that she will consider implementing a formal national programme of engagement, rather than the current fractured localised work? I would also like her to respond to the calls from Women’s Aid and others for the Government to make sex and relationships education and personal, social, health and economic education a statutory part of the national curriculum. That would help to ensure that all boys and girls had the opportunity to learn about healthy, mutually respectful communication and the meaning of consent, and to be encouraged to develop broader, more flexible gender roles.
The Government have made progress and have done reasonably well in some areas, but they need a helpful shove in others. If we are to achieve the success that we all want in ending violence against women, we need an effective justice system that truly understands the issue and punishes those who commit such atrocious acts. That includes working with those who are serving time in the justice system as a result of committing violent acts against women.
Respect works with perpetrators of domestic violence, and as well as running an advice service for male victims of domestic violence, it runs a series of specialist domestic violence prevention services. Those services focus on changing perpetrators’ behaviour and managing their risk, and the safety of victims, including children, is at their heart. Such services help to prevent repeat cases of domestic violence and help us gain knowledge of why people resort to violence in the first place.
A four-year study conducted in the United States evaluating a similar service to Respect’s specialist domestic violence services showed a clear de-escalation of re-assault and other forms of abuse over time, with the vast majority of men reaching sustained non-violence. The services that Respect provides are extremely important, and I urge the Government to work with it, because we need to do more work with perpetrators. We need to help change their behaviour to prevent repeated abuse and to gain knowledge of the causes of domestic violence. All perpetrators of domestic abuse should be encouraged to enter rehabilitation programmes during and after their incarceration.
My final point is about the ratification, or lack thereof, of the Istanbul convention. The Government signed that document on 8 June 2012. Three and a half years is a long time to delay ratifying something to which they have already agreed. This morning, the Minister reassured us that the convention will be ratified once the one remaining issue with the devolved Administrations is resolved. What is that issue, and is she in a position to give Members an indication of when it will be resolved so that ratification can take place? The convention is important as it argues that no single agency or institution can address violence against women alone. The legally binding framework stresses the need for partnership working, intervening early and having a series of integrated policies that stretch across all Government Departments and across sectors. Ratifying the convention will send a clear and strong message about the UK Government’s commitment to eradicating violence against women from our society.
Tackling and defeating violence against women is one of the rare issues that unifies this Parliament. However, we should not allow that consensus to foster complacency. There are still too many women who are afraid of doing or saying anything at home in fear of violent repercussions. There are still too many young teenage girls in abusive relationships who are too afraid to get out of them. There are still too many children who go to bed at night and cannot sleep because they hear the violence that is poisoning their home. I for one have had enough. I pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about men’s violence against women in all its forms. Today, as Members of this House, we must resolve that we can, should and must do more combat the abhorrent violence inflicted on women in homes across our constituencies and across the UK. It is an inexcusable shame and a national scandal that these violent acts persist in our society. We have a duty to fight back and eradicate this scourge once and for all.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
Order. I intend to call the other two movers of the motion now, starting with Mr Andrew Percy.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I apologise that I must leave this debate early. I mean no discourtesy to the House, but I am chair of a governing body and we are discussing the new school uniform this evening, which is somewhat controversial, so I must be there.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands); I agreed with much of his speech. Given the time constraints and the fact that I am leaving early, I shall endeavour not to repeat much of it. I pay tribute to him and to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who also sponsored the motion. I have been a member of and an ambassador for the white ribbon campaign for two or three years now; it is great to see them here at this debate. The issue is important.
Having said that I would not repeat what the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North said, I will now do so. We are aware that domestic violence does not affect only women; in fact, sadly, sometimes when I have posted on social media about this particular campaign, I have been instantly attacked by people saying, “Ah, but what about the men who are victims?” Nobody involved in any of these campaigns is trying to brush that under the carpet. We know that it is not the case that all women are victims, or that all men are perpetrators, but it is a fact that the majority of people who suffer domestic violence are women, and the campaign seeks to address one particular element of that: the role that men can play in tackling violence against women.
Actually, as the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North said, it is about men and boys, because boys are an important part of the campaign. I know as a former high school teacher that unfortunately, teenage boys in our communities sometimes have views of women and girls that are entrenched from an early age. It used to sadden me often in the community where I taught. It was a difficult community; we had considerable social problems. Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems that we had to deal with was boys’ views of women and girls, often because the person they came up against most in their lives, such as their primary caregiver, was a woman. Their behaviour towards them became unacceptable, and their view of women was concerning. We used to deal with that quite a lot.
I am open-minded about personal, social, health and economic education—I used to teach it—but I am not sure that it has a particular impact or value in schools. As a result of the new workload agreement, it is often not taught by teachers but delivered by others within the school. Unfortunately, when a subject is not examined—even when it is statutory, as religious education is throughout the English curriculum—the priority given to it by the school and the quality with which it is delivered are sometimes questionable. I would argue that equality should be embedded throughout the school curriculum, in both the pastoral role that tutors play and through delivering the curriculum. That is the most effective way to deliver on a theme across schools.
We heard from the hon. Gentleman about the cost of domestic violence, which is estimated at about £23 billion to the United Kingdom and £3.1 billion to employers. Of course, putting a figure on it does not do justice to the real cost of domestic violence, which is human and emotional suffering by the victims and their children. We also heard from him that one in four women will experience physical abuse, and almost half will experience some form of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. As he said, two women a week in the United Kingdom are killed in that context.
Although progress has been made, and in many respects it is encouraging that women now feel able to report far more than they used to, it is worrying that back home in Yorkshire, one in five cases of reported domestic violence are not pursued any further. Public interest issues are sometimes claimed, as are other reasons. That is a major concern, but progress has undoubtedly been made. The hon. Gentleman talked about that, so I will not repeat it, but domestic violence has more repeat victims than any other crime in the United Kingdom, and we should bear that in mind.
The hon. Gentleman also outlined much of the Government action that has been taken. I am pleased that this is the sort of debate that unites people across the House. We all want to go in the same direction. We may debate and discuss how to get there—comments have been made about local government funding and all the rest of it—but I think that the issue unites us politically, and we should pay tribute to this Government and the previous Government for the progress that they have made and the action that they have taken on the issue, some of which he reported.
I will not repeat what he said, but I will mention my local authority. The reason why I became a white ribbon ambassador involves Steven Marshall, the South Australian Liberal leader, of all people, who is a good friend. I noticed that he was involved with the white ribbon campaign in Australia. I thought that it looked like a thoroughly good thing to do. He signed up on behalf not only of his constituents and his party but ultimately, if his party forms one, of the Government, to support the campaign. I thought that that seemed sensible, which is why I approached the white ribbon campaign a couple of years ago to ask how we could engage in it better in my own area. My area is served by two local authorities: the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire.
I approached our leader—Baroness Redfern, as she now is—in North Lincolnshire and asked if she would sign up the council to become a white ribbon council and Scunthorpe to become a white ribbon town. She was pleased to do so. I encourage other Members to ask their local authorities to do the same. Local authorities are already undoubtedly spending a lot of money and engaging a lot of time and effort to tackle domestic violence, but what the white ribbon campaign can bring is important, including getting councils to rethink how they view the issue.
We have engaged Scunthorpe United, which I am pleased to say has now hosted us for two signings. However, it is not just about signing up, getting an award and all the rest of it; it is about what the local authority is actually doing. My authority is now rewriting all its policies, and there are some progressive examples that would read across to other authorities. The entire domestic violence policy is being reviewed in light of the white ribbon campaign.
Importantly, the council is also reviewing its code of conduct for employees. The current code of conduct states that employees must not behave in work or outside work in a way that calls into question their suitability to work for the council. We do not think that that is tightly defined enough, so the local authority is seeking to make it absolutely clear by writing it into the code of conduct that any employee who engages in domestic violence is never suitable to work in North Lincolnshire. I would say that they are not suitable to work anywhere, particularly if they deal with other vulnerable people.
When commissioning and procuring services, the council will ensure that the principles of the white ribbon campaign are written into new contracts as much as possible, so that anybody with whom the council contracts is aware of them too. The council is also considering a youth engagement strategy, which is important. I agree with what the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North said. I know what it is like, as a former teenage lad and a teacher of teenage lads. The people they look up to are, frankly, not Members of Parliament. I am sure that the public generally look up to and respect Members of Parliament, but a really good way to teenage lads is their role models in sport—in the local football team, in rugby and, I hope, increasingly in American football, a proper sport. That is how to engage lads of a particular age, which is why a youth engagement programme run by the local authority with sports teams—not just football, but other sport clubs—is important.
There is no doubt that in northern Lincolnshire, we have a big ethnic and minority population who can be difficult to reach on this issue. We have teams operating in those communities, and the council is looking to engage them to find role models there as well, which will be important. Getting the local leaders to take a stand is important, so we have engaged with people in business and local solicitors, and we are encouraging all the elected members in the cabinet to sign up and become ambassadors for the campaign. Then, of course, there is the training for staff and all the rest of it, which is so important.
There is a lot that the council can do. I am really interested to see whether one idea comes to fruition. It is to consider a graduate placement or apprenticeship opportunity in this field, specifically to promote the white ribbon campaign in North Lincolnshire, which I think would be really innovative.
A lot is being done; there is a lot more that could be done. Local authorities have a really big role to play in this area, as do schools. The NHS is also important, because one issue that still comes up repeatedly is whether or not the training on domestic violence provided within the health system is as widespread or as sufficient as it should be.
I will not say much more than that, Madam—Mrs Gillan. It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I believe that this issue unites the House. As I have said, a lot is being done. I pay particular tribute to the white ribbon campaign. If we can get Government working more closely with campaigns such as that, it will be all for the better. I agree that we need to look at the Istanbul convention and consider where we are with that.
There is a real leadership role here for Government, but we will never tackle this problem from the top down; we will tackle it from the bottom up. That means men taking a stand and making it absolutely clear that we will not remain silent whenever there is domestic abuse or violence perpetrated against women, or tolerate it. We have a responsibility. Those of us who are not involved and never will be involved in domestic violence have a responsibility to make it absolutely clear to those of our gender who are involved that we will not stay silent if they engage in that sort of behaviour.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
I call the other sponsor of the motion, Jess Phillips.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Mrs Gillan—Madam Gillan—the many variations on what you have been called today—
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
Order. Madam Chairman or Mrs Gillan will do.
Jess Phillips
Madam Chairman, Mrs Gillan, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship.
Jess Phillips
When we look at the fight to stop violence against women in the UK, we see protest after protest by women: reclaiming the night; laying down red shoes to signify the women murdered at the hands of their partners; and women with banners and signs. I know from all my work and from endless academic studies that tackling women’s rights issues here and around the world is always best organised and best realised when women self-advocate. We will not be given a break; we will have to take it. I know that men should not lead this fight, but we women will achieve nothing without the world’s men joining in and helping us.
It is a shame that I have to say this, but I am glad that, as a man, the previous speaker—the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy)—also felt he had to say it. Time and time again, people with egg-faces on Twitter accuse me of thinking that all men are rapists. So, for the record, I will say that I do not think that all men are rapists. I am sure that it is strange for many people out there to hear that I am married to a man, and I have never said that I think all men are rapists, regardless of how many times it has been quoted as something that I have said.
I do not think all men are sexist and I do not think that all men commit violence against women, or against anyone for that matter. Most men are absolutely smashing. Most men would gladly stand up, shoulder to shoulder with their sisters, and demand better. In fact, in a recent Survation poll undertaken by the Fawcett Society, nearly nine in every 10 men surveyed said that they wanted women to have equality in all areas of their lives, which was a higher proportion than the proportion of women who said that. The truth is that men out there want equality, and now we have to help them to act on that.
Unfortunately, a very tiny minority of very vocal men are not like that. A tiny minority of men rape women; a minority of men hit their partners. In any group, there is a tiny minority who let the majority down. It is the same tiny minority of men who get incredibly defensive when women speak up about this issue. I am here to say to them, “Dude, don’t always assume that we’re talking about you.”
It would be fair to say that sometimes I can be clumsy with my words. Sometimes, my emotions and frustration pour out in words that perhaps I should consider just a little more, but I get angry because it is an unpalatable truth that women are sexually harassed and assaulted and physically abused hundreds and hundreds of times every day in this country, and always have been. For every man who has tweeted me, emailed me and called my office this week to say that that is total rubbish, three times as many women have sent me messages telling me their experiences. The most wonderfully heartening messages this week, and I think they were the messages that I received most frequently, were those from hundreds of men showing their support for the women in this country.
Violence against women is not something that just happens on a TV drama or in one section of society; it is everywhere. I have worked with women who have the most horrific tales to tell and I have tried to retell their stories; stories of rape as a weapon of war, and stories of a life of torture and fear. This violence exists—it happens—but the reality of violence against women is far less bombastic, and far more pedestrian and everyday, and that is what people find so hard to believe.
Here are some of the stories from my life, and from the lives of others who have been in touch with me this week. I will start with my own story.
When I was 19, I was having a drink in a bar and a man pinned me against the wall, and stuck his hand up my skirt and inside my knickers, in full view of all of his mates. I slapped him in the face, as I am sure everybody in this room today would expect me to do, and I was thrown out of the bar, even though I told the security staff what had happened. The man and his mates laughed at me as I was ejected. I was terrified, and I am sad to say that that was the not the one and only time that I have been terrified by a member of a tiny minority.
Following my recent outing on “Question Time”—an occasion when my words could possibly have been chosen better—I received hundreds of messages from around the country. Here are just some of them:
“I was dancing on the dance floor. A group of lads started to lift up my skirt and try to pull down my pants. I just walked away.”
“I am a beautician and I was in a consulting room with a client. He asked me if I offered extra. I said no, he exposed himself to me and started to masturbate. I asked him to stop, he said sorry, he couldn’t control himself. I am visibly pregnant. It didn’t stop him. He’s been in since as if nothing happened.”
“I was on the tube this week. A man kept putting his hand on top of mine on the rail, every time I moved it he did it again. I moved my hand, to tip-toe and reach the handle above me. I’m not tall so it was difficult. He then stood so close behind me that his groin rubbed against me. I couldn’t do anything.”
“I stopped going to clubs because I was fed up of being touched inappropriately by strangers. Now, as a barmaid, I just have to deal with ‘banter’ in a work context!”
“I first got my bottom groped in a pub when I was 15. I thought nothing of it. When I was 20, I woke up from a nap on a long-haul flight to find the man in the neighbouring seat with his hand inside my blanket. I was too shocked to respond.”
She said she just sat there with him the whole way. She continued:
“At 21, I was on a train when a man knelt on the floor in front of me and ran his hands up my legs—again, I did nothing.”
This story is from a teacher:
“Last week in the corridor at school, I overheard a girl tell her boyfriend to wait while she just went to the loo. After she walked off, the boy’s two mates laughed at him. One said to another, ‘Don’t let her order you around, keep that bitch on a leash.’ They were 14.”
My story and every one of the hundreds of stories that I have read this week have one thing in common—the victim never mentioned the incident to their parents, their partners and certainly not the police. Figures will never show the reality; this is just part of our everyday normal life. Women shrug it off—“Just one of those things.” For most women, this is an accepted part of life; we think of it as an annoyance. Having to tell a man, and I have done this repeatedly in my life, “No, I don’t want to get into your car”, is a pain but no biggie.
I have met girls who did get in the car. Certain men know where to look for the vulnerable girls who will get in. They are the girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and—before we congratulate our own areas—pretty much every town and city pretty much everywhere in the country.
Violence against women is everywhere; on every street, a woman is taking a beating, or just keeping quiet and waiting for the ordeal to be over. In every nightspot in the country, some teenage girl is being groped and shamed. Every school in the country has a kid whose time there is respite from what they see at home. When a problem is everywhere, we need everyone to join in the fight to stop it.
The first part of this fight is for us to ask the question a lot more. I ask every person in this room, both men and women, to ask the women in their lives—their daughters, wives, sisters and friends—if they have ever been frightened by the behaviour of a man. You will be shocked and surprised by what you hear.
We need action. We need every man who sees his mate touching a woman’s bottom to speak up—don’t laugh; it is not just one of those things. We need every man who hears another man referring to a woman as a worthless bitch, a whore or a slag to speak up. No man should ever let the statement, “She was asking for it”, pass without comment. If men think their mates, their sons or their dads are being a bit lairy, tell them to pack it in. Most of all, when a woman says, “It happens,” do not tell her she is wrong. Do not think that it means she thinks all men are like it or that it means she thinks you are like it. Just listen.
The white ribbon campaign is brilliant. It gives a space for men to pledge to fight against violence. If every man who was on our side spoke up, it would drown out the very loud minority who do not support women’s rights. As I am speaking, hundreds of the noisy men are taking to the internet right now to shout at me and say things like, “She wishes someone wanted to rape her”. Let us not let them be the voice that stands out.
Here in Parliament, I have been proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with men in the fight to protect refuge funding. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) have fought valiantly to protect domestic violence refuges across the country. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) dedicated much of his previous life as the Director of Public Prosecutions to improving the harrowing situation for victims of domestic and sexual violence in the criminal courts. He now stands shoulder to shoulder with me and the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and many of our female colleagues from all parts of the House in trying to improve how women and children cope with the family courts.
Dr Huq
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. She referred to the courts. Last week, the Court of Appeal found against the bedroom tax for discriminating against domestic violence victims. Does she agree that it beggars belief that the Government seem more intent on fighting that decision than protecting those victims and compensating them?
Jess Phillips
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. There is one particular man seemingly fronting up the case to take the issue back to the courts and to try to damage women who have been put in specialist supportive accommodation. I ask that particular man, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to stand with me and pledge, as part of being a white ribbon ambassador, to do his bit to stand against violence against women. Unfortunately, I fear that that request will fall on deaf ears.
Our network of specialist services is under threat, and I ask everyone in this place to stand with us and fight for them. I ask Ministers today, as my colleague from over the border, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, asked, to answer how we can make our safe spaces and refuges sustainable for the future so that they are not merely living hand to mouth every year. I ask all the men in Parliament and Parliament itself to sign up to the white ribbon pledge. How councils have done that and the definite beneficial effects have been outlined.
This is not an us and them issue for women and men. Women fighting for their rights to live free from violence are not attacking men; they are defending women. The more men who join us in the fight against violence against women, the less it will happen. More women will speak up and more women will be free to go out dancing, to settle down with a partner and to live full lives. We must encourage every women who suffers violence to report it to the police. I wish I had. All I ask of every man is simple: please just tell us that you believe us. Otherwise, we will just keep keeping it secret; just taking it as if we deserve it. I want to give a massive thank you to the men in the Chamber and especially to my colleague the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North for calling the debate. Men are brilliant, funny, kind and caring. We do not just want them in our lives, we want them in our fight, too.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I want to speak about one specific issue: the need for this country to have a sex buyer law. Sex buyers are a key reason why vulnerable young women are lured by traffickers into Britain to be brutally exploited in the sex trade. They are a key reason why sexual slavery is worth at least £130 million annually in the UK. They are a key reason why in 2016 we must continue our fight against human trafficking. One way to do that would be to criminalise paying for sex. At this stage, I pay tribute to the Minister for all the work she has done in the fight against human trafficking, and I know she continues to work on that and that she will be listening carefully to what I have to say.
Even if they do not agree on many other issues—the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and I have smiled about such disagreements on more than one occasion—no one of fair mind could fail to be moved by the heartrending accounts of young girls lured to the country by the promise of work in a nail bar or a hairdresser, only to have their passport confiscated by the person who accompanied them through passport control. Often that person is an apparently charming young man who suddenly changes once they reach this country. He takes her to a place where she is effectively imprisoned, and then she is repeatedly, horrendously abused. She is often fed with drugs and often raped by several men until she is broken down. She is then told that to repay the debt she owes for having entered this country, and effectively to gain her freedom, she must service countless other men for an interminable time. I say countless; one anti-trafficking organisation that I know well and does excellent work supporting such victims told me of one girl who decided that she would count the number of men she was forced to service with sex in one day. It was more than 100.
Most men do not pay for sex, but most of those who do pay for sex are men. Many men recognise that transaction—paid-for sex—for what it is: sexual exploitation. Sex buyers are the critical link in the human trafficking chain, so far as these women who are exploited are concerned. If we can break that link, we can do so much to change their situation and the lives of countless other young women who otherwise will continue to be exploited and brought into this country in that way.
Right now, paying for sex in this country is legal. As Alan Caton, a former detective superintendent of Suffolk constabulary, said:
“Sex buyers feel the current law gives them licence to exploit vulnerable women—and they are right.”
We have to remove that licence to exploit. The legality of paying for sex is a crucial factor in whether a country is an appealing destination for sex traffickers. An analysis of up to 150 countries found that reported human trafficking inflows were bigger—much bigger in some cases—in countries where prostitution is legal. Countries such as the Netherlands and Germany which have legalised paid-for prostitution now face the challenge of continued exploitation and high rates of trafficking. A retired police detective from Germany has described the country as a traffickers’ magnet and a
“centre for the sexual exploitation of young women from Eastern Europe, as well as a sphere of activity for organised crime groups from around the world.”
In a moment, I will explain why there is such a contrast between such countries and countries where paid-for prostitution has been criminalised.
Britain needs a sex buyer law: a three-pronged legal framework that criminalises paying for sex, decriminalises selling sex—we have to recognise that these women are victims—and supports those who are exploited through the sex trade to exit. When Stephen Harper’s Government introduced that approach in 2014, Peter MacKay, Canada’s former Justice Minister, explained that those who are paid for sex are decriminalised
“not because it authorizes or allows selling it, but rather because it treats sellers as victims of sexual exploitation, victims who need assistance in leaving prostitution and not punishment for the exploitation they’ve endured”.
Such a law here in the UK would send out a strong message, backed by legislative sanctions, that to exploit a person by trafficking them for sex is totally unacceptable and that those who do so will face consequences.
Sweden was the first country to adopt the sex buyer law in 1999. Under that law, by which it is an offence to buy sex, there have been approximately 3,000 convictions. The message has gone out loud and clear that there is no point trafficking people to Sweden to sell sex. Conversations between traffickers have been intercepted in which they have said, “Don’t bother sex trafficking to Sweden.” An official evaluation of its impact noted in 2010 that,
“according to the National Criminal Police, it is clear that the ban on the purchase of sexual services acts as a barrier to human traffickers and procurers considering establishing themselves in Sweden.”
Norway followed suit by adopting the sex buyer law in 2009. Again, an assessment of the law’s impact, which was commissioned by the Norwegian Government, concluded:
“A reduced market and increased law enforcement posit larger risks for human traffickers. The profit from human trafficking is...reduced due to these factors. The law has thus affected important pull factors and reduced the extent of human trafficking in Norway in comparison to a situation without a law.”
The nation to most recently adopt the sex buyer law was Northern Ireland. Proposed by Lord Morrow in his Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill, it entered into force in June 2015. At a parliamentary event that I chaired to mark its introduction, I had the privilege of listening to the powerful testimony of prostitution survivor Mia de Faoite, who had testified before Northern Ireland’s Committee for Justice during their deliberations on the legislation. She very movingly told us that
“prostitution is the systematic stripping of one’s human dignity, and I know that because I have lived and witnessed it.”
Mia spent six years in prostitution on the streets of Dublin. The sex buyer law, she said,
“is about the protection of human dignity”
and
“the protection of freedom”.
As a member of the Modern Slavery Bill Committee in 2014, it was clear to me that to end sexual slavery we must end the demand driving it. That requires adopting a sex buyer law. Although the Modern Slavery Bill did not offer the legislative vehicle for this reform—the Committee did discuss it—it is crucial that we now move quickly to provide one. As I said in Parliament when speaking on that Committee,
“the majority of people who sell themselves for sex are incredibly vulnerable and subject to real exploitation.”
Whether or not they have been trafficked, they are
“often homeless, living in care and suffering from debt, substance abuse or violence. They have often experienced some form of coercion either through trafficking or from a partner, pimp or relative.”––[Official Report, Modern Slavery Public Bill Committee, 4 September 2014; c. 203.]
In adopting this reform, we would bust a business model for pimps and stop Britain being a lucrative destination for sex traffickers.
I welcome the Home Affairs Committee’s current inquiry into prostitution laws. It is possible to obtain a consensus across parties on this issue, and I hope that MPs of all parties will support the proposed sex buyer law and take this opportunity to stand up for vulnerable women from across the UK and, indeed, the world.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
It is genuinely a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship here today, Mrs Gillan. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) for securing this debate.
The debate is timely, given all that has transpired in Scotland over the past week and the media coverage that has focused on a certain individual whom we have come to know as Roosh V: a name that many people would not have been aware of until this week. Judging by the overwhelmingly negative public reaction to his media coverage, I can confidently declare that the vast majority of men are appalled at his suggestion that rape should be legal on private property. Roosh V’s views are clearly abhorrent, but the events organised in his name offer us an important reminder. No matter how much progress we have made or continue to make on preventing violence against women, we can never become complacent.
Unfortunately, the views of too many men remain stubbornly fixed in the ancient past, and sometimes such views will become uncomfortably apparent to us. We have all been there when—some day, some place—a person makes a joke that we find offensive. When we do not laugh or we perhaps express our dismay, the response is usually the same: “It’s just a joke”. However, we know better; it is not just a joke. It is a reflection of something deeply hidden: a misplaced and perhaps unintended view against a person, situation or aspect of life that we believe is not suitable to be mocked or laughed at.
Why is it, though, that I believe one thing and another person can be comfortable believing another? You may think in this Parliament that we might have a greater understanding of a person’s views and how they originate. After all, we as parliamentarians spend practically all our waking moments expressing our views, opinions and beliefs. But dissecting an opinion into its constituent parts to find the root cause is not an exact science. And so we all go on, stumbling in the dark, trying to understand the human condition.
What makes a man violent? What makes a man violent against a woman? Is it nature or nurture? Is violence a fundamental part of the male psyche? Does it emanate from prehistoric times when the leader of the tribe felt that violence was an acceptable tool at his disposal? If that were a simple truth, all men would be violent against women, and we know that that is not the case. So, rather than making excuses for the unforgivable behaviour of a minority of men, we need to address nurture and the reasons why some men are violent.
Violence is a choice. It is something undertaken by some men who continue to accept outdated views of women: views that should never have been tolerated in the first place. Other factors undoubtedly contribute to this choice, whether that is mental health issues, stress or substance abuse. Studies also suggest that exposure to domestic violence as a child increases the likelihood that an individual may be violent within their own family. We should be adamant, however, that while it is important to understand these factors, they can never be used to excuse or justify violence against women. Equally, we must recognise the scale of the problem, and the ramifications for individuals, families and the country if we fail to take effective action.
The white ribbon campaign reports that one in four women in the UK will experience physical abuse in their lifetime, with almost 1 million children in the UK witnessing domestic violence every year. Across the EU, it is estimated that around 62 million women have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15.
A consultation on a specific offence to tackle domestic abuse across Scotland was launched last December. The consultation is a significant leap forward in tackling domestic abuse in our communities. It will make Scotland world leading in responding to this most heinous of crimes and protecting those who are some of the most vulnerable in our society. Scotland will be one of only a handful of countries across the world to introduce dedicated legislation that will not only capture types of conduct that are already criminal, but other forms of psychological abuse and control that cannot usually be prosecuted under the existing criminal law.
There is also Clare’s law, which is being implemented across Scotland. Clare’s law allows people to contact the police and request information on their partner’s background if they suspect that they have a history of domestic abuse. The scheme was trialled for six months in Ayrshire and Aberdeen, with a total of 59 applications received and 22 disclosures made. Each case is considered carefully by Police Scotland and other agencies to determine whether disclosure is lawful, necessary and proportionate to protect the individual from their partner. The initiative was named after Clare Brown, who was murdered by her violent ex-boyfriend in Greater Manchester in 2009. She was unaware of his history of violence against women. The initiative was brought about as a result of a campaign led by Clare’s father, Michael Brown. It is a powerful example of men’s constructive role in preventing violence against women.
At a national level, the Scottish Government have shown a firm commitment to tackling domestic abuse. Between 2012 and 2015, more than £34 million has been invested in a range of measures to tackle all forms of violence against women and girls. Although this financial support is welcome, if the Scottish Government, or any Government, are to achieve its long-term goals of bringing about social, cultural and attitudinal change, men need to take a more active and positive role.
The role models of our young men should not be those who threaten and attack women. It must be those who are caring and take their family and community responsibilities seriously. Men are in a unique position to speak out and step in when male friends or relatives insult, abuse or attack women. By doing so, we can create a culture of zero tolerance and a culture that reflects the position of those who think that domestic abuse can never be justified.
Roosh V and his handful of supporters want us to regress to an earlier age. I stand alongside the vast majority of men who reject his views. It is encouraging that a growing number of men are finding their voice on this issue. With effective action, we can permanently change attitudes and ensure that violence against women is consigned to the past for ever.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
My delight at serving under your chairmanship is absolutely undiluted, Mrs Gillan—unless you intervene in some way that I do not like very much. I apologise, because I know it is unusual for a member of the shadow Cabinet to take part in a debate such as this, but I remember that when you were in the shadow Cabinet you used to do so occasionally, so I am following in your footsteps. Indeed, I remember that you took forward a private Member’s Bill at one point.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
Mr Bryant, I have called you to speak, and we are looking forward to hearing what you say.
Chris Bryant
I wanted to speak in this debate for the simple reason that in my constituency, the Rhondda, probably the single biggest issue that takes up the most police time and causes the most damage to the individuals and the community I seek to represent is domestic violence against women. Every Thursday, Friday and, in particular, Saturday night is a tough night for the police in the south Wales valleys, and certainly in the Rhondda. They often have to deal with issues for many days afterwards. Sometimes things are very complicated because somebody makes a complaint and then wants to withdraw it. There are many complicated issues relating to whether and how the police should pursue such matters, let alone how the Crown Prosecution Service acts. In my 15 years as an MP, the majority of murders in my constituency have involved one partner killing another, and there have been several cases in which the man has killed both his girlfriend, wife or partner, and the child or children. There is no issue that is more important to my constituents. Unfortunately, in recent years we have seen a dramatic rise—by some 23%—in violent crime in Wales, particularly south Wales.
Some weekends are far worse than others for domestic violence in Wales. It is not because of the sport that we all love in Wales, rugby—I do not think there is a direct causal relationship—but it is a simple fact that when there are big international rugby matches on, and sometimes football matches as well, the number of domestic violence incidents rises dramatically. That is why we in Wales in particular have to look deep into our souls when it comes to domestic violence in our country. I am a great rugby fan. I go to matches and I enjoy it—I broke my leg playing rugby at Twickenham once—but we need to look very hard at the cultural issues in Welsh life that affect violence against women.
Some public attitudes in the valleys do not help, such as the attitude towards alcohol—that it is best to drink lots and lots and get absolutely blotto on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, and if you can do it all day Sunday as well, so much the better. Then there is the belief that young people prove themselves by drinking large amounts of alcohol. Not everyone participates at all. In fact, I recently surveyed all 16 to 18-year-olds in my constituency, and the percentage of youngsters who drink alcohol to excess is lower in my patch than in many others. None the less, that strong attitude is imbued in many people from an early age.
There is a similar attitude towards the perfect male shape, which is often influenced by anabolic steroids. The use of steroids in many gyms is well documented. Successive Governments have found it difficult to deal with the problem, which perpetuates the image of what a real man should look like: physically strong, silent, not necessarily very good at communicating, but good at communicating with their fists and prepared to take physical action if they want to. That whole concept of being a real man—of manning up—is a serious part of the problem. It is bad for men as well, and not only because of the fights outside pubs on weekend nights, some of which have led to deaths in my constituency; it is also bad for them on the rugby pitch. All too often, when someone has a concussion, they are determined to go back on. We need to change that attitude to concussion in sport. It is not the manly thing to go back on or to force somebody back on. The manly thing is for people to be responsible about their own health and take sage advice: if ever in doubt, sit it out.
I raise all those points because there is one issue that particularly troubles me. The six nations starts this weekend, and that is wonderful, but when there is a rugby match, we on the Welsh terraces will all sing “Delilah”. I know that some people will say, “Oh, here we go, he’s a terrible spoilsport,” but the truth is that that song is about the murder of a prostitute. It goes right to the heart of the issues we are discussing. There are thousands of other songs we could sing. We Welsh know every song in the book—we even know some of the words. “Cwm Rhondda” is a pretty good one to start with. I have sung “Delilah” as well—everybody loves doing the “She stood there laughing” moment—but if we are really going to take this issue seriously in Wales, we have to change how we do things.
In some years, the Welsh Rugby Union has been involved in really effective campaigns. Last year’s was called “Not In My Name”, and I am glad to say that several Welsh rugby clubs have signed up to the white ribbon campaign, but it is a shame that it is not every year and throughout the year. The decision about when the big internationals should be played is made entirely around money and broadcasting. Perhaps it should also be made taking into account the effect on people’s drinking habits and what they will do to their partners when they get home.
I am enormously grateful to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and the other Members who have secured the debate, who are from different parties. I should also mention bullying in schools towards not only girls as a whole but lesbians and trans people. I have tried so many times before, but I want to say to the Government that we will never be able to address these issues unless we have proper sex and relationship education. I know that some people will think, “That means you’re going to teach kids how to have sex.” It is quite the reverse. It is about making sure that every young person has the self-confidence to make good decisions for themselves—whether about alcohol, or friendships, or when they want to have their first sexual experience.
All the evidence from every country in Europe and around the world suggests that where there is good sex and relationship education, kids delay their first sexual experience, the number of boys who are violent towards girls is cut, relationships between boys and girls are improved and bullying is cut. I cannot see why we are prepared to continue with a situation in this country where some schools do it brilliantly and many schools do it abysmally; and where it is the one class that a teacher dreads having to teach and kids dread having to go to. We have to have a whole-school approach, and it has to be on a statutory basis. Of course individual parents should be able to say that they do not want their kids to engage in it, but no schools or set of governors should be able to say, “Sorry, we are just not going to do that,” because in the end, when that happens we are consigning kids to bullying and more girls and women to violence in their lives. It is about self-confidence and respecting one another.
I have never wanted to live in a tolerant society, because that always sounds like people are simply tolerating those who are different from them. I want to live in a society of respect, where we respect one another’s sexuality, one another’s right to say no, and one another’s right to say yes. We will never have that unless we look deep into our souls when it comes to these cultural issues. I am deeply grateful to have had this opportunity speak, and I am glad to stand with others who seek to end the violence that has been perpetuated through the centuries, with women and children being called chattels and treated as things to be thrown around and used and abused. One day, we will put a stop to it.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Like all the speakers before me, I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and the other Members who were involved in securing this debate.
Gender-based violence is a function of gender inequality and the abuse of male power and privilege. It takes the form of actions that result in physical, sexual and psychological harm or suffering to women and children, or of affronts to their human dignity, including the threat of such acts. It is men—not all men, but a tiny minority—who predominantly carry out such violence, and it is women who are predominantly the victims of it.
Talking about gender-based violence highlights the need to understand violence in the context of women’s subordinate status in society. It cannot be understood in isolation from the norms, social structures and gender roles in the community, which greatly heighten women’s vulnerability to violence. For far too long the issue has been confined to the shadows, and what has gone on behind closed doors has remained private. Violence should never be considered private. An attack on one woman by a male perpetrator is an attack on all women, because it goes to the heart of how the perpetrator views women and their relation to men. How we recognise and respond to such violence goes to the heart of the kind of society we seek to build. Violence against women should never be confined to the shadows, and it is shocking that it ever was. Thankfully, times have changed and our society is beginning to shine a bright light on the issue. No woman should ever feel trapped in a cycle of violence, and no man should ever feel that perpetrating violence against his partner is a private matter.
Shamefully, in 2013-14 almost 60,000 incidents of domestic abuse were recorded by the police in Scotland, and that figure increased by 2.5% in 2014-15. As we know, the real figure is likely to be much higher, because domestic abuse is under-reported for a variety of reasons. The latest figures show that women make up the overwhelming majority—80%—of victims of domestic abuse. The overwhelming majority—94%—of serious sexual assaults are carried out by men, 83% of victims know the offender and 54% of victims identify the perpetrator as their partner. That is a matter of deep concern to all of us, because violence against women—indeed, violence against anyone—is a fundamental violation of human rights.
We must recognise the role that men can and must play in preventing and countering violence, particularly violence against women. It is important to acknowledge, as other hon. Members have pointed out, that the vast majority of men are not violent towards women, but the evidence shows that such violence is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men. Although it is important to deal with the aftermath of such violence, we must confront its root causes and reflect on the role of men. Specifically, we must address the attitudes, behaviour, identities and relationships of men who exhibit violence. Many men understand that it is important that we engage them in this debate, and we must underline the fact that they have a positive role to play in helping to prevent violence against women.
It is heartening that so many men across Scotland, the UK and the globe support the white ribbon campaign. The campaign aims to raise awareness among men and boys, promote discussion and provide information and resources to support personal and collective action by men. I am delighted that my local authority, North Ayrshire Council, participated in and supported the white ribbon campaign’s 16 days of action. It joined millions across the world in that international crusade. North Ayrshire Council has its own comprehensive violence against women strategy.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Several Members have referred to the importance of teaching positive relationships and personal, social, health and economic education in schools. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to think seriously about the process of the socialisation of young men—particularly those who grow up without a role model, those with violent or serial fathers and those who have no access to information and no role models other than people who are violent in relationships? We must concentrate on that crucial area if we want to make a sea change.
Patricia Gibson
The hon. Gentleman makes a very valid point. In Scotland we are trying to recruit more male primary school teachers to provide positive role models for young boys who lack them at home and in their wider family circle. I understand that that is happening across the United Kingdom, and it is to be encouraged and supported. There other social outlets, too. For example, schools can identify children who do not have positive male role models and direct them towards activities such as football clubs.
Our ultimate goal must be to create a society in which women are equal to men and feel safe and respected. I am proud that the Scottish Government have committed to achieving that goal in Scotland. They have provided record levels of funding and introduced legislation to ensure that Scotland works towards the prevention and eradication of all forms of violence against women. I will not go over the ground that my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North covered, but there have been many funding initiatives in Scotland to tackle the issue. The Caledonian system works with men convicted of domestic abuse offences to address the underlying causes of their behaviour and to further protect women. Only a few days ago, the Social Justice Secretary in the Scottish Government, Alex Neil MSP, announced more funding for women’s support groups across Scotland, but there is clearly much more to do.
If a mother is not safe in her own home, it is extremely unlikely that her children will be. Children frequently come to the attention of agencies when the severity and length of the mother’s exposure to abuse compromises her ability to nurture and care for her children. Make no mistake, living with domestic abuse is a form of emotional abuse for children. Many children can vividly describe incidents of violence in the home and their feelings of terror, powerlessness and fear. Children may also witness coercive, intimidating or manipulative behaviour, or direct threats. Such behaviour is as frightening and harmful as physical violence, and its long-term effect on children cannot be measured.
Although some women manage to escape from their violent partner, that can have a profoundly damaging effect on their children and can leave them distressed and confused. That deep sense of loss can cause lifelong emotional scars. Therefore, when men inflict violence on their partner, they harm people other than the woman against whom the violence is directed.
The Scottish Government are committed to Clare’s law, which my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North spoke about. I will not go over that ground again, but that is a powerful example of the constructive role that men can play in preventing violence against women. In Ayrshire—my neck of the woods—interesting things are happening. Individuals who have committed domestic violence are monitored by the police. At times when spikes in domestic violence are anticipated, such as the festive period, the police deploy domestic abuse cars manned by officers dedicated to dealing with domestic abuse. Visits similar to interventions are paid to those known by the police to have a history of committing domestic abuse, to proactively let them know that such behaviour will be pursued and to divert them from it.
I urge the Minister to reflect on the fact that to escape from domestic abuse, women need to be financially independent from their partner. Women experiencing domestic abuse face many barriers when trying to escape from that situation. Universal credit will replace benefit payments that are paid separately to each member of a couple with a single payment to one claimant in the household. That will increase women’s financial dependence, prevent them from leaving abusive homes and increase the risk of harm to them and their children.
It is essential that we engage positively with men—our important allies in tackling the problem of men who exhibit abusive behaviour. Rather than imposing a sense of guilt and shame on all men, we must make every effort to ensure that men understand that they are able to play a crucial part as positive role models in the prevention of violence against women. By challenging the attitudes of peers, by teaching our children from a young age about equality between the sexes and by refusing to condone the objectification and commercial sexual exploitation of women at any level, the prevention of violence against women can be achieved through the positive engagement of non-perpetrating men, who make up the vast majority of men out there.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) on securing this debate, which is timely given the urgent question earlier today about the visit by the rape apologists from—
Naz Shah
When we consider violence against women, we always look at the woman and the family, but there are wider implications. As someone whose mother served time in prison for killing an abusive partner and as a woman whose own forced marriage is well documented, I want to provide a cultural narrative to the debate from a BME perspective and to enlighten people about the issues around women in prison. In this country, two women a week are murdered by their partners, but some women are driven to kill because they see no other way out and have nowhere else. Services are not responsive due to language barriers or a lack of understanding. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) mentioned, some women are still not believed. My experiences happened over 23 years ago, but many women face the same issues and obstacles. Language barriers and cultural differences are a double whammy, leading to more hurdles to overcome to access services. We must be mindful of the barriers that women face.
I am pleased to see Ikram Butt, the first Asian rugby player to play for England, present today. He is a white ribbon champion and has come all the way from Yorkshire. He has canvassed me many a time about wearing my white ribbon, which is important because he is a role model for Asian people and Asian young men in sport. Sport is one way in which we need to engage with young people and young men in particular.
I had a natural hatred of men and of my own community because of my experiences, but my hatred was alleviated by the good men whom I came across and worked with, who taught me that our communities do contain decent men. However, that fact does not take away from the inequalities that women suffer. Turning to women in prison, the majority—nine out of 10—of women incarcerated in our prisons committed a crime because they were a caregiver or because they suffered some form of abuse. When women with children are imprisoned, the system not only incarcerates the woman but punishes the whole family. The entire family, including the children, are set up to fail because services are not geared correctly towards children. I was lucky that I was 18 and not in the care system and was able to look after my siblings, but the experience of prison affects young people as well. When discussing violence against women, we should not talk only about the woman who has been violated. Whole families and communities are affected. When a man commits violence, he is perpetrating a crime against a whole community or people. It is not just about the woman who is physically hurt or controlled, whether financially or mentally.
I am disheartened by the Government cuts that have affected charity organisations. Last year, I led a debate on cuts in the voluntary sector in this very room. Since my election, Bradford has seen the closure of two local charities that helped women. Both the Blenheim Project, which was a refuge, and the Manningham Mills Community Association, which was a place for women to come together and seek support, have closed. In addition, more than a third of the women who go to Women’s Aid are unfortunately turned away because of the cuts since 2010. There has been an increase in reports of rape this week in my local area alone. We need to address the cuts to local authorities, police forces and organisations such as Women’s Aid. It is fantastic that we are empowering men, and it heartens me to see so many men taking part in this debate and that the debate was led by a man. However, we are setting our communities up to fail if we do not address the wider issues of the funding that should be available to communities.
I urge the Minister to consider the implementation of the Istanbul convention, which has been signed by the United Kingdom but has not yet been ratified. I also advocate making awareness of gender-based violence the focal point of our school curriculums. I am unsure whether we are doing enough to address children’s anxieties about the role of women and power and control. If we are to address the matter, we cannot just address what is currently happening; we need preventive work for the long term. Young people have even more issues now, such as body image, and I have an 11-year-old daughter, so I am familiar with the pressures that young people face and I am exasperated by them.
Social media has a massive part to play in violence against women. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley has been persecuted, and such action is unacceptable. I have experienced Twitter trolling, but nowhere near that of some of my colleagues. I stand by my hon. Friend and I retweet things, as do many others, but we need more men to do that. I encourage the men in this room to troll the trolls. I would like the Minister to commit to embed such issues in our curriculum, so that we can empower young people and teach them that the way to get real power and control is not through the persecution of others but through being comfortable and by empowering women. Like my hon. Friend, I thank the fantastic men out there. I have two sons of my own. Men are wonderful, but we need more of them to help us. Be the majority, not the minority.
[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am trying not to be a paranoid politician, but the previous Chair left just as I was about to speak.
I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on granting this debate. All the Members who have contributed have made really powerful speeches. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah). Her life experiences and the comments made in earlier speeches tell us everything that we need to know about today’s debate. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) for his commitment to the white ribbon campaign.
One of my senior caseworkers used to work for Women’s Aid and I pay tribute to its work and that of similar organisations. We cannot forget that some situations are so grave that support workers actually put themselves at risk in their quest to help others, which is a forgotten consequence of violence against women. My final tribute is to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) who has worked in this field and continues to campaign on the subject and for women’s rights in general. She made another strong speech today, but her contribution on the impact of housing benefit was really powerful and the lack of response from the Minister that day was shameful. I hope that we can get that addressed today.
Everyone here abhors domestic violence, no matter who the perpetrator or victim, but I must admit that I sometimes wonder in these days of heightened equality whether we should differentiate between genders in domestic abuse. The blunt facts speak for themselves: 80% of domestic violence perpetrators in Scotland are male. Clearly, therefore, for a significant reduction in this abhorrent crime, or to break what can be a vicious circle of repeat behaviour with different partners or perpetrators’ children becoming future offenders, we need to tackle men’s attitudes and behaviours.
In fairness, society has come on leaps and bounds since the time of such oft-used phrases as “a woman’s place is in the home” or “a woman’s place is in the kitchen”, which perpetuated women’s status as second-class citizens, fuelling bad behaviour in the demands of men. Equally, although we have not completely eradicated such views, we have to remember that it is not even 100 years since women were first deemed worthy of a vote. Without doubt, we have come a long way.
We politicians have a real job to do on women’s place in society, in particular in international relations. One of our big middle east allies, Saudi Arabia, has a poor attitude towards women’s rights—women are not even allowed to drive. I have mentioned that before, in a human rights debate in the main Chamber, but we have to keep the issue to the forefront, because too many people have blind spots when dealing with Saudi Arabia.
In the UK, to change attitudes and prevent violence against women in a domestic situation and men’s role in that, education is clearly the most important tool. With education, we need to remember that most men have grown up to see hitting a woman as disrespectful or even unmanly—in Scotland it is often said, “You never hit a woman”—but we know that it happens. So there is a bit more to education—it is about getting people to understand how they change their moral compass and justify things. Vigilante mobs can justify their violent actions, but cannot see the irony in them doing violence.
Alan Brown
I was talking about men and changing their attitudes. That is why campaigns such as the white ribbon one are so vital—it is about making men see what domestic abuse is, as well as what the figures for it are. In that, I commend previous adverts from the Scottish Government that highlight how domestic abuse can be not only about violence but about controlling behaviour. Phrases such as “You’re not going out dressed like that”, or suggesting not meeting so-and-so or not going to a certain place, are controlling behaviour, which is a form of abuse that erodes self-esteem and can even lead in the end to domestic violence. As men, we need to recognise such behaviours and speak out against them.
To give an example of controlling behaviour, one of my constituents ended her marriage early due to domestic abuse but, some years later, she still has not managed to get a divorce settlement, because her ex-partner is deliberately dragging matters out, preventing her from truly moving on. He is now seeking an unrealistic settlement with regards to her property, towards which he has not paid one penny. We need a better support system in terms of the law and to assist women to move on. I realise that that is an “after the event” scenario, but it would help victims, confirm that they are the injured party and, importantly, put down a marker about unacceptable behaviour.
In terms of general court support, I pay tribute to the Scottish Government, who have allocated nearly £2.5 million to increase court capacity, reduce delays and expand access to legal advice as well as £1.85 million to Rape Crisis Scotland. We have heard that the Scottish Government are committed to rolling out the disclosure scheme known as Clare’s law. The need for that law underlines what we as men have to do to bring about social, cultural and attitude change in the coming years.
We must get to the heart of gender equality and engage in and support equality issues. Women being seen and treated as equals might not eliminate violence, but it will go a long way to changing the behaviour of many men. We also need to stand against people who use the derogative term, “That’s just the PC brigade” when we speak out. Those who use and hide behind such phrases are demonstrating that they have the wrong views and attitudes in the first place.
We must also speak out when misogyny occurs on social media. I welcome the general abhorrence of the Return of Kings event and I must put it on record that for Roosh V to advocate that rape should not be defined as such when a female willingly enters a property beggars belief. We cannot allow the spreading of such views, which tie in with some men seeing women purely as objects, which we must resist at all costs.
We also need to ensure that women do not feel that they have caused themselves to be victims. Over the years we have heard horror stories of court rulings in which judges have ruled that the way women dressed or the fact that they had had too much alcohol were mitigating factors. We need to fight those attitudes at all costs and, frankly, those judges need to be flushed out of the legal system.
As politicians, we must support initiatives such as the Scottish Government’s desire for gender-balanced boardrooms, recognise Scotland’s gender-balanced Government and understand why we have women-only shortlists in politics. We need a proper, equal society.
On governance, we need to understand wider policies and strategies and how they are interlinked, such as the Scottish Government’s proposals for minimum unit pricing for alcohol. We know that alcohol cannot be used as an excuse for violence, but no doubt it is a contributing factor. In Scotland, we have too big a dependence on alcohol—I feel a slight hypocrite as I was at the bar last night—so we should commend the Scottish Government for trying to tackle the subject head-on. The UK Government should think about that, because that is another subject on which the Conservatives have done a U-turn in the past.
Another unintended consequence from policy is the state pension equalisation fiasco, which in some cases has caused women to be more dependent on their partners as they struggle financially. That is clearly unhealthy, creates tensions and limits the choices women can make in controlling their destinies. I have touched on the housing benefit limit and the cuts imposed by the Government. The effect that that policy may have on women’s refuges means that it needs to be rethought or, as a minimum, that some form of exemption needs to be made. We cannot possibly tackle the scourge of domestic violence if the safe havens are at risk of closure. That is wrong from both a moral and a long-term financial perspective—the proposals do not make sense.
To return to Scottish statistics, there was a 2.5% increase in reported crimes in 2014-15 compared with the previous year. Increases are often attributed to the fact that victims are more likely to come forward, so I hope that that is the main reason for the increase, but we need to be careful not to use that as a comfort blanket. We need to understand trends fully and ensure that we keep on top of them if we are to make true inroads into ending violence against women. I am confident that continuing education, the calling out of misogyny in social media, listening to women and encouraging them to speak up, and having better joined-up Government policy will help us get there and eradicate violence against women.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the Members on bringing forward this important debate, which is the first of its kind, from the Backbench Business Committee. Considering the number of years this place has been dominated by men, it is refreshing that the debate was led by a man. None the less, the fact that domestic violence continues to occur both here and internationally highlights that Governments of all nations must make a strong statement.
The white ribbon campaign is a prime opportunity to give men that voice and allow those such as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) to have their say. It will take positive male role models such as Members of Parliament, sportsmen, celebrities and other high-profile figures in public life to condemn violence against women and girls and make a strong statement about what men’s role is in preventing and eradicating violence against women.
This conversation is not new. For years women have been speaking out loudly, and feminists have been condemned as outspoken, radical and extremist simply for saying something that should be common sense to all of us: violence against women and girls should not and cannot be tolerated. Men and boys need to take an active role on their contribution to violence, but we also have to accept that it goes the other way. Many Members have mentioned that there are occasions—they are few—where women are the perpetrators of violence, so it is about educating girls and boys, and men and women about their role and their relationships with one another, because as we have heard this is not a women’s issue; it is a human rights issue. I am glad that this debate is happening today.
The first priority is to ensure that our educators and local figures are making that strong statement condemning violence in all forms. One of the most alarming statistics I have read has been touched on but not covered. The title of the report published by Women’s Aid this year is “Nineteen Child Homicides”, which brings home the wide range and impact that domestic violence can have on women and girls and children. Violence does not happen just to women; it affects fathers, husbands, sons and brothers. In fact, perhaps no member of a family is untouched by violence, and that is why it will take all voices across the community to advocate the removal of violence in all forms.
We have heard a lot about different laws and policies as well as the law of unintended consequences of some of the policies that are affecting women’s lives, which needs some acknowledgment from the Government. While much of the debate has centred around heterosexual relationships, statistics show that there is the exact same level of violence in same-sex relationships. Broken Rainbow has sought to highlight in its campaign that domestic violence is not unique to one relationship. It happens across all relationships and across all genders and sexualities.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Brigg and Goole for securing the debate and highlighting this truly important issue. I hope that we will go some way towards eradicating violence.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for securing this debate.
I would like to particularly mention the comments made my hon. Friend, whose experience is unrivalled in this House in terms of the work she has done year after year with women who have been victims of domestic violence. I thank her for her contributions on everyday sexism, which highlighted the experiences to which even we, as MPs, are not immune. The story of a man reaching to touch a woman’s hand on the tube when she grabbed the rail sounded very familiar. Like my hon. Friend, I experienced an incident of groping not that long ago. Unlike her, I did not go for physical violence, but I certainly gave it quite a bit of verbal.
It is clear that violence against women remains a hugely significant problem in Britain, with 900,000 calls relating to domestic violence made to the police in the 12 months up to March 2015. That equates to a staggering 100 calls every hour of every day. Recently released figures show that 33% of crimes involving violence against the person were linked to domestic abuse, as were 12% of sexual offences. Women are overwhelmingly more likely than men to be victims of domestic violence, and it is vital that we work to tackle violence against women and girls. I welcome the opportunity today to discuss the role that men can play in that.
I would like to ask the Minister some specific questions. If she does not feel able to answer them today, I am happy to receive answers by letter. What measures is she taking to ensure that community rehabilitation companies fulfil their contract requirements to provide better offending behaviour programmes, and in particular the Building Better Relationships programme? What steps will be taken to hold them to account if that provision is not made available to all men who require it? What assurances will she give to the courts and the judiciary that any sentence they impose on a perpetrator of domestic violence will be delivered in full and will involve attendance on the Building Better Relationships programme if they choose to impose that sentence?
The campaign to end violence against women has historically been led by women. Women have campaigned energetically for many years for improved legal protection from gender-based violence and have been largely responsible for the delivery of support services, including women’s refuges and rape support services. The leadership role of women in ending gender-based violence is vital. For a subject so intricately linked with female disempowerment, it is crucial that women are at the forefront of those efforts.
However, the leadership role of women does not and must not preclude the involvement of men in the campaign. Gender-based violence has been recognised by both the United Nations and national Governments as a human rights issue. Violence against women is almost always perpetrated by men. Those harmed are men’s wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. Violence against women cannot for a moment be considered an issue only for women.
There is an unfortunate tendency to seek to deflect from discussions of violence against women and girls by pointing to statistics on male victims of domestic abuse. That often presents an obstacle when discussing the role of men in ending violence against women and girls. It also decidedly misses the point. There are, of course, a significant number of male victims of domestic violence. That group, like any other, needs and deserves our support and attention. We can and should support victims of domestic violence, whatever their gender or sexual orientation, but we must also not ignore the substantial imbalance between male and female victims of domestic violence.
The full involvement of men and their active engagement with the campaign brings significant benefits. Men are best able to challenge the attitudes of their peers, who may condone or even engage in violence against women. Unless men are encouraged to speak out, we cannot hope to confront the attitudes and cultural norms that underpin gender-based violence.
Challenging negative gender attitudes also benefits men directly, as articulated by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). The negative stereotype of a “real man”—tough and emotionally distant—is as damaging for men as it is for women. The suggestion that for a man to be open about his emotions is somehow unmanly can cause real harm. That attitude is pervasive and can be a significant barrier to men seeking help. The benefits of men’s involvement in ending violence against women requires productive engagement. Rather than impose a sense of guilt or shame or resort to a view of men as only perpetrators, we must instead help men to understand the important role they can play as allies and role models. Organisations such as the white ribbon campaign have made real strides in that area, but work remains to be done.
So how best can men help to confront this insidious problem? First, as I previously alluded to, men can challenge the attitudes of other men and confront their peers. Where anyone—man or woman—witnesses abuse or harmful attitudes, they must not remain silent or offer excuses. As Members may be aware, the virulently misogynist organisation Return of Kings had planned to hold events in the UK on 6 February. The group has called for women to be banned from voting, described a woman’s value as dependent on her “fertility and beauty”, and claimed that women with eating disorders make the best girlfriends. Articles posted on the group’s website have included “5 Reasons to Date a Girl With an Eating Disorder”, “Don’t Work for a Female Boss” and “Biology Says People on Welfare Should Die”. Furthermore, the group’s founder has publically advocated legalised rape.
Those views will be abhorrent to the vast majority of men and cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. It is welcome that in the face of vocal and sustained objection to those events, the group was forced to cancel its plans. That shows clearly the difference we can all make when we make it clear that misogyny will not be accepted. I thank the Minister for her response to the urgent question in the Chamber this morning on that topic.
Sexist attitudes can be seen as harmless, and some men may remain unaware of the impact of destructive attitudes they may hold or of their behaviour. Gender-based violence is often underpinned by sexism. Where sexism is challenged, it frequently elicits the same response: “Get a sense of humour.” Let us be clear: sexism is not harmless and it is not funny. It is deeply damaging and must be confronted. It is important that we all—men and women—learn to recognise abuse when we see it. Physical violence may be the most visible form of abuse, but emotional violence and coercive control can be just as damaging. If we learn to spot abuse in all its forms, we can make a real difference.
We must also introduce compulsory and universal education programmes on healthy relationships. There is currently no statutory requirement for all children to be taught about what a healthy relationship is and what abuse is. Current provision is piecemeal at best, and that cannot continue.
Men should also have the courage to look inwardly and confront their own attitudes. That can of course be problematic, and many men may become defensive or feel under attack, but if we are to truly end gender-based violence, we must address the mentality that allows it to be perpetrated or ignored. We must encourage men to understand themselves and to work to change attitudes that may knowingly or inadvertently perpetuate violence.
Unfortunately, where men express sympathy for or an understanding of what are perceived as women’s issues, they are often met with questions about their own masculinity. That can prevent men from speaking up. We must challenge damaging assumptions about men as much as we must confront negative attitudes to women. We must encourage men to have the confidence to speak out.
What role can politicians play? We can lead by example, as men and women who are not afraid to speak out on gender-based violence or confront the attitudes that allow it to continue. We desperately need role models to make it clear to men that they should never stand idly by or condone violence. Influential men in all walks of life, including MPs, can play a part in that by pledging their support.
Men can and should play a full role in ending gender-based violence. We must ensure that we do not resort to inflicting a sense of guilt, but instead encourage men to become involved and help them to understand that they can play a crucial part in securing real change. If we work together, we can consign violence against women and girls to history.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
May I start by saying what an honour it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and what an honour it was to serve under the chairship of your predecessor, Mrs Gillan? I congratulate the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) on securing this important debate. I also congratulate all Members on the thoughtful and constructive points raised.
I want to start by saying that any form of violence against women or girls is absolutely unacceptable. The physical, psychological and emotional impact of domestic and sexual violence on victims cannot be overestimated. As the Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime, I have the ambition to end those terrible crimes. We owe it to victims of domestic and sexual violence to do everything we can to afford them the protection and support they need. I will work closely with victim support services and police and criminal justice agencies to ensure that we are doing just that.
Many points have been raised today and I will do my best to address as many as possible, but if I fail to address any I will endeavour to respond in writing, as the shadow Minister invited me to do, and particularly as some of her questions were about technical criminal justice matters and are probably better addressed in correspondence.
It is important to reflect that—the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North started with this—both women and men may be victims of domestic or sexual violence, forced marriage or stalking. It is also important that the response for all victims is as good as it can be. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) talked about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender relationships. We realise that there is abuse in all forms of relationship and the measures we have in place are available in all forms of abuse in all relationships. However, we need to say that women and girls are far more likely to be victims of such crimes and we recognise that inequality and gender play fundamental roles in violence against women and girls. We all have important roles to play in challenging the cultural norms and stereotypes that underpin violence against women and girls.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) talked about women being used as chattels. When I was training to be a chartered accountant and filling in tax returns, women’s earnings were her husband’s. There was an extra column on the tax return. Only in 1990 did women have their own taxation system. It is unbelievable that I am standing here having filled in tax returns when a woman’s income was her husband’s. She was her husband’s chattel and that was how she was treated in law.
Gender inequality manifests itself in ways that can limit women’s and girl’s aspirations and life chances, and put pressure on men to act in certain ways, as the hon. Member for Rhondda said: to be physically powerful, emotionally detached and in control. The relationship between gender and violence is complex, but we must never forget that in the most extreme cases we are working to save people’s lives. It is a sad fact that over 80 women a year still lose their lives to domestic homicide. We must never think about the matter just in terms of numbers, as the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and for Rhondda both said. We need men, women, girls and boys to work together to end violence against women and girls in all its forms.
Before responding to the contributions to this debate, particularly those on the role of men in ending violence against women and girls, it is important to address some of the concerns about increases in domestic abuse and sexual violence. We all want the prevalence of these terrible crimes to fall and ultimately to end, but we know that they are hidden and under-reported.
At least in the short to medium term, we want increased police recording of crimes of violence against women and girls. The Office for National Statistics clearly states that increases in police recorded rape, sexual offences and domestic abuse are due to greater victim confidence and better recording by the police. We should all welcome that. That these increases are a positive development is reinforced by our best measure of the prevalence of all crimes or how many people experience domestic and sexual violence, which comes from the self-completion module of the crime survey of England and Wales. That data show both the general downward trend in sexual assaults since 2005-06 and the fact that 8.2% of women were the victim of any domestic abuse in the last year. That is the lowest estimate since these questions were first asked in the 2004-05 survey.
We need more of the increased number of reports leading to effective police and criminal justice action. Again, while there is undoubtedly more work to do to bring perpetrators to justice, it is important to reflect that the number of police referrals to the Crown Prosecution Service, the number of prosecutions and the number of convictions for all crimes were all higher in 2014-15 than ever before. For example, prosecutions for domestic abuse have increased from just over 30,000 in 2004-05 to over 90,000 in 2014-15. That is the highest level ever. However, let me make it clear that 1.4 million women experiencing domestic abuse every year is still unacceptably high. Over 300,000 victims of sexual assault is unacceptably high. We need collectively to do more to prevent these terrible crimes from happening, and the role of men is critical.
I met the white ribbon campaign—many of us are wearing our white ribbons—with my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice. We heard about its inspiring work with boys and its programme of actions to challenge abusive and violent behaviour by men and boys, as well as its continuing work to increase the number of organisations accredited with white ribbon status. The Government will continue to promote the campaign’s work and to support greater co-ordination between existing groups of men and boys who act as change agents, develop evidence of what works to engage men in challenging violence against women and ensure full understanding of appropriate, safe and effective action to give men the confidence to speak out and challenge unacceptable behaviour.
When I was on the Select Committee on Procedure, we looked at introducing iPads in the Chamber. I am pleased to have my iPad in the Chamber because it has given me the chance to look at the white ribbon campaign’s latest figures; 24,377 pledges have been made and I hope that that will start to go up as people watch this debate. I want to make a few points about the website. The hon. Member for Rhondda and others talked about the importance of sport to young boys and men. I know from my two young sons that if a footballer says something, they tend to listen, so it is great to see that Juan Mata has signed up. A comment on the website states:
“Most men are not violent towards women, but many of us ignore the problem, or see it as something which doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
That sums up what we have been talking about in this debate. I congratulate the white ribbon campaign. We will continue to work with it. It is great to see so many women wearing the white ribbon, but I want to see more men wearing it. I am sure that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, as great champions of the campaign, will make sure more of their colleagues wear it and make the point.
I want to touch on the Return of Kings group, which was raised by a number of Members and was the subject of an urgent question today. I repeat that we condemn in the strongest terms anyone who condones rape and sexual violence or suggests that responsibility rests with victims. Responsibility for such crimes always, unequivocally rests with the perpetrator. The shadow Minister and many others have made the point that the vast majority of men do not share the views of the group, which are laughable. If the individual concerned did not take them seriously, we would laugh at him because they are utterly ridiculous.
The point has been made that we need to engage with young men. Our “This is Abuse” campaign was talked about during discussion of the urgent question and included specific messages to boys about abusive behaviour. It is an approach informed by research into what works in changing boys’ behaviour, like the Boys to Men project of Professor Gadd at Manchester University. It is vital that those of us in a position to speak out about violence and abuse do so, but we also need to realise that, sad as it may seem, teenagers may not listen to politicians. We must engage credible voices that young people will listen to.
Our previous campaigns accordingly used vloggers—video bloggers—to produce online video blogs to reach thousands of young people through social media and online platforms, and to help young men to understand what constitutes abusive behaviour. I will talk later about some of the other work we have been doing to deal with perpetrators and to change that behaviour. We have also worked through the campaigning partnership with MTV to develop adverts with a wide range of high-profile celebrities to act as a counter narrative within the sometimes highly sexualised environment of music TV.
Evaluation of the campaign’s impact showed that 67% of boys who saw its adverts were more likely to seek consent as a result, 70% said they felt more likely to recognise if someone does not want to have sex and 80% agreed that the videos made them understand that abuse is not always physical. We have invested £3.85 million in the next phase of the campaign, which will continue to build teenagers’ awareness of key issues, such as consent and healthy relationships, including engaging with boys and young men.
I also want to make the point about young women. One thing that we have been working on through our ending gang violence and exploitation programme—that is the new stage of our original ending gang and youth violence programme—is about the exploitation, including sexual exploitation, of young women by gangs. It is incredibly important that we educate young women that they should not expect to be treated in that way. Being part of a line-up is not acceptable. They should not be made to perform sex acts on boys. That is something they should say no to.
It is also important that we treat the young men and make them understand that. Last year, I had a powerful visit to one of the London gang charities. A young man who had been in a gang said that until he was spoken to by that charity, he had never understood that such behaviour was wrong. No one had ever told him that it was not the way to treat women. No one had ever said to him, “Women need to be respected.” That was because unfortunately he had grown up in a household where domestic abuse was the norm. It was what he had seen all his family and friends do. He thought that it was normal. Only when there was an intervention did he understand that it was not the way to behave. It is so important that we do all we can to educate both young girls and young boys, and I will say more about education shortly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who I know cannot be here now because she is taking part in the debate in the main Chamber, talked about prostitution. We debated that topic at length during the passage of the Modern Slavery Bill last year—we are approaching the 12-month anniversary of that becoming an Act—and of course we now have new measures to protect victims of trafficking and criminalise those who traffic them. We are looking at the evidence that is available. My hon. Friend referred to, and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is a supporter of, the Nordic model. There is no unequivocal view on that; there are different views on it, and we need to understand how it works. Northern Ireland is a Province that we will be looking at carefully—because it has a very similar legal system to the UK—to see how it works, but there are conflicting views on the Nordic model. I will also be taking a great interest in the inquiry by the Select Committee on Home Affairs on this topic, because I know that many hon. Members are very interested in it.
How can we effect change? How can we change people’s views? In every area of life, we need to see everyone, including men, playing their part in challenging violence and abuse. I am encouraged by the many promising initiatives to engage professionals, friends, family and the wider public in tackling what is unacceptable and criminal behaviour.
These are just a few examples of what is happening. Citizens Advice has trained front-line staff to ask about violence and abuse. I visited Citizens Advice in Harlow recently. The volunteers are asking questions of people who have come in to talk about debt problems, because the debt problem could be the result of domestic abuse. It is very powerful to be able to see the training that volunteers at Citizens Advice have had to enable them to recognise what might be a domestic abuse situation.
Public Health England and the University of the West of England have been working on a bystander programme to help to challenge sexual abuse on campus. Housing providers can play a critical role in identifying those carrying out domestic abuse and those at risk, including children, and a nationwide alliance is working to improve the housing sector’s response. The alliance is arming professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills to support residents to live safely and free of abuse.
I am pleased that, as this debate has definitely demonstrated, our understanding of what constitutes abuse is becoming more sophisticated. For example, the new offence of domestic abuse, which was commenced on 29 December 2015, not only addresses a gap in the law to tackle controlling or coercive behaviour but can be used as a vehicle to build wider public awareness that domestic abuse extends beyond episodes of physical violence, and that patterns of psychological manipulation and control can be just as harmful. I am interested to hear that the Scottish Government are looking at introducing a similar measure.
Refuge, in partnership with the Co-operative bank, has launched a powerful new campaign called “My money, my life” to raise awareness of financial abuse in intimate relationships. Its research found that one in five people in the UK report that they have experienced financial abuse within an intimate relationship. That campaign is informing those experiencing financial abuse about their rights and empowering them to make positive choices about their own financial future.
A number of hon. Members raised the Istanbul convention, and we also discussed it during the urgent question today. The UK Government signed the Istanbul convention in 2012 and have since been putting in place all the measures that are required in order that we can comply in full. There is one article—article 44—that we are not yet in compliance with. That is the extraterritoriality measure, which basically means that the criminal law in the UK would extend to conduct abroad. I hope that hon. Members from Scotland and other devolved Administrations will understand why there may be some problems in ensuring that the two jurisdictions’ legal systems work with that particular issue. We will need to introduce primary legislation in the UK to put that in place, but when we have done that we will be able to ratify the Istanbul convention. We do not wish to ratify a convention until we are absolutely confident that we comply with it 100%.
A number of contributors raised the topic of PSHE, and it is fair to say that there were slightly different views about whether it should be on a statutory basis. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole perhaps disagreed with the hon. Member for Rhondda as to whether—
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole is a teacher with great experience of such things.
We do need there to be education. The Government have made it clear in the introduction to the framework for the national curriculum that all schools should teach PSHE, and we are committed to working with schools and other experts to ensure that young people receive age-appropriate information that allows them to make informed choices and stay safe, but the point is that it must be good-quality PSHE across the board and not, as my hon. Friend said, the add-on that no teacher wants to do.
It is probably worth mentioning the tools that we have introduced for prevention and protection, which, as I have said, apply to all relationships—LGBT, men to women and women to men. Domestic violence protection orders and the domestic violence disclosure scheme were rolled out across England and Wales from March 2014, and those tools put the responsibility for violence and abuse squarely with the perpetrator.
DVPOs can prevent the perpetrator from returning to a residence and from having contact with the victim for up to 28 days. Latest figures show that magistrates have granted more than 2,500 DVPOs. The domestic violence disclosure scheme, also known as Clare’s law, which a number of hon. Members have referred to, enables the police to disclose to the public information about previous violent offending by a new or existing partner where that may help to protect them from further violent offending. The latest figures show that more than 1,300 disclosures have been made. The Government will build on those achievements by evaluating Clare’s law and DVPOs to identify how we can strengthen those important tools.
We have also strengthened significantly the law on female genital mutilation, including through FGM protection orders, and last year we introduced two new measures—the sexual harm prevention order and the sexual risk order—to make it easier for the police and courts further to restrict and monitor the activities of individuals who pose a risk, including when they have not been convicted of a previous offence.
I want to touch on the issue of stalking. Being stalked by a stranger can have terrifying consequences, so we are consulting on the introduction of a stalking protection order. That will explore whether positive requirements can be placed on perpetrators at an early stage, to help to stop their behaviour. By that we mean a perpetrator being forced, for example, to attend mental health sessions so that we can try to stop the behaviour before it becomes criminal. We are ensuring that new measures include a focus on the perpetrator—disrupting their activity, removing them from the home where necessary and ensuring that they engage with appropriate interventions to help to stop their offending before it escalates.
Hon. Members have made a number of points about the right approach to take. The question is, what is justice for a victim of domestic abuse? What will help that person to get control of their own life, and what is the right outcome for that individual? There are many different ways to tackle the problem, and it is clear that one size does not fit all.
Refuge provision has been discussed at length. The Government are committed to refuge provision. We have announced £40 million between 2016 and 2020 for domestic abuse services including refuges, and a £2 million grant to Women’s Aid and SafeLives to support early intervention, but refuge is not the answer for every victim. The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) talked about victims being turned away from refuges. I have spent time with refuge providers, who have told me that often a victim has such complex needs and so many difficulties that the refuge they go to is not the right place for them, and they may need different provisions and support.
I am committed to ensuring that refuges provide the appropriate safety net for people. However, for some families a better outcome might be achieved if a woman can stay in her home with her family, and if the perpetrator is removed from that home and is not just allowed to move in with the next partner to start the cycle of abuse all over again. I do not pretend that that will always be possible, but it is a better outcome for some victims. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley knows better than anybody that there are many different needs, and I have enjoyed our conversations on the matter. We need to think about how we can tackle the problem and break the cycle, and that means dealing with perpetrators.
Alan Brown
The Minister is saying that refuges are not the only answer, but they are important and required just now. Given that the local housing allowance cap is a threat to refuges, does she support protecting them from it?
Karen Bradley
As I said, the Government have committed £40 million to provisions, including refuges. I want to ensure that refuges are available to victims for whom they are the right answer. Organisations have told me that victims sometimes do not feel that they can come forward because they do not think the services are there. We want victims to have the confidence to come forward, and we need to tell them that they will be supported and looked after so they can get the support they need and we can break the cycle.
Preventing abuse depends on changing the attitudes and behaviours of perpetrators. Addressing the root causes of violent offending forms an integral part of our refreshed strategy. There is evidence that experiencing adversity, including violence and abuse, can have serious consequences. We need only consider that 41% of the prison population have witnessed or experienced domestic abuse to understand the wider social harms such crimes cause. We are working with agencies and in local areas to ensure the availability of appropriate perpetrator programmes, prison and probation rehabilitation approaches and, where needed, mental health interventions that may lead to a reduction in offending and sustainable behaviour change.
National organisations SafeLives and Respect have formed a partnership to create a new type of intervention for perpetrators of domestic abuse. The model, referred to as the Drive project, will involve working with perpetrators of domestic abuse on a one-to-one basis to reduce their offending, using support and disruption where appropriate, and ensuring that victim and family safety is embedded within the response.
The troubled families programme that we ran in the previous Parliament worked with 120,000 families. We found that a high proportion of families in the programme had experienced domestic abuse, even though that was not a reason for families enter the programme. Domestic violence is therefore now a specific criterion for identifying families for support in the next stage of the programme. For families who suffer domestic violence, it is seldom the only problem affecting them. The “Understanding Troubled Families” report showed that 39% of families who experienced domestic violence included a young offender, 37% had drug or alcohol dependencies, 62% had a truanting child, and 60% included an adult with a mental health problem, compared with 40% in families where there was no domestic violence.
Patricia Gibson
In the light of the Minister’s comments, will she specifically address the changes to universal credit? Given the statistics she just mentioned, the changes will only increase a woman’s financial dependency on her partner, because the payment that is made will be changed to a single payment to one person in the household, which we know will usually be the man.
Karen Bradley
I was a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions when universal credit was being discussed, and that point was made at the time. I am sure that changes to the benefit system will not cause a reduction in levels of support for victims of domestic violence and abuse, and they will provide help towards housing costs. Those living in supported accommodation that meets the definition set by the Department for Work and Pensions will receive funding outside universal credit, and we will continue to provide flexible funding to help to meet the higher costs that sometimes arise from providing refuge to women escaping domestic abuse. I understand the hon. Lady’s point about financial control. It is important that we make people understand, through the work of Citizens Advice, Refuge and the Co-operative Bank, that they can have control of their money and that they should not be controlled by their partner when it comes to financial matters.
The hon. Member for Bradford West talked very powerfully about her own experiences. If she would allow me to, I would like to sit down with her at some point to talk about the work we are doing, particularly on the forced marriage unit, which the Home Office runs jointly with the Foreign Office. Perhaps we can learn from her experiences and her knowledge what more we can do to help women in that situation.
I am proud of the progress we have made in getting to grips with complex offending behaviour, the effects of which can be deep and long-lasting for victims, but there is more that we can collectively do. The Government are working closely with experts on violence against women and girls to develop a refreshed strategy later in the year. Today’s debate has been timely, helping to inform what more can be done to engage men and boys in the agenda and to support their crucial role in preventing violence against women and girls. I congratulate the hon. Members who secured the debate, and I congratulate the white ribbon campaign on its work. I assure Members that, as the Minister responsible for preventing abuse, exploitation and crime, I am determined to do everything I can to protect victims and bring perpetrators to justice.
Gavin Newlands
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the Minister for her thorough response, but there were a few holes in it, which I will come back to at the end of my contribution.
I thank all hon. Members who have contributed today, and I thank the white ribbon campaign for attending the debate. It has been a good debate that has included many varied points. To highlight the breadth of the debate, I will touch on a few of the contributions that were made. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made strong points about local authorities and the power of sport in getting the message across to young men. My hon. Friend—I will call her that—the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) spoke about her undying love for all men, perhaps bar the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). She also gave us a powerful account of her own experiences and those of others, reminding us of how far we have to go.
My hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) made a powerful point about subconscious misogyny and whether violence against women is nature or nurture, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) spoke of abuse as a fundamental abuse of human rights, and of the good work of her local council.
The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) gave her own deeply personal story, giving us a different cultural perspective by talking about misogyny and abuse in the black and minority ethnic community. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) paid tribute to Women’s Aid for its work and shared his concerns about our relationship with countries such as Saudi Arabia, whose record on gender equality is atrocious.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) spoke about the importance of education and the powerful Women’s Aid report, “Nineteen Child Homicides”, and highlighted the fact that the issue exists just as prominently in the LGBTI community. The shadow Minister reminded us that the UN views tackling violence against women as a priority and listed a number of detestable posts by Roosh V, who has been renamed in Scotland as Sssh V.
The Minister, in her lengthy response, spoke about the “what’s hers is his” nature of tax collection as recently as 1990. She spoke about promoting the white ribbon campaign but stopped short of promising any funding. Will she look at that again, and will she meet me to talk about a national prevention strategy in every school? She spoke about the Istanbul convention, which the Scottish Government are keen for the Westminster Government to get on with ratifying.
On refuges, nobody said that they are the only answer, but I ask the Minister to give the groups involved some certainty. The funding ends on 31 March, and they would like to know whether they will have any funding thereafter. It is clear that, despite some small differences, we can and will move forward together to end violence against women.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the role of men in preventing violence against women.
Written Statements
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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General Data Protection Regulation
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (jointly with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) and Minister for Intellectual Property has made the following written ministerial statement.
This Government have decided not to opt in to the Justice and Home Affairs provision within the EU general data protection regulation (GDPR). Negotiations on the regulation were concluded on 15 December 2015 and a proposed final compromise text was communicated to the European Council on 17 December. The final text for the GDPR is expected to be formally adopted in due course.
The compromise text contained wording in article 43a, which triggers the UK’s opt-in under protocol 21. This article deals with the recognition and enforcement of judgments, and includes content that falls under article 81 (judicial co-operation in civil matters) and article 82 (judicial co-operation in criminal matters) Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, thereby triggering the UK’s JHA opt-in. The text restricts a member state from enforcing a judgment requiring the transfer or disclosure of personal data where there is no international agreement or treaty.
As a result of concerns relating to the integrity of the UK legal system, the UK will not exercise the opt-in to the parts of article 43a which trigger the protocol 21.
[HCWS511]
Northern Ireland Executive: Gifting of Surplus Accommodation
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)
I have today laid before Parliament a Ministry of Defence Departmental Minute to advise of the intent to gift up to 59 surplus service family accommodation to the Northern Ireland Executive. This gift forms part of coalition Government’s financial settlement with the Executive and the commitments set out in Building a Prosperous and United Community: One Year On, in which the Government and the Executive set out plans to work together to build on political stability.
It is intended that legal transfer of title will be completed by late spring 2016, with the disposal value of the sites estimated at £3.5 million as at April 2014. Her Majesty’s Treasury has approved the proposal in principle. If after 14 sitting days, no objections to the gift have been received, the transfer will proceed.
In addition to the gift, 605 surplus service family accommodation that cannot be gifted for operational (security and training) reasons inside our existing perimeters; 286 at Aldergrove, 199 at Ballykinler and 120 at Holywood, costing a total of £3.6 million, will be demolished. Enabling works have begun and demolitions will start in late 2016, with the land then being retained for training. The Ministry of Defence will continue to look for surplus properties to gift as part of the shared commitment of the Government and the Executive to take forward plans to build a shared future.
[HCWS509]
Reformed GCSE and A-level Content
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
We are reforming GCSEs, AS and A-levels to make sure that they give students the best possible preparation for further and higher education, and for employment. We want new GCSEs to set expectations which match those of the best education systems in the world, with rigorous assessment that provides a reliable measure of students’ achievement. The reforms are extensive and represent a new qualification gold standard.
Schools are now teaching some of the new reformed GCSEs and A-levels, and we have already published reformed subject content for those GCSEs and A-levels to be taught from September 2016. Content for reformed GCSE subjects and for AS and A-level subjects can be found on gov.uk.
The new GCSEs will be more academically demanding and reformed AS and A-levels will better prepare students for undergraduate study.
Today I am publishing revised subject content for some of the GCSEs and AS and A-levels that will be taught in schools from September 2017:
GCSEs in ancient history, classical civilisation, electronics, film studies, media studies and statistics; and
AS and A-levels in accounting, ancient history, archaeology, classical civilisation, electronics, film studies, law and media studies.
Accounting AS and A-level requires students to understand and to apply double entry accounting methods. A greater emphasis is placed on the use of accounting concepts and techniques in the analysis and evaluation of financial information. There is also a better balance between financial and management accounting.
The new ancient history GCSE, and AS and A-levels will require students to study events, individuals, societies, developments and issues drawn from the period 3000 BC to 500 AD. At GCSE students must study the history of at least two societies, at least one of which must be Roman or Greek. At A-level students must study the history of both ancient Rome and ancient Greece. At GCSE students will have to undertake one period study covering at least 50 years, one longer period study covering at least 150 years, and two depth studies focusing on shorter time spans. At A-level students will undertake two period studies of at least 75 years and two depth studies.
The new archaeology AS and A-levels will require students to study two archaeological contexts in depth (one at AS) and what the archaeological evidence can tell us about that society’s social structure, belief system, art and technology. Through two breadth studies (one at AS) students will also study at least three different societies in relation to specific issues such as religion and ritual, or economics and material culture.
The new classical civilisation GCSE, AS and A-levels will require students to study both Roman and Greek civilisation (and their surrounding worlds). All students will now study literature (at least 30% of the GCSE and A-level) and visual/material culture (at least 20% of the GCSE and 15% of the A-level), and at A-level students will also study classical thought. Students will develop their understanding of the classical world through study of the social, historical, and cultural context of the literature and sources selected.
The new electronics GCSE increases the demand of the subject by increasing the breadth and depth of content students are required to study. The new electronics AS and A-levels have improved depth and breadth with new topics such as the principles of semiconductors added. The GCSE, AS and A-level content also includes strengthened mathematical requirements and a detailed list of equations that students will be required to know and understand.
The film studies GCSE, AS and A-levels will require students to study critically recognised, culturally and historically significant films. At GCSE and AS students will study at least six films including at least one British, one non-English language and one independent film and at least one historical film made before 1961. A-level students will study at least 12 films from at least three continents covering pre-1930 to present day, including documentary, experimental and silent film. Overall the content emphasises a more academic approach with greater emphasis on a critical and contextual understanding of film, and at A-level of film theory.
The new law AS and A-level content will ensure students study a greater number of areas of substantive law: at AS one area of public law and one area of private law; and at A-level at least three areas of law. Students also need to study the nature of law including links to moral concepts, how law interacts with society, and the English legal system.
The new media studies GCSE, AS and A-levels will ensure that students have an understanding of the main theoretical concepts underpinning the subject. Students will study media language, representation, media industries, and audiences, and will apply all four of these to at least one audio visual, one print and one online media form. Overall, students will study nine forms of media and all products studied must be culturally, socially and historically significant. The AS and A-level also require students to study a wide range of specified theories and theorists.
The new and more demanding statistics GCSE requires students to study the statistical enquiry cycle and to perform key statistical calculations such as interpercentile range and standard deviation. Students will be required to know and use fundamental formulae, for example to determine Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. New content has been added, such as using collected data and calculated probabilities to determine and interpret risk, and interpreting the characteristics of a binomial distribution.
[HCWS508]
Police Grant Report England and Wales 2016-17
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has today laid before the House, “The Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2016/17” (HC 753). The report sets out, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary’s determination for 2016-17 of the aggregate amount of grant that she proposes to pay under section 46(2) of the Police Act 1996, and the amount to be paid to the Greater London Authority for the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
At the time the provisional police grant report 2016-17 was laid on 17 December 2015 I said that I was also considering whether a limited amount of police capital grant would be reallocated. After careful consideration I have decided that £10.4 million will be reallocated to support police national technology services. This will assist in providing necessary investment in these critical police services.
To assist police and crime commissioners and chief constables with their medium-term financial planning, I have also decided to provide further information on the police funding settlement over the spending review period. Please note that these figures are indicative only. Home Office Ministers will decide on the level of reallocations for each year on an annual basis, but PCCs should assume that these will be broadly in line with those in 2016-17. PCCs should plan on the basis that their direct resource funding—consisting of formula funding, legacy council tax grants, national and international city grants and precept—will remain at broadly flat cash levels when compared with 2015-16, throughout the spending review period.
This statement also includes details of other funding streams that the Home Office, the Department of Communities and Local Government and the Welsh Government intend to provide to the police in 2016-17.
15-16* (£m) | 16-17 (£m) | 17-18 (£m) | 18-19 (£m) | 19-20 (£m) | Change (£m) | Cash change (%) | Real change (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Government funding (excl CT) | 8,271 | 8,378 | 8,497 | 8,631 | 8,785 | 514 | 6.2% | -1.4% |
o/w Home Office | 8,099 | 8,204 | 8,321 | 8,453 | 8,604 | 506 | 6.2% | -1.4% |
o/w DCLG | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 37 | 0 | 0.0% | -7.2% |
o/w Welsh Government | 135 | 137 | 139 | 141 | 143 | 8 | 6.2% | -1.4% |
Precept | 3,105 | 3,194 | 3,286 | 3,379 | 3,474 | 369 | 11.9% | 3.8% |
Total | 11,376 | 11,572 | 11,783 | 12,010 | 12,259 | 883 | 7.8% | 0.0% |
*Central Government funding includes Airwave which has been brought into the police settlement and council tax freeze grant amounts which were not known at the time of the 2015-16 annual police settlement. |
£m | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Total central Government funding* | 8,355 | 8,461 | 8,583 | 8,725 |
o/w ESMCP | 80 | 175 | 160 | 55 |
o/w Police transformation fund and other reallocations (including Airwave and PFI) | 491 | 545 | 725 | 1,017 |
o/w Direct funding | 7,784 | 7,741 | 7,698 | 7,653 |
Precept** | 3,194 | 3,286 | 3,379 | 3,474 |
Overall resource funding*** | 10,978 | 11,026 | 11,076 | 11,127 |
*These figures include baseline adjustments for HMIC and NCA. **Assumes a tax base increase of 0.5%. These figures are based on conservative tax base growth assumptions used at the time of the spending review announcement. These will be updated over time in line with the latest projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Figures assume that all PCCs maximise their precept up to the 2%/£5 referendum limit in each year and PCCs in Wales increase precept by 2% each year. These figures assume the 10 PCCs in the lower quartile receiving this additional flexibility remain the same as in 2016-17. ***Direct resource funding consists of formula funding, NICC grants, legacy council tax grants and precept. Note: figures may not sum due to rounding. |
Police funding | 16-17 |
|---|---|
£m | |
Central Government funding* | 8,995 |
o/w CT Police Grant** | 640 |
o/w Airwave | 204 |
o/w Police Private Finance Initiatives | 73 |
o/w Legacy Council Tax Grants | 545 |
Overall core Government settlement funding | 7,534 |
Reallocations | 218 |
o/w Direct Entry | 4.6 |
o/w Emergency Services Network | 80 |
o/w Independent Police Complaints Commission (for the transfer of integrity functions) | 32 |
o/w Innovation Fund | 55 |
o/w Major Programmes (HOB and NPDP) | 21.8 |
o/w Special Grant | 25 |
Transformation Fund | 76 |
Total direct Government funding | 7,239 |
Government formula funding | 7,061 |
cash change | -41 |
cash change percentage from 15-16 | -0.6% |
real change percentage | -2.3 % |
National and international Capital City Grants | 178 |
o/w City of London Police | 4.5 |
o/w Metropolitan Police | 173.6 |
Precept | 3,194 |
Overall resource funding*** | 10,978 |
cash change | 51 |
cash change percentage | 0.5% |
real cut | -1.2% |
* includes £14 million baseline adjustment for NCA in 2016-17. A separate baseline transfer has been applied for HMIC. ** Additional capital of £30 million will be provided for CT policing. ***Comprises formula funding, NICC grants, legacy council tax grants and precept. |
Detail of Police Transformation Funds (totals indicative) | |
|---|---|
Transformation fund | 76.4 |
o/w new transformation funding | 37.8 |
o/w Firearms | 34 |
o/w Digital justice (CJS)/digital investigations (DII) | 4.6 |
2015-16 Police Capital | £m |
|---|---|
Police Capital Grant | 54.1 |
Special Grant Capital | 1 |
National Police Air Service | 16.5 |
Police Live Services | 10.4 |
Total | 82 |
2016-17 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Local Policing Body | HO core (including Rule 1) | Welsh Top-up | WG | Ex-DCLGFormula Funding | Legacy CouncilTax Grants (total from HO) |
£m | |||||
Avon and Somerset | 105.0 | - | - | 56.5 | 14.7 |
Bedfordshire | 40.3 | - | - | 23.3 | 4.6 |
Cambridgeshire | 48.5 | - | - | 24.4 | 6.5 |
Cheshire | 61.5 | - | - | 44.8 | 8.3 |
City of London | 18.4 | - | - | 33.6 | 0.1 |
Cleveland | 46.2 | - | - | 38.5 | 7.7 |
Cumbria | 28.7 | - | - | 30.8 | 4.8 |
Derbyshire | 62.1 | - | - | 37.7 | 8.7 |
Devon and Cornwall | 102.7 | - | - | 63.1 | 15.5 |
Dorset | 41.2 | - | - | 17.3 | 7.9 |
Durham | 42.7 | - | - | 37.0 | 6.1 |
Dyfed-Powys | 32.1 | 5.1 | 12.9 | - | - |
Essex | 102.8 | - | - | 55.9 | 13.1 |
Gloucestershire | 34.4 | - | - | 19.5 | 6.1 |
Greater London Authority | 861.5 | - | - | 749.8 | 119.7 |
Greater Manchester | 226.6 | - | - | 181.4 | 25.7 |
Gwent | 42.4 | - | 30.1 | - | - |
Hampshire | 120.0 | - | - | 63.1 | 12.9 |
Hertfordshire | 71.4 | - | - | 36.4 | 10.2 |
Humberside | 67.2 | - | - | 46.6 | 10.0 |
Kent | 106.3 | - | - | 66.6 | 13.3 |
Lancashire | 100.6 | - | - | 79.2 | 12.8 |
Leicestershire | 65.3 | - | - | 39.6 | 8.9 |
Lincolnshire | 38.4 | - | - | 20.3 | 6.8 |
Merseyside | 122.5 | - | - | 112.8 | 15.6 |
Norfolk | 50.2 | - | - | 28.8 | 9.3 |
North Wales | 46.3 | 4.9 | 21.6 | - | - |
North Yorkshire | 41.7 | - | - | 27.0 | 7.9 |
Northamptonshire | 43.2 | - | - | 24.2 | 6.6 |
Northumbria | 110.1 | - | - | 107.4 | 8.2 |
Nottinghamshire | 77.9 | - | - | 48.1 | 9.7 |
South Wales | 87.5 | - | 72.2 | - | - |
South Yorkshire | 100.6 | - | - | 77.5 | 10.9 |
Staffordshire | 66.5 | - | - | 39.9 | 12.0 |
Suffolk | 40.7 | - | - | 22.9 | 6.8 |
Surrey | 62.2 | - | - | 29.2 | 9.2 |
Sussex | 97.8 | - | - | 53.9 | 13.2 |
Thames Valley | 141.2 | - | - | 73.9 | 15.3 |
Warwickshire | 31.0 | - | - | 17.4 | 5.2 |
West Mercia | 66.3 | - | - | 43.4 | 12.0 |
West Midlands | 250.8 | - | - | 180.3 | 19.0 |
West Yorkshire | 171.5 | - | - | 129.3 | 16.7 |
Wiltshire | 37.5 | - | - | 20.7 | 5.2 |
Total England and Wales | 4,112.0 | 9.9 | 136.8 | 2,802.2 | 507.4 |
Force Area | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | Cash change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
£m | £m | £m | % | |
Avon and Somerset | 269.3 | 270.7 | 1.4 | 0.5% |
Bedfordshire | 99.6 | 100.0 | 0.4 | 0.4% |
Cambridgeshire | 128.1 | 128.9 | 0.8 | 0.6% |
Cheshire | 169.5 | 170.9 | 1.4 | 0.8% |
City of London | 55.4 | 56.8 | 1.4 | 2.5% |
Cleveland | 122.3 | 122.5 | 0.3 | 0.2% |
Cumbria | 99.2 | 99.7 | 0.5 | 0.5% |
Derbyshire | 160.7 | 161.4 | 0.7 | 0.4% |
Devon and Cornwall | 278.0 | 279.5 | 1.5 | 0.5% |
Dorset | 118.4 | 119.3 | 1.0 | 0.8% |
Durham | 112.5 | 112.7 | 0.2 | 0.2% |
Dyfed-Powys | 93.3 | 94.1 | 0.8 | 0.8% |
Essex | 260.8 | 263.4 | 2.5 | 1.0% |
Gloucestershire | 104.3 | 105.1 | 0.8 | 0.8% |
Greater London Authority | 2,517.4 | 2,522.4 | 5.0 | 0.2% |
Greater Manchester | 541.2 | 542.9 | 1.7% | 0.3% |
Gwent | 117.8 | 118.5 | 0.7 | 0.6% |
Hampshire | 299.1 | 300.6 | 1.5 | 0.5% |
Hertfordshire | 181.1 | 182.9 | 1.8 | 1.0% |
Humberside | 169.4 | 169.8 | 0.5 | 0.3% |
Kent | 273.1 | 275.5 | 2.4 | 0.9% |
Lancashire | 258.9 | 259.5 | 0.6 | 0.2% |
Leicestershire | 167.7 | 168.5 | 0.7 | 0.4% |
Lincolnshire | 108.4 | 109.1 | 0.7 | 0.7% |
Merseyside | 307.0 | 307.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% |
Norfolk | 145.5 | 146.5 | 1.0 | 0.7% |
North Wales | 139.8 | 141.1 | 1.3 | 0.9% |
North Yorkshire | 137.1 | 138.2 | 1.1 | 0.8% |
Northamptonshire | 119.2 | 119.9 | 0.7 | 0.6% |
Northumbria | 259.5 | 260.3 | 0.8 | 0.3% |
Nottinghamshire | 188.9 | 189.5 | 0.6 | 0.3% |
South Wales | 255.1 | 256.5 | 1.5 | 0.6% |
South Yorkshire | 239.1 | 240.0 | 0.9 | 0.4% |
Staffordshire | 176.7 | 177.6 | 0.8 | 0.5% |
Suffolk | 110.9 | 111.6 | 0.6 | 0.6% |
Surrey | 205.0 | 207.1 | 2.1 | 1.0% |
Sussex | 249.7 | 252.1 | 2.5 | 1.0% |
Thames Valley | 369.7 | 371.9 | 2.2 | 0.6% |
Warwickshire | 89.5 | 90.1 | 0.6 | 0.7% |
West Mercia | 198.5 | 199.8 | 1.3 | 0.6% |
West Midlands | 522.8 | 524.0 | 1.2 | 0.2% |
West Yorkshire | 404.6 | 406.3 | 1.7 | 0.4% |
Wiltshire | 102.8 | 103.5 | 0.6 | 0.6% |
Total | 10,927.0 | 10,977.8 | 50.8 | 0.5% |
*This includes all formula grant, NICC grants and legacy council tax grants and police precept. This assumes that PCCs in England increase their precept to the maximum referendum limit in 2016-17, PCCs in Wales raise council tax by 2% and tax base growth of 0.5% across England and Wales. |
Local Policing Body | 2016-17 |
|---|---|
£m | |
Avon and Somerset | 1.2 |
Bedfordshire | 0.5 |
Cambridgeshire | 0.6 |
Cheshire | 0.8 |
City of London | 0.4 |
Cleveland | 0.6 |
Cumbria | 0.4 |
Derbyshire | 0.7 |
Devon and Cornwall | 1.3 |
Dorset | 0.5 |
Durham | 0.6 |
Dyfed-Powys | 0.4 |
Essex | 1.1 |
Gloucestershire | 0.4 |
Greater Manchester | 2.7 |
Gwent | 0.5 |
Hampshire | 1.4 |
Hertfordshire | 0.7 |
Humberside | 0.8 |
Kent | 1.3 |
Lancashire | 1.3 |
Leicestershire | 0.8 |
Lincolnshire | 0.5 |
Merseyside | 1.6 |
Metropolitan | 14.3 |
Norfolk | 0.6 |
North Wales | 0.5 |
North Yorkshire | 0.5 |
Northamptonshire | 0.5 |
Northumbria | 1.5 |
Nottinghamshire | 0.9 |
South Wales | 1.1 |
South Yorkshire | 1.3 |
Staffordshire | 0.8 |
Suffolk | 0.5 |
Surrey | 0.7 |
Sussex | 1.1 |
Thames Valley | 1.7 |
Warwickshire | 0.5 |
West Mercia | 0.9 |
West Midlands | 2.9 |
West Yorkshire | 2.1 |
Wiltshire | 0.5 |
Total | 54.1 |
[HCWS510]
Grand Committee
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Food Waste
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to reduce food waste.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)
My Lords, it is almost two years since the EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, which I chair, published its report into food waste. At the time, it was enormously gratifying for the committee to produce a report that generated so much interest. The press office tells me it had more coverage than any other Lords Select Committee report.
The fact that around one-third of all food produced in the world is wasted is truly shocking. The waste of land, labour, water, carbon and all the other resources is truly staggering. When people around the world are going hungry, when the global population is set to increase and when many thousands of people here in the UK do not have enough to eat, this becomes a moral issue, too. It does not matter what sort of political philosophy you have—there is a case to be made for dealing with this as a matter of urgency.
So two years on seems like a good time to see what has happened since. In this time, food waste has rocketed up the agenda and efforts are being made at all levels. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who are speaking in the debate today and very much look forward to hearing from them.
The United Nations sustainable development goals, which were published in September, contain a commitment to halve food waste at the consumer and retailer level and to reduce food losses along the supply chain. The UN goals make a distinction between the two, as we did in our report, but I would like to give an example of where this is no longer quite so clear-cut. The campaigning organisation Feedback has spent several years looking at the supply chains of our major supermarkets. Focusing on Kenya, Peru and Guatemala, it has uncovered evidence of late cancellation of orders and overzealous size and shape specifications resulting in up to half the crop being wasted and massive hardship for farmers.
These were exactly the sort of practices which in UK agriculture had led to the establishment of the Groceries Code Adjudicator in 2013, and it is increasingly clear that farmers in the developing world need protection, too. Is the Minister aware of this issue and would he agree with me that bad behaviour should be stamped out, regardless of whether the farmer is in Norfolk or Nicaragua?
Our report made recommendations aimed at all levels of government. We asked the European Commission to look at areas where it has responsibility—date labelling, the regulations around the feeding of waste to animals, packaging regulations, fish discards, and the use of CAP funds for food waste reduction projects—and we asked it to spearhead work on common definitions, measurements and benchmarks.
Around the same time as we were producing our report, the EU Select Committee reported on the role of national parliaments in EU decision-making. It concluded that national parliaments should have a power to request action as well as to object. Under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, a so-called “green card” procedure was developed with the support of all EU parliaments. I am really pleased that the first-ever green card to be issued in the EU was based on our work on food waste. It was signed by 18 parliamentary chambers.
In December, the Commission published its Circular Economy Package, which includes a section on food waste. That reflects many of the recommendations that were made in our report and in the green card proposal. Will the Minister say whether the Government are minded to support the proposals on the table?
The thread which ran through our 2014 report was the role of the supply chain in generating food waste, and why it is essential to look not just at each stage but at the links between them. The UK is fortunate to have a highly effective think tank—that is what I will call it—WRAP. It is now a charity independent of government and it provides a unique combination of academically rigorous analysis, supply-chain knowledge and campaigning skills. It really excels at developing partnerships and has been at the forefront of doing so with regard to food waste. Its work with the hospitality and food service sector achieved a 3.6% reduction in food waste by its second year. In a sector where an estimated one meal in six is thrown away, it is really important to address this. The food service giant Sodexo has developed some very good initiatives and what strikes me from what it told me is how important it is to get the staff engaged, because, when they are engaged, things begin to happen and it is more effective than just setting targets.
A couple of weeks ago the Times ran an article outlining how top chefs are now moving away from à la carte menus in favour of more limited menu choices. That is exactly to reduce food waste. One Michelin-starred restaurant said it thought it could halve the amount of food it wastes. So regardless of the size of your business there is a clear economic case for dealing with this. This is an area where a lot more could be done, particularly by the large outfits. Will the Government meet WRAP and perhaps me and other Members to discuss what more could be done about this? Clearly, the public sector is an enormous user of these catering services.
Another good example of this partnership is the Courtauld commitment. The voluntary agreement started in 2005 is in its fourth stage and aims to reduce packaging waste as well as food waste. While recognising the limits of the new charitable status of WRAP, I hope that the Government will commit to continue to support its work. I was certainly very taken by a briefing from the campaign group Stop the Rot which talked about how important this is and I know that it, and I suspect some noble Lords here today, would like to see Courtauld do more and be more ambitious.
Retailers are still very reluctant to publish food waste data, so, in this regard, hats off to Tesco, which has been more open about its levels of waste; others should follow suit. Retailers are crucial in reducing supply-chain waste. They impact not only on the growers, as we have heard, but on the processors of food, and are key influencers of consumer behaviour. Tesco and Asda have done some very interesting work to assess levels of waste of their most popular products and have looked right through the supply chain to see what can be done. It is not rocket science—for example, using bananas that cannot be sold off the shelf as a base for frozen smoothies or using things for soups and sauces makes absolute sense, as does sending bakery waste to animal feed or converting used vegetable oil to biodiesel. The Food and Drink Federation told me that KP is now using potato starch generated from its processes to make products such as wallpaper paste. This is real value added from waste.
Our report highlighted a food waste hierarchy in which food produced for humans should, wherever possible, be eaten by humans—then turned into animal feed, then used to generate energy, then composted and so on to achieve zero to landfill. I think this is one of the most important aspects of this whole debate. Without getting into discussion about the need for food redistribution, of course it makes sense to use this food wisely. FareShare has reported a 30% increase in the food redistributed in the last two years. Indeed, its partnership with Tesco provides 1,700 community groups with meals. The Co-op increased its depot-level redistribution from 85 tonnes to 300 tonnes in the last year.
Marks & Spencer is using an app called Neighbourly that links stores with local charities and in the pilot a single store in Bristol in just six months redistributed 4 tonnes of perfectly good food that otherwise would have gone to anaerobic digestion. FareShare estimates that around 300,000 tonnes of supply-chain food waste could go to feed people instead of feeding animals or going to digesters or landfill. Will the Minister commit to exploring ways of ensuring that the incentives to behave in this way are lined up? We are still a long way behind the US, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain, and they all have some sort of fiscal incentive.
While it is true that much household waste occurs at household level, it is a complex issue to tackle. As we uncovered in our evidence, the causes are often rooted in modern life—irregular eating patterns, the weekly shop, a wider variety of food and so on, and much less basic knowledge about food. WRAP has developed the Love Food Hate Waste label and has even exported it to Canada. The retailers have stepped up to the plate on this, but there is still much to do to demystify date labelling, despite the Food and Drink Federation’s Fresher for Longer initiative.
We have made a lot of progress in the past two years but we are really still only in the foothills of what we need to do to make permanent inroads into the scandalous waste of food. What gives me cause for optimism is that I think that we have developed a sort of ecology. We have the academic rigour and analysis from WRAP; a huge variety of civil society groups, from the Trussell Trust to Stop the Rot; innovative use of technology; a willingness on the part of industry to really see the business case; and the campaigning zeal of people such as Tristram Stuart from Feedback, and celebrities such as Jamie Oliver, who are so effective at mobilising public action. We have done a lot, but there is much more to do.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for initiating the debate and for her excellent overview of where we are at the moment. I start by proudly declaring my interest as a new member of the board of WRAP—for the uninitiated, that is the Waste and Resources Action Programme—taking over from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I look forward to learning much more from that organisation and supporting its excellent work over the coming months and years. I am so glad that I decided not to focus on the Feedback report from Kenya, which is a very important part of all this. The noble Baroness mentioned the brand, Love Food Hate Waste, which will be well known to all in this Room and increasingly better known even to those who take less of an interest in these matters, as well as consumers.
I was asked on BBC Essex this morning what the problem is, why it matters and what we can do about it. I am not sure that I can answer all those questions in five minutes, but I shall give it a go. The problem, as the noble Baroness said, is that each year one-third of all food produced for human consumption across the globe is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain from production to consumption. The costs are enormous. Enough food is grown to feed the world today as well as the coming billions. We must support farmers in developing and sharing knowledge around cultivation methods, seed varieties and rearing techniques to reduce pre-farm gate losses. Improving food storage and investing in transport, which is badly needed to move food from producers to consumers, could help to reduce the amount of food lost across the globe.
Why does it matter? In a nutshell, we have a duty of care to the next and future generations to conserve and preserve the earth’s finite resources. Cutting down rain forests to grow soy, not for human consumption locally but to import for our pigs, seems absolutely crazy. What can we do about it? The noble Baroness has put a lot of questions to the Minister, whose answers I look forward to hearing. Here in this country, there are many more things that we can do, as government, supermarkets and consumers. I too pay tribute to the campaigners in this field who have done excellent work to highlight the issue—to Tristram Stuart at Feedback and to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, whose two brilliant television programmes last autumn motivated a new audience. What a great communicator he is. Who can forget him taking one-third of the food out of a shopper’s trolley and just chucking it away to illustrate graphically the amount of food consumers buy and then bin, as well as all the additional collection costs? How can we not be ashamed that the average family throws out the equivalent of £700-worth of food every year? That is £60 a month, and more than half of that food is edible. Between 20% and 40% of UK fruit and vegetables are rejected before they even reach the shops because of strict cosmetic standards set by supermarkets. This too was graphically highlighted by Hugh in his film about the parsnip farmers in Norfolk and their treatment by Morrisons. They tragically subsequently went out of business, but I would be surprised if the adverse publicity did not also damage Morrisons’ bottom line, as well as its reputation.
The point is that all of this could be a win-win. Greater support could be offered to FareShare, for example, which saves food destined for waste and sends it to charities and community groups who then transform it into nutritious meals for vulnerable people. The food it redistributes is fresh, quality and in-date surplus from the food industry. Last year, it redistributed the equivalent of 16.6 million meals. But despite a 30% growth last year, Fareshare was only donated 2% of what is available, unlike in France, for example, which redistributes closer to 25%, potentially saving charities £250 million. That is a heck of a lot of money. I hope that all large food retailers will commit to the principles of Courtauld 2025 and take immediate voluntary action to embed practices to cut food waste and improve implementation of the waste hierarchy in their disposal of food.
Confusion about food labelling persists. As far as I am concerned, the “sniff, smell and taste” test works, but if you are anxious or squeamish the use-by date is the only one that really matters. There are lots of encouraging figures in terms of reduction but there is so much more to do. As consumers, we can all do more to waste less. We can plan better, shop better, cook better, and be aware that by doing so we are saving ourselves money and saving our planet for future generations.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on the debate. It is a vitally important issue and the Library research document is, I must admit, a mine of information. I only have five minutes so I am going to focus. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, has ensured that I do not have to worry about the sheer cost per household because she has given your Lordships the facts on that.
I am focusing on food waste in the home. I had a brief discussion with Lady Young before I left and said that I was going to reveal some intimate details of the Young household—well, not that intimate, but relating to food. I have here exhibit 1. I usually have fruit but this morning I decided that I was going to have Shredded Wheat with a few bran flakes on top, so I picked up this packet of bran flakes. Lady Young does not throw things away unnecessarily and it said: “Best before 31 May 2014”. I thought, “I’ll give it a whirl”, and it was perfectly okay. It had been stored in an airtight container; it was tasty and I did not notice any difference. I doubt that the Shredded Wheat was any younger than about six months to a year either.
Then I started to look around. I looked at a tin of baked beans. I do not think it gave a use-by date but it said that once opened, the beans should be stored in the fridge and used within two days. That is a load of rubbish. I have eaten baked beans that are nearly two weeks old. What prevents me eating them? If I look inside and there is a bit of green mould, I draw the line at that. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, made this point. If we threw out sell-by dates and put in smell-by dates, and if we threw out use-by dates and had “use by common sense” dates, we might start making progress in this area. I looked at a tin of salmon that has not been opened. It went out of date in 2015 but we are going to use it. If there is mouldy cheese, I cut the mould off and carry on using it. So there is a lot more that we could do in how manufacturers approach this, in the information that we give consumers and in education.
I had not heard of the Love Food Hate Waste programme but I think that it is brilliant. It made me think about reusing. I had my grandchildren down and I did the breakfast so I gave them bubble and squeak. “What is that?” they said. What is bubble and squeak? It is the great British invention and it recycles. It saves you wasting. Why do people use a bread bin? Put it in the freezer and pull out the slices when you want them. If there are any crusts left over, Lady Young incorporates them into bread pudding. Even our dog is not exempt from Love Food Hate Waste. Charlie the cocker spaniel loves cauliflower and broccoli stalks now, so we are all in on it—and it is important. It is a culture and an attitude of mind.
Regarding food, our council is changing collection and delivery. Only about 25% to 30% of households have food-waste boxes—very few—so we know that food waste is going into landfill, which is the worst possible option. Not everybody can compost, but our peel goes into compost and the small amount that we waste goes into the food-waste bin. The one area that concerns me where recycling does not seem to be done very well is cooking oil which, if poured down the sink, is really bad news. It goes into the water environment and it is quite hard to get rid of it. I was asking the council recently why we could not leave bottles of used oil out, which it could collect and recycle.
What else can we do? Love Food Hate Waste is great but I would like to push it into an area where I have an abiding interest, as many other people here no doubt have. I am a school governor in a primary school. If we educate the next generation to start encouraging their parents into good habits of cooking and how they use food waste, that would make a big difference. So my question to the Minister is this: what are we going to do about these very generalised sell-by and use-by dates, which contribute to the problem rather than help? Of course we have to have guidance on how to use and store food, but there ought to be a lot more common sense in it than currently. I am conscious of the time, but I hope that the Minister can give me a positive response on whether we can extend the ideas in the Love Food Hate Waste campaign into schools.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, it is not often that one finds it impossible to follow certain speeches, and I am not going to go through my breakfast because it probably would not be as impressive as that of the noble Lord, Lord Young.
I must declare an interest as a member of the board of the Marine Management Organisation, and I will say a little about that later. I start by congratulating not just my noble friend Lady Scott but also the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and my noble friend Lady Parminter for following this subject through, which is so important. I know from having been chair of the House’s Arctic Committee, which did not get quite the same level of publicity but did not do badly, that it is so important because we in this House put so much energy into these reports. It is important that the chairs of those committees, and other Members, follow them through and make the differences that we open out.
On the fisheries side, I congratulate the coalition Government and the present Government on having followed through with Europe in terms of landings requirements. That now means that, increasingly, the discarding of fish is illegal at last. That is true of the pelagic stock, for which it was introduced last year, and this year it is sensibly being introduced for demersal species. That will make a huge difference to the immoral waste that there was; something like 15% or 20% of some stocks was being thrown back into the sea to die. I do not think that the Government need any encouragement, but nevertheless I encourage them to keep strong in that area, not just in terms of our own fisheries but also those of our EU partners. That is really important.
The area that I want to talk about a little more is the developing world. Clearly, most of the subject so far has been around the UK. During the general election, I attended a meeting with the NFU in Devon and Cornwall as the Lib Dem representative. The meeting was in Exeter, and there was a lot of consensus and it was most interesting. But one question from a landowner in Devon was about the fact that we have a population of 6 billion on this planet and we are going to go to 9 billion. He asked, “How the heck are we going to feed them and deal with that?”. I put my hand up, schoolboy-style, and said, “Please, sir, I’ve got the answer to that one because I have read the report from the House of Lords which states that around 30% of all food globally is wasted”. So one key way of solving the problem of feeding not just the increased population but the existing people in poverty is by looking at this whole area of food waste. We need to make it not just a national issue but a global one.
Over the last year, I was very privileged to chair a commission for the University of Birmingham on the “cold” economy and doing “cold” smarter—it was all about refrigeration and supply chains. Again, one key thing to come out of that was that a large proportion of food waste in the developing world is because of wastage due to not being able to control temperatures; obviously the other major issues are just not being able to get to markets and pestilence. Cold chains are really, really important. There is a huge amount that we can help developing countries with in that area and I am very interested to hear from the Minister on that. It is clearly a DfID issue rather than a Defra one, but in terms of the global development goals and UK aid, are we helping in that process?
One of the other things about it is that, although waste food takes up the equivalent of about the size of Mexico and impinges on water and land usage as well, refrigeration engineering technology is extremely bad, polluting and energy inefficient. We have technological solutions for that in this country which we are implementing. It is so important that we allow that technology to go out to the developing world.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on securing this debate and moving it through. The last thing I would say is that one of the great solutions to food waste in Cornwall is organisations such as the Cornish Food Box Company, which delivers food boxes and does not care what shape the food is at all. I recommend that fellow Members go to that source.
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for securing the debate today and for the work that she led in the sub-committee. It was a joy to serve on that committee, which produced one of the most interesting reports I have taken part in. The important thing, which Lord Teverson has just touched upon, is to follow it through. This issue has had a lot of coverage and is hugely important. I declare my family’s farming interest at this stage.
The committee considered food production from seed to plate, understanding that waste occurs in the growing of the crop, from harvesting through to storage, processing and delivering before it ends up on the shop shelves. Waste occurs when crops fail due to climate conditions and they rot in the fields. However, as we heard earlier, it also occurs when retailers reject produce because it is misshapen, considered too small or fails to meet the standard size. The fact that there is nothing wrong with the freshness or the taste of the produce does not stop the item being wasted. This really is disgraceful.
The publication Force-Fed, produced by the Food Foundation, hit our desks this week. It contains some staggering figures which I should like to include in my contribution. It is based on a typical British family in the middle income band. The research shows that family food spend takes approximately 18% of weekly household expenditure, of which two-thirds is consumed at home and one-third on eating out. Of that, half the average shopping bill goes on processed food. Some 74% of people are not eating enough fruit and vegetables and 25% are obese. However, as we have heard, 7 million tonnes of food are wasted each year at a cost of £13 billion, which could be saved by buying more carefully and not wasting food. Households in the UK throw away 4.2 million tonnes of household food and drink annually, which is the equivalent of six meals every week. Vegetables, salad, fruit, fresh poultry and chilled ready meats are in the categories of higher- value waste.
This morning’s news caught my eye because it contained an item which showed that the average household loses some £700 a year through wasted food. The noble Baroness is topical because this issue has hit the headlines again. I believe that each of us has to take responsibility for the way we live our lives. We can make a difference, however small. I congratulate WRAP for the lead it has taken in raising awareness of the challenges we face. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who has served on it before, and my noble friend Lady Jenkin, who now works very closely with WRAP. Its persistence in tackling the food waste scandal is absolutely key.
The Government have taken a series of steps. They backed WRAP and introduced a Groceries Code Adjudicator to ensure fair dealings between farmers and the top 10 retailers. They sought to establish better labelling, including what I call end-of-life—but that is something which would take another afternoon to debate—and calorie content. They have improved the standards required for school meals, particularly in primary schools, and most importantly they responded at Davos last week, via Liz Goodwin, to commit to the aim of halving food waste and reducing food loss globally by 2030 according to target 12.3 of the sustainable development goals. These are important steps.
Finally, I turn to food waste itself. In the first instance, wherever possible surplus food should be offered for human consumption. Secondly, where appropriate, it should be sold or given for animal feed, and finally, rather than throwing it into landfill, it should be used for anaerobic digestion.
I have two quick further observations. First, TV chefs, who have already been referred to, have been doing important work in showing us how good, wholesome meals can be cooked simply and cheaply using raw ingredients. Secondly, we should give credit to farmers who have opened up their farms, especially to schoolchildren for them to see how food is grown. Children come away having enjoyed the visit and having seen a farm for themselves rather than thinking of food only as they see it in the shops. Surely it is a scandal that we waste food when millions are dying each year of starvation, that obesity has become a regular norm of modern living, and that we look to others to solve these problems. Government does indeed have a role to play, but so do we.
The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on securing her Question today. I should declare an interest as a former farmer and producer of food. Although a relative newcomer to this subject, I nevertheless have considerable concerns regarding food wastage in general. I was fascinated by the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, regarding his cocker spaniel. I have a black Labrador. She does not even allow us to get to the food before she has it before Sunday lunch.
I shall be very brief in what I have to say. Food waste is not a problem peculiar to this country. It is a worldwide phenomenon which has a vast financial and environmental cost, but the United Kingdom has a particularly wasteful record amounting to some £700 a year for every household, yet there has been a reduction in household food waste since 2007 of some 15% despite a significant increase in the number of households. This reduction has been achieved by the excellent initiatives being carried out through the Courtauld commitment and WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign. I congratulate them both.
Yet we continue to waste unacceptable quantities of food on a daily basis. To illustrate this, in the run up to Christmas, a very large provider of oven-ready poultry in the Midlands was marketing at greatly discounted prices carcases nearing their sell-by date which had been returned from supermarkets. With three days to go until Christmas Eve, I asked a member of its staff what would happen to a bird should it not be sold in time. The answer was that it would go to landfill. What a terrible waste. That is nothing short of appalling. In days gone by, the pig industry was an avid guzzler of swill, which took up considerable amounts of food waste. However, that practice was rife with some pretty dodgy activities and it was subsequently, quite rightly, limited following the foot and mouth crisis which did the agricultural industry so much damage. Why could this food not be frozen and brought out later for consumption in, say, hospitals, prepared meals and a large range of other uses for human and even pet consumption? What a waste. It is totally unnecessary to discard it.
What is being done to minimise the sending of such food to landfill? Surely the cost of sending such materials to landfill is significant in landfill tax when some sort of return could be achieved from recycling that material. Anaerobic digestion technology has revolutionised the disposal of waste food in the UK and beyond, but it is extremely expensive to develop at entry point. The start-up cost is millions of pounds. One has to ask the question whether, with the proposed reductions in feed-in tariffs, that makes the development of new AD systems and technology less economically viable, which is likely to reduce the attraction of using waste food as feed stock.
Finally, the practice of discarding considerable amounts of the catch by our fishing industry is immoral. It deprives our seas of breeding stock and the consumer of a product which could be used in a wide variety of foods. Is the Minister able to provide an update on the current situation regarding discards? While things might be seem to be heading in the right direction, with a great deal of effort from many people and bodies, in many influential areas there is still a very long way to go in our attitude to and handling of waste food.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I am not the first or, I am sure, the last to use the word “shocking” in regard to the levels of food waste that we are finding in the UK and globally. For me, the issues are about respecting the resources that the environment provides for us as humans and sustaining people who are in need. Equally, one other issue which has not been touched on quite so much so far today is the impact on climate change, which the food waste levels that we produce in this country contribute to. As the Government look to address the fifth carbon budget later this year, I hope that they will be looking seriously at the leadership they are showing on tackling food waste as a key component of the draft legislation which they will be obliged to bring forward.
This House has a proud record of bringing forward this issue and, in that regard, I pay particular tribute to my noble friend and colleague Lady Scott, who has led this debate, both personally and through her work as the chair of the committee which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, said, both she and I were privileged to serve on. The report produced was excellent. The initiation of the green card was an exceptional step forward in addressing this issue and showing how House of Lords committees can have a major impact on public policy issues. Having seen the green card and its impact, it was therefore a great disappointment that when the commission brought forward its circular package directive at the end of last year, there were no targets on reducing food waste. I am also particularly disappointed by the response of the Government to the circular economy directive, which talked about avoiding unnecessary burdens on business and seemed to fail to grasp the opportunities for reducing food waste now and providing green jobs with WRAP, the excellent work of which other noble Lords have mentioned. On green jobs, WRAP said that if the EU did more to move towards the circular economy, at least 160,000 new jobs could be created by 2020 alone.
In the time allotted, I want to touch on just two issues. First, there is the lack of progress on food waste collection in England by local authorities. Only 31% of local authorities in England separate our food waste; most of it ends up in landfill. The overall increase in food waste collection in the UK has been driven strongly —almost entirely, if I may say so—by the devolved Administrations in Wales and Scotland. Wales has an approach which is quite mandatory and I think that it has achieved 86% of its local authorities having separate food collections. Scotland has gone for a different approach: it has a central waste framework and while it is not supporting a mandatory approach it has separate food collection for urban food businesses. Both approaches have in different ways delivered very impressive reductions in food waste, so it is really important that the Government do more to encourage local authorities to extend separate food waste collection.
As noble Lords have already said, that is important in its own right but also important if we are to encourage anaerobic digestion. The Government have said that they are keen to support AD but that will not happen if there are not significant food stocks to drive AD, which requires supplies 24/7 and 365 days a year. We therefore need more local authorities doing separate food waste collections, otherwise that sustainable local energy just will not happen. What plans does the Minister have to drive up English food waste collection?
The other issue I want to talk about briefly is retailers. Other noble Lords have mentioned the initiatives that retailers have delivered in the past year, given their pivotal role in the food chain. When we have the next Courtauld commitment, the recommendations will take us up to 2025. I do not think that we have seen as much progress as we could have done. If retailers do not make the progress that we want to see by that date, are the Government considering whether to bring forward not voluntary but legal targets?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for consistently championing this issue over the years and for tabling the debate today. We have had an excellent debate which has seen considerable and welcome cross-party agreement. In the short time I have to speak, I would like to echo the following three points. Sadly, I will not have time to share my breakfast habits with noble Lords—perhaps later.
First, as has been said, this is an issue with huge global ramifications as a result of population growth and the socio-economic changes which have seen a more western diet spreading across the world. The demand for food is expected to increase by 60% to 70% by 2050 and this will undoubtedly have a major impact on food security, prices and the environment. Yet as we have heard, a third of all food in the food system globally is wasted, valued at around £600 billion. Apart from the obvious waste of scarce resources, as we have heard, this contributes to 3% to 5% of global warming, so there has never been a better reason for collaboration to tackle food waste on a global scale. That is why we support the delivery of Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 which seeks to halve per capita global waste throughout the supply system by 2030. It is also why we welcome the Champions 12.3 coalition of leaders to inspire ambition, mobilise action and accelerate progress towards achieving those goals. Perhaps the Minister could clarify what support the department is giving this and other initiatives to deliver the sustainable development goals.
Secondly, we have made some early progress on reducing food waste at the UK level, and like others I commend WRAP’s work on this issue. Its Love Food Hate Waste campaign highlights not only the scandalous waste of food that is being binned, but also the unnecessary cost of the food that is wasted, averaging some £700 per household per year. Partly as a result of the campaign and with the help of celebrity campaigners—people have mentioned Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who are both great food campaigners—consumers have reduced their food waste by some 21% since 2007.
But it seems that the efforts of consumers, although I know that we have further to go on this, have not been matched by the food industry, which remains responsible for more than half of all food waste across the supply chain. Like others, we very much welcome WRAP’s Courtauld 2025 voluntary agreement, which will be launched in March this year. The aim is to bring together food suppliers, retailers and the hospitality sector to deliver the food waste sustainable development goals. While this is by its very nature a voluntary agreement, it would be helpful if the Minister could give us some insight into how the department will be putting some backbone into it and encouraging a maximum sign-up by the industry. In particular, we need suppliers and supermarkets to address the huge amount of waste generated upstream, starting with farm surplus, a point which has been referred to a number of times. For example, an estimated 20% to 40% of all UK fruit and vegetables are rejected by supermarkets before they even reach the shops. Meanwhile, farmers in developing countries such as Kenya are being forced to waste up to 50% of their produce. This cannot be right and it makes consumers very angry. It feels immoral to throw away good food while people queue at food banks or go hungry. Can the noble Lord clarify whether the department has any initiatives to specifically tackle farm-gate waste?
Finally, we need to address the scandal of unsold good surplus food being destroyed by supermarkets. Currently, only 2% of this food is redistributed to charities. As we have heard, the charity FareShare has done tremendous work to highlight this issue and persuade some supermarkets to think again.
FareShare estimates that if the UK diverted just 25% of supermarket food for distribution, it would save the voluntary sector some £250 million a year. In France, the Government voted to require supermarkets to give away unsold food that has reached its sell-by date. I pay tribute to my Commons colleague, Kerry McCarthy, who campaigned tirelessly on this issue but whose Food Waste (Reduction) Bill was not even granted a Second Reading this week. Do the Government support that Bill? Are they giving active consideration to measures similar to those adopted by the French Government?
At the end of the day, the solution to food waste lies in tackling food surplus at source, prevention through better ordering systems, redistribution of surplus to those who are hungry and, finally, diversion to livestock and recycling when all other options fail. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to confirm that he supports those principles.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for securing this important issue for debate. Indeed, I applaud the influential work of this House on food waste, including the 2014 report, Counting The Cost Of Food Waste: EU Food Waste Prevention. This debate today, with all the contributions to it, highlights your Lordships’ commitment to addressing this pressing matter. I believe that we are overwhelmingly all on the same page and I acknowledge all the campaigners mentioned today who, of course, give a greater awareness of this issue.
Food waste requires urgent action across the globe. As many of your Lordships mentioned, a third of the food that the world produces is wasted. This is a waste of food, water, energy, land and money, and—as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said—it is an issue for climate change as well. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, both raised an important issue about waste: that of fisheries. The fact is that for years now we have been wasting fish stocks at an absurd and immoral level. That is why we, the Government, seek to address this by implementing a discard ban. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that we will keep strong.
Half of all food wasted in the United Kingdom is produced in the home. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green—and his wife—took us through what I call the practical common sense that most households in this country should adhere to. The noble Lord looks very healthy on his regime, if I may say so. UK households waste 7 million tonnes and spend £2.5 billion every year on food that could have been eaten but ends up being thrown away. This amounts to £470 a year for the average household. I checked on this because the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned £700 a year. This is for UK households with children. Both figures come from the WRAP report. That shows that not only in households but in households with children we need to work with parents and schools. We need to do more on this matter.
The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, also mentioned local authorities. We are all working on this and it is very important that WRAP will publish updated guidance in the near future to assist local authorities which want to introduce or improve their collection schemes. I will not go into waste collection today because we would have a considerable debate on that, but clearly this is an issue we all need to address.
The Government are helping households to waste less and save money through the Waste and Resources Action Programme—WRAP—campaign, Love Food Hate Waste. I, too, acknowledge the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Jenkin is carrying on the baton. It is very important that WRAP’s work is successful. It is about raising the profile of the campaign, with campaigns in 10 cities offering support to households to reduce the food they waste. This includes the development of practical skills through community cooking classes, guidance and initiatives to improve shopping habits and budgeting.
Retailers are also working directly with their customers. For example, the town of Swadlincote has been awarded £1 million from Sainsbury’s to invest in ways to halve household food waste. Sainsbury’s plans to spend £10 million over the next five years to promote similar schemes across the country—small beginnings, but very important. This approach has made a difference. UK annual household food waste has decreased by 15% between 2007 and 2012, which amounts to 1.3 million tonnes. The waste prevented would have filled 2,600 Olympic swimming pools.
Food is also wasted across the supply chain: 3.3 million tonnes in manufacturing, 0.2 million tonnes in food retail and 0.9 million tonnes in the hospitality sector. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, is absolutely right about dates. Defra and FSA published date marking guidance in 2011 to help ensure that dates are applied consistently. Use by labels should be used only where the safety of food cannot be guaranteed after that date. Most other foods should have a best before date only to indicate when the food is no longer at its best but is still safe to eat. We are seeing date markings to meet guidance. The noble Lord made a valuable point and we should all be mindful of it.
The Government have been working with retailers through WRAP to reduce food waste through the voluntary Courtauld commitment. Signatories reported a reduction of 7.4% in supply chain waste between 2009 and 2012, with interim results showing a further 3.2% reduction by 2014. The Courtauld commitment encourages action in line with waste hierarchy. It was very helpful that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, explained that hierarchy.
It is clear that the production of surplus food should be minimised. However, when good food is left unsold, it should be distributed to feed people in need. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that the Government and industry are working together to ensure that more surplus food is redistributed to people before being put to any other use. Signatories to the Courtauld commitment have reported a 74% increase in the level of food redistributed between 2012 and 2014 which would otherwise have gone to waste. We welcome the actions that organisations such as FareShare and Company Shop are taking to ensure that good quality surplus food gets to people in need. We encourage the food industry to forge closer links with redistribution charities, and support the action and public commitment on redistribution made by all retailers. For example—my noble friend may have mentioned this—Morrisons has recently announced that unsold safe food will go to local community organisations from early this year.
The voluntary approach is delivering results, but we want to do more. Following the Secretary of State’s meeting last year, a working group is driving forward work to waste less and redistribute more. The group is developing a partnership model to provide a consistent framework for providers and recipients of surplus food to reach agreement on working together. WRAP has also commissioned research which will identify where and why waste and surpluses occur in the supply chain. This will help industry to take appropriate action to increase waste prevention and assist redistribution.
There will always, I fear, be some unavoidable food waste. That is why the anaerobic digestion strategy is in place to reduce the amount of organic material going to landfill. My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury was absolutely right to mention anaerobic digestion. If he wanted to raise with me more privately where the producer was proposing to take the landfill, I would be prepared to take that up, because it is terribly important that we ensure that landfill is the very last option.
By 2014, retailers reduced the proportion of waste sent to landfill to 7%, down from 43% in only 2005. Under the Courtauld commitment, WRAP has also worked with supermarkets and consumers to support acceptance of the use of imperfect fruit and vegetables. My noble friends Lady Byford and Lady Jenkin and other noble Lords mentioned this matter. We welcome the action by supermarkets to sell a greater range of produce in stores. For example, in January 2015, Asda began trialling the sale of misshapen fruit and vegetables at reduced prices. This trial has now been rolled out to 25 stores and covers a wider range of product. Asda plans to increase the range further in 2016. This is a very good example of what should be done much more widely. The fruit and vegetables taste just as good. I assure noble Lords that my misshapen parsnips taste very good indeed.
The UK is at the forefront in tackling food waste internationally. We acknowledge WRAP’s work over the past decade, which many across the world want to replicate. Liz Goodwin, WRAP’s CEO is one of the 30 champions in the new UN coalition chaired by Dave Lewis, group chief executive of Tesco, which aims to accelerate progress towards meeting the new UN target to halve per capita food waste by 2030, to which my noble friend Lady Byford and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, referred.
Defra continues to fund WRAP—£13.5 million for this financial year—to help drive forward and deliver improved resource management and efficiency. This includes devoting approximately £4.1 million to take action to reduce food waste and improve sustainability across the supply chain. I emphasise Defra’s commitment to all this. We want to go further. That is why WRAP is now brokering a new agreement, Courthauld 2025. It is an ambitions farm-to-fork industry commitment—I am particularly mindful of what my noble friend Lady Byford said about from the farm—bringing the food industry together to make the food we produce and eat more sustainable and secure and to reduce waste even more. Pre-farm-gate waste—I mention this particularly as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, referred to it—will be within the scope of the new farm agreement.
Significant progress has been made over the past decade, but we all want to do more. I am very conscious that there may be particular points that noble Lords have raised—
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I enjoyed the Minister’s contribution very much, but he did not mention extending the Love Food Hate Waste campaign into schools.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I think I said at the beginning that that is something for education, but if I did not say it, I intended to say that this is issue that we wish to work on. I will raise it with officials and with WRAP. I apologise because it was in my notes to raise it.
This has been a very interesting and helpful debate. I am conscious that I may not have specifically answered some of the precise points that were raised in the time available. I would find it tremendously valuable, if noble Lords would be interested, if we continued these discussions and if noble Lords who are interested have meetings with officials and with WRAP. I started by saying that we are all on the same page. I do not think there is much difference between us. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. This has been a fascinating debate, and I think we have more work to do together.
Homelessness
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Suttie
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the issue of preventing homelessness in the context of the current Spending Review.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity today to raise issues surrounding homelessness and the impact of the spending review on measures to prevent it. I am grateful to noble Lords, including my noble friends, for taking part in the debate.
Homelessness is a highly complex issue, which touches on so many issues of public policy, including provision of affordable housing, local government finance, public health, mental health, substance abuse, immigration and relationship and family break-ups. Given the time constraints today, I can only begin to touch on some of those issues.
Two years ago, I had the privilege of volunteering with Crisis at Christmas. I also volunteered to work on Crisis’s English-language classes, and, last August, I did an overnight shift with a brilliant outreach team from St Mungo’s Broadway in north-west London. In my attempts to understand homelessness issues, I have been consistently impressed by the dedication of the professional and voluntary staff I have met at Crisis, Broadway St Mungo’s, the YMCA, Pathway and the Olallo centre, to name but a few.
Homelessness figures are significantly on the increase and must be a cause for real concern. Outreach teams recorded 2,862 individuals sleeping rough in London from October to December last year, a 12% increase in the total figure from the year before. However, the statistics alone do not begin to tell the tragic and often harrowing personal stories that lie behind them—lives that have gone off course but, with timely intervention, can be put back on track.
The estimated annual cost to the state of homelessness is £1 billion. However, recent research for Crisis drawing on large studies of homelessness across Britain has shown that tackling homelessness early could help save the Government between £3,000 and £18,000 for every person helped.
The figures for homelessness are in themselves extremely worrying, but many more people do not show up in the statistics. They are the hidden homeless: those who are staying with friends or family members or living in squats, often in very insecure and inappropriate accommodation. Research by Crisis suggests that about 62% of single homeless people are hidden and may not show up in official figures. The hidden homeless are often subject to exploitation, and risks to personal safety are high.
One of the main causes of homelessness is the ending of tenancies in the private rented sector. The sector is home to 18% of the population and is in desperate need of reform. Private-sector rents have become untenably high in many parts of Britain, most notably here in London, and many renters are now paying more than half their disposable income in rent. Moving from one rented home to another can be very expensive, with high lettings fees and large deposit requirements. Rented homes often fall below a decent standard, and there are continuing problems with rogue landlords, which can lead to a family becoming homeless.
I welcome recent changes to protect tenants from revenge evictions: legislation which was passed by the coalition Government. I also welcome the provisions in the Housing and Planning Bill to tackle rogue landlords. It is vital that we strengthen the private rented sector if we are to hold the rise of homelessness. I have very real concerns, however, about the effect of the Bill on the level of social housing, which is extremely important when it comes to bringing down homelessness. Selling off council homes to fund the right-to-buy extension, with no requirement for replacement properties to be of the same tenure, will have the effect of pushing more people into the private rented sector in the long term.
What measures do the Government plan to take to prioritise funding for new housing that is affordable to rent for people on low incomes? Will they make it clear that low-cost homes for ownership—starter homes—should be additional to, not built instead of, housing to rent?
I welcome the Government’s announcement of 17 December last year on maintaining and protecting homelessness prevention funding for local authorities and on increasing central government funding for homelessness programmes to £139 million over the spending review period. I welcome, too, their commitment to work with homelessness organisations and across departments to consider options, including new legislation, to prevent more people becoming homeless. However, I would like to use today’s short debate to ask the Minister for some further details on these proposals. What measures are the Government taking to ensure that the homelessness prevention grant is allocated based on actual levels of homelessness and housing need in each local authority area, and what measures will be put in place to monitor how the money is spent? Will the Minister give a commitment to keep the level and allocations of the homelessness prevention grant under review to ensure that it is sufficient to implement any new legislative reforms on homelessness?
I turn to the specific issue of public health and homelessness, and in particular tuberculosis. I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the APPG on Global Tuberculosis. Rates of TB have been found to be as high as 400 per 100,000 among London’s homeless population, more than 10 times the London average and more than 30 times the national average. Homeless people are also less likely to access healthcare to complete treatment and are therefore significantly more likely to develop drug-resistant strains, which have been described by the WHO as a global health emergency.
As infectious diseases, particularly drug-resistant diseases, pose a threat to the public health of all UK citizens, it is extremely important to support the outreach programmes and multidisciplinary teams required to diagnose and successfully treat people with chaotic lifestyles. If admitted to hospital, a homeless person cannot be discharged unless either their treatment is completed or they have a permanent address to which they can be discharged. In practice, this leads to people with long-term conditions such as TB being admitted to hospital and bed-blocking, sometimes for as long as six months. The cost to the NHS of a hospital bed per night is around £500. By contrast, however, dedicated hostel provision can cost as little as £60 to £70 per night and would include life- skills coaching, three solid meals a day and secure accommodation. This would help to ensure that patients complete their treatment, which is particularly important in the case of tuberculosis.
One such hostel is Olallo House near Euston station, which has a very effective TB programme. It is also, I believe, unique in its specialised provision of beds for homeless European migrants in London, and does a fantastic job in assisting people to return home, should they want to. I understand, however, from my last visit there just before Christmas, that its future funding is now in question. Will the Minister consider visiting the Olallo Project with me to see how such it works in practice and just how effective—and cost-effective—it has been?
In conclusion, homelessness is a highly complex issue which transcends party politics. It crosses over several government departments and requires co-operation between local government, devolved Administrations and central government. It requires programmes for homeless people with complex needs that join up services, pool budgets and provide holistic, tailored support. For this reason, I believe that a national homelessness strategy is now required involving cross-party consensus. Such a strategy should have input from local government and the devolved Administrations, as well as from practitioners and the homelessness charities. It should provide sharing of best practice from local government of the many excellent programmes on the ground, some of which I have seen. Above all, a national strategy should monitor national resource requirements and anticipate increases and changes in these requirements. Such a national strategy would be an effective step forward in the prevention of homelessness.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness for her choice of subject for this short debate and for the powerful speech she has just made in opening it. She raised a number of pertinent questions which I know my noble friend will want to answer.
It is 50 years since 1966 when “Cathy Come Home” was first shown on television. It was a powerful film that showed how a young couple through no fault of their own could become homeless and have their child taken into care. In the wake of it, two great national charities were formed: Shelter and Crisis. They are both approaching their 50th anniversaries, and I know they will do all they can to ensure that the issue of homelessness remains very high on the political agenda. It is also 25 years since, as Housing Minister, I launched the rough sleepers initiative here in London with the objective of making it unnecessary for anyone to sleep rough on the streets of London. Anybody who has been round London at night knows how much remains to be done. This is not to belittle the steps that have been taken in the past 50 years. Without the legislative changes and financial investment, the position would be far worse, but no Housing Minister could possibly ignore the challenges that remain.
At a strategic level, as the noble Baroness has just said, there needs to be an increase in housing supply, not least so that those in temporary accommodation can move on into permanent accommodation and free up spaces in hostels and temporary accommodation for those in greatest need. I welcome the initiatives in the Housing and Planning Bill designed to drive up the supply of new homes. I also welcome the financial initiatives in the Budget and the recent public expenditure review, which had the same objective of increasing supply. Like the noble Baroness, I was pleased that in the recent spending review the homeless prevention grant for local authorities was protected.
However, as in health, so in housing, and we need to put more emphasis on prevention. I was delighted to see that the ministerial group on preventing and tackling homelessness continues. Perhaps my noble friend can bring us up to date with its work. I understand it had a meeting last month. It would be helpful to know what its priorities are for this Parliament. Is my noble friend also able to confirm, as asked by the noble Baroness, that the Government have not ruled out legislative changes on the prevention of homelessness in the light of discussions that her ministerial colleague Marcus Jones has been having with interested parties?
On this subject, I was reading Crisis’s report, Turned Away, which shows how the services provided by local authorities can vary. Its mystery shoppers found that in more than half of their visits local authorities turned them away with little or no support leaving them in very vulnerable situations with the prospect of sleeping on the streets. That is simply unacceptable.
I also welcome the recently announced review of the funding regime for supported housing. Unlike mainstream housing that depends on rents and housing benefit, supported housing needs a stream of funds from a variety of sources and has higher management costs and more voids. We need to put this vital housing sector on a much firmer financial footing so it can play its full part in helping homeless people.
Can my noble friend update us on the no second night out initiative, which her department is helping to fund, to stop those who had no option but to sleep rough adapting themselves to that very dangerous lifestyle? The average life expectancy of somebody sleeping rough is 47. It would be helpful to know how that initiative is going. With the 1990s initiative, we were able to reduce the number sleeping rough in London by two-thirds, but of course it has gone up again. This may be partly due to better recording, but today there are many non-UK nationals in this country who were not here in the 1990s, and we need some targeted initiatives to resolve that problem. Homelessness is the symptom of wider problems—alcoholism, relationship breakdown, financial problems, discharge from prison or care without proper support—that need to be addressed at the same time as accommodation is provided. The supported housing movement is so important as it can provide the one-stop shop that is needed.
Finally, I welcome the initiatives to make it easier for homeless people to access private rented accommodation. I note the reservations the noble Baroness has about the current regime. The Minister’s department has funded the private rented sector access development fund since 2010. This provides a good model for persuading landlords to accept families who are threatened with homelessness. If assurances can be given that the deposit will be available, the rent will be guaranteed and if the arrangements do not work the family can be rehoused, many landlords who might be cautious about accepting homeless families might overcome their reservations. Homeless families are not synonymous with problem families, and if they are given decent accommodation many can rebuild their lives.
We may need legislative change to reinforce the safety net. We need to spread best practice. We need financial support for cost-effective and targeted initiatives. We need a stable funding regime for the voluntary organisations on the front line. If we get all those arrangements in place, I think we in this Parliament can make a real impact on tackling homelessness.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, for initiating this extremely important debate. It gives me the opportunity once again to raise the problems of a group of women who, for many reasons beyond their control, find themselves vulnerable and homeless. These women have been overlooked for far too long and can find themselves in a downward spiral of chaos and exclusion. Just over 1,000 women have been recorded as sleeping rough in London. As no such gendered information is available for the rest of the country, will the Minister say whether there are any plans to collect this information, not least because, as has been said, the number of homeless people is rapidly on the increase? It is estimated that about 30% of rough sleepers will be women, and they have special needs. There are also many thousands of women who make up the hidden homeless. Homeless rootless women with few belongings will often show up in the head count of rough sleepers. These hidden homeless women may be sofa-surfing, staying with family and friends or trapped in an abusive relationship because they have nowhere else to go.
Women’s homelessness can occur after a prolonged period of trauma, including physical, sexual and emotional abuse. It can follow a cycle of mental health problems, substance use and myriad other problems. The figures show, however, that half have experienced domestic violence, 78% report mental health needs and one in five has a combination of mental health and physical health problems.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said, homelessness has to be seen as being not just about a place for people to go but as a health issue and, sometimes, even a life issue. The average age of people who die while homeless is 47; for women, it is just 43. According to research from the Salvation Army, 53% of homeless women have attempted suicide at least once. Despite facing such harsh health inequalities, women who are homeless often do not get the right healthcare. Their health problems often remain untreated until a health crisis requires urgent care. That comes at a cost, for both individuals and the NHS. That is clearly illustrated by one instance. Angela has a history of homelessness and substance use and has spent time in prison. She says, “I got mixed up with the wrong people. I never imagined in a million years I would be selling my body for drugs. I have nearly been killed three times doing it. I have been raped doing it and as a result I have HIV”, which is another cost to the health service.
In my area of Brighton and Hove, evidence from the women’s centre—I declare my interest as patron—shows that almost half its clients are mothers. Of these, 67% have had their children taken into care or adopted. Much of the complexity of homeless women’s needs is rooted in histories of violence and abuse stemming from childhood. So not only are they grieving for their lost children, they are also grieving for their own lost childhood. These problems are intergenerational. We have to make sure that they are not passed on to the next generation.
To add to their problems, and to make the way out more difficult, women are marginalised in the labour market. Evidence from St Mungo’s states that the majority want to move into employment, but about only 9% of its female clients have a job. The importance of having an occupation, of being trained with the consequent boost to self-esteem, cannot be overestimated as a way of recovery.
Making matters worse for many of these women, they experience stigma and shame because they are homeless and are judged by societal expectations that women should be good mothers and maintain a home. A perceived failure to live up to these expectations can be a significant barrier to recovery. Unfortunately, the histories of far too many of these women are full of missed opportunities, through insufficient co-ordination by national and local government and inappropriate and erratic interventions, to get the right help at the right time, leaving needs unaddressed and making recovery much more difficult.
It is feared that unless urgent action is taken now, too many women will not get the help they need to escape from homelessness, a situation not assisted by the cuts to public services, the restrictions on welfare, rising private sector costs and the lack of social housing supply. I also have concerns about the consequences of the Housing and Planning Bill. There are also cuts in local authorities’ spending on specialist services, such as refugees and women-only hostels. That has reduced the number of places where women can go. It is estimated that next year there will be a shortage of something like 15,500 places. The Government have said they will consider legislative changes to prevent more people becoming homeless, which should take into account the provision of holistic, gender-sensitive support. There have to be imaginative approaches and partnership working across government and local government. Will the Minister say what progress has been made in getting some legislation on the statute book? The longer a woman sleeps rough, the worse her problems become, and the more costly it becomes to help her off the streets and make her life worthwhile so that she is able to contribute to the economy of the country.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Suttie for sponsoring this debate. We visited St Mungo’s Broadway together to see its work last year. As a former trustee of Homeless Link, the membership body for organisations working with homeless people, over the years I have had the privilege of seeing St Mungo’s Broadway’s innovative approach, led by Howard Sinclair. It has never ceased to impress. Street Link is just one of the examples. It was set up in 2012 by St Mungo’s and Homeless Link to connect people on the street as quickly as possible to local services. It continues to have very welcome support from the Government, including the No Second Night Out initiative referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham.
Fifty years ago, Shelter was formed, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned, with the express ambition of quickly putting itself out of business. A short walk from here along the Strand any evening of the week suggests that the work of my former employer, Shelter, is needed now more than ever. The stats seem to bear out what we can all see, especially in inner cities, not just London but elsewhere. The latest quarterly figures, which came out at the end of January for the period October to December 2015, show that outreach teams recorded 2,862 individuals sleeping rough in the capital, a 12% increase on the total figure for October to December 2014. New rough sleepers accounted for 46% of all rough sleepers. In a way, the good news is that there are fewer people out for longer periods of time. It would seem that there is some achievement in that area. Intermittent rough sleepers account for 39% of all those recorded.
Will the Minister share with us what is happening with the Government’s statistics, which are now under criticism and scrutiny? The recent assessment by the UK Statistics Authority concluded that the official statistics for homelessness prevention and relief and rough sleeping do not currently meet the required standard of trustworthiness, quality and value to be designated as national statistics. They have been retained, on condition that urgent action is taken by the Government to make a series of required improvements. That seems a far cry from when my former colleague Louise Casey was in charge of this.
Today, I would like to tease out one of the things that particularly affects homelessness, which is the danger of unintended consequences when developing policies in government and the need, among friends and in this safe atmosphere, for Governments occasionally to change their minds and recognise when policies go wrong in this area. Away from party point scoring, there is value in recognising just how often Governments with the best of intentions end up with some of the worst case scenarios. From right to buy and care in the community all the way to the spare room subsidy or the bedroom tax, recent political history is awash with policies that have impacted badly on homeless people
Other speakers referred to the overall supply of affordable housing and the chronic decline in social housing. What has been needed ever since right to buy is a substantial housebuilding programme, but the loss resulting from the sale of 1.7 million council homes between 1979 and 2001—covering two Governments—has never been recouped. Local authorities are now left with such limited stock that today’s councils find themselves in the invidious position of deciding to move homeless foreigners out of their own boroughs to areas with cheaper rents for temporary accommodation. As Inside Housing and others have shown, the increase in the number of households placed outside the capital often comprises vulnerable families. Often, a local authority in receipt of them has not been informed that they are within their area.
Given all we know, those accepted as homeless often have complex issues. As Homeless Link’s research showed, 78% report a physical health problem and 86% report some form of mental health difficulty. From those on the front line of street homelessness represented by Homeless Link, the most pressing concern right here, right now—and possibly an unintended consequence—is the proposed cap to social rents to LHA levels. I would love to hear from the Minister some reassurance on that because this is in the welfare area. Many of Homeless Link’s members now say that they will be forced to close homeless provision, hostels, supported accommodation and refuges. There is also a danger in terms of funding that drives more and more towards generic provision of service and away from specialised services, for instance for women or trans communities. These are unintended but damaging consequences.
I can recall as far back as 1996 when at Shelter I asked my policy team why housing benefit did not go direct to recipients rather than landlords—a classic question coming from a Liberal, if you will forgive me. Now, having seen how HLA will be delivered, I can see unintended consequences from it going to any chaotic individual rather than the landlord. However, I am out of time.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, on securing such a timely and important debate. The impact of the CSR announcement on capping social rents kept us all up late last Wednesday during Report on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill—and quite right too. This is an incredibly important issue for many providers of supported housing for the most vulnerable, whose care and shelter may be all that stands between those they serve and unbearable hardship or even death.
I think about Jonathan, who was offered a place in the Exaireo homelessness project in Loughborough after he tried to drink himself to death when his marriage foundered. Exaireo means to rescue and restore. It did not just put a roof over his head but gave him a reason to hope again, to rediscover a sense of purpose and his worth as a human being. Within a couple of years, with Exaireo’s help he had set up a consultancy that has since worked with local authorities on their housing strategies. It has a great track record in getting people off benefits and into jobs and higher education. For information, the criminal justice system savings from keeping ex-offenders out of prison are more than 300% higher than the housing benefit costs they incur.
Certainly, organisations such as Exaireo are concerned about the sword of Damocles that hangs over their funding, as has just been referred to. I am sure the Minister can imagine the trust they and others must place in the Government’s review as they seek to expand to meet growing need. My noble friend Lord Freud repeatedly stated that this Government take their responsibilities to the most vulnerable extremely seriously as they seek to reform welfare. Ministers responding in last week’s debate in the other place on housing benefit and supported housing were also unequivocal that they had no interest in cutting off the social housing sector at the knees.
However, this debate is about preventing homelessness, and I want to spend the rest of my time talking about what we must do to reduce the number of people who need the services of organisations such as Exaireo. Many providers cite the prevalence of relationship breakdown as a potent driver of destitution. Exaireo says that it is a significant factor for more than half, possibly three-quarters, of all the people they help. Certainly many of them have addictions and mental health problems but, as Professor Kim Etherington’s research has shown, the roots of these often lie in the trauma from emotional, physical and sexual abuse that people experienced in childhood. Poor parenting has to be addressed, so I welcome the Prime Minister’s life chances speech, which highlighted this as well as the need to support couple relationships.
Tragically, the pressure group Crisis says that the biggest cause of homelessness in young people is being told to leave the family home by their parents, when the relationship between them has broken down considerably or irretrievably. The inspiring Liv Bauckham, who leads Love4life, another award-winning Midlands charity, says how difficult it is for the vulnerable young people she works with when a string of different partners come into their mothers’ lives. Many single parents are utterly devoted to their children and either put their own romantic aspirations on hold or tread incredibly carefully in this area, but it can be the case that young girls and boys suddenly find themselves living with older men whom they have never met. When there is conflict, often borne out of the teenager’s fear for their own safety, the mother, says Liv,
“will always put her boyfriend first”.
The teenager is seen as an unruly and unpleasant interloper in their romance and is given the ultimatum that if they do not like the living arrangements, they can always leave. Crises are easily reached, and underage teenagers find themselves sofa-surfing, going into care or disappearing into the shadowlands of gang and drug culture, easy prey for exploitative adults. Yet their mothers are often outworking a dysfunctional parenting blueprint they somehow survived themselves.
In many families in our poorest communities, and even in some where there is less financial need, the relational fabric of society lies in tatters. There are solutions that could ultimately stem the flow of people into homelessness services, but we have to start early. Your Lordships, and indeed now a number of Ministers, are aware of my focus on the need for family hubs. Some pioneering local authorities facing greater social need and smaller budgets, such as the Isle of Wight, have transformed their early years children’s centres into hubs where families with older children can go when they are struggling. Troubled families programmes are wholly integrated into this service. Often it is the conflicted relationship between parents that hinders them from giving their children the safe, stable and nurturing environment that they need to flourish. Bromley family hubs recognise this and, if staff cannot help couples, there is a small budget for Relate sessions.
Leadership from national government is urgently needed to encourage local authorities to broaden the purpose of children’s centre infrastructure. Many children’s centres are deserted from 4 pm onwards; certainly they are underused at evenings and weekends. Let us sweat these assets. Will the Minister undertake to look more closely at family hubs and perhaps consider using her role in the Cabinet Social Justice Committee to create a caucus for change in this vital area?
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Suttie on securing this important debate. At a time when the House is beginning to debate the Housing and Planning Bill, we do well to consider the plight of those who are homeless. The number of homeless families has rocketed by one-third since 2010, with a record 56,040 families on the streets last year. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests as vice-president of the LGA. We have heard from my noble friend Lady Suttie who spoke eloquently of the brilliant work of St Mungo’s and other organisations to assist homeless people back into employment and decent housing. Similar organisations operate across the country to great effect. Many rely heavily on charitable donations to carry out their work. This is a very hand-to-mouth existence and deserves more security.
One-third of those who find themselves homeless do so as a result of private landlord tenancies ending. There are very considerable costs to renting in the private sector with myriad fees: agent’s fees for introducing a property; fees for drawing up the tenancy agreement; fees for credit checks; and at least four weeks’ rent, and often six, as a deposit in advance, and then a month’s rent also in advance. The previous deposit is not returned in sufficient time to be used for a new property. Many of those reliant on the private sector for housing do not have this kind of money, so when their tenancy ends they have nowhere to go but the streets. These people deserve better.
Outside of those who are homeless as a result of tenancies ending or evictions are those with mental health issues, those given to alcohol and substance misuse, and those suffering from domestic abuse. It is widely reported that among those arrested and spending a night in police cells are many suffering from mental health problems. I am pleased that the Government are at last allocating resources towards dealing with mental health on a par with physical health. This is long overdue and needs urgent attention.
Not many years ago I frequently used the Tube at Hyde Park where there were often male rough sleepers on cardboard. One morning there was a woman with a boy of about eight sleeping there as well. Both were clean and reasonably well-dressed. Women do not sleep rough with their children unless they are fleeing domestic abuse. Local authorities have a duty to provide housing and accommodation for many categories of vulnerable people, especially those suffering from domestic abuse. However, these services are continually under threat as contracts outsourced to private contractors collapse due to insufficient profit being available. Services are returned in-house and re-let to another provider. On each occasion, the specification and the cost are reduced. Since the ending of ring-fenced funding for Supporting People, local authorities with dwindling resources find it increasingly difficult to prioritise this section of our communities. The current local government settlement has put these people at very serious risk.
Currently, my own county has given notice that the existing contract which provides for vulnerable adults will end in April 2016. It has a statutory duty to provide for those with mental health issues but the other elements of the contract will only receive £1.4 million for all other elements of homelessness, including substance abuse and homeless hostels over the whole county. Other counties are suffering similar choices. Analysis from the National Housing Federation suggests there are 110,000 places in supported housing in 2015-16 for those of working age. That is 15,000 fewer places than needed. This shortfall is set to grow to 30,000 places by 2019-20. Is the Minister aware of this situation and is she prepared to take action to ensure that vulnerable people are safeguarded? This is a particular challenge in two-tier areas where districts are the statutory housing providers. Funding is now channelled through the counties which, under pressure, are withdrawing sufficient funding and saying to districts, “You are the housing providers; you take responsibility”. Is the Minister aware of this tension?
Social housing is increasingly important for people who are homeless or at risk but the availability of social rented housing has halved since 1994, dropping from 3.6 million properties to 1.6 million properties in 2016. Many local authorities find that they have insufficient housing to accommodate emergency cases. Some of these people will resort to sleeping rough or will be placed in temporary accommodation in a hostel or bed and breakfast. One of my colleagues who is the leader of a large council tells of how she cried the first time she had to put a family into bed-and-breakfast accommodation as there was nowhere else for them to go. This is soul-destroying, especially for those families with young children. How many people—both individuals and families—are currently in temporary accommodation up and down the country? There is a desperate shortage of housing for those vulnerable people needing to rent. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the comments made this afternoon.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, for putting this Motion down for debate. Secondly, I declare an interest as an elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham. When discussing homelessness and how we can prevent it, I am always drawn to the fact that we are one of the richest countries on the planet. As a nation we have achieved some remarkable things in almost every field you can think of, and yet we have people sleeping in doorways and on friends’ sofas, and the problem is not being addressed properly. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, is right when she tells the Grand Committee that this is a complex issue that needs tackling across government.
I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, will produce a raft of statistics. As organisations such as Crisis and Centrepoint point out, these official figures do not reveal the real scale of the problem and, unless we get true figures and a real understanding of the problem, then we will struggle to get a grip with this issue. You have only to walk the streets a few hundred yards from this House to see people sleeping in doorways. I was struck by witnessing homeless people on the Strand, close to Charing Cross station, gathering in the early evening to be fed by charity workers, who brought them bread and soup.
You can break homelessness down into different categories and circumstances, and with some it can be easier when trying to find solutions than with others. Families that find themselves unintentionally homeless have protections in law, and local authorities have a duty to help them. However, changes that the coalition Government made to welfare and housing benefit, and other reforms, mean that, particularly in London, local authorities often have to rehouse people in temporary accommodation many miles away. Many Members in the other place, representing constituencies in the north of England and the Midlands, have told me of families coming to their surgeries who were rehoused from parts of London but who want to go back to their own communities. An immediate problem is solved, but others are created.
The Government have allowed local authorities to use the private-rented sector to house homeless families. They also have overseen the building of the smallest amount of council houses, as I mentioned earlier, building fewer than 11,000 social homes for rent last year compared to Labour’s 33,000 in its last year in office. During the Second Reading of the Housing and Planning Bill, I recall the noble Lord, Lord Horam, from the Conservative Benches, making a plea for the Government to build more council homes and social rents. On the subject of rent, the affordable rent strategy being pursued by the Government just creates an unaffordable private-rented sector for young people and families in many parts of the country, particularly in London, and that is no solution.
You then have people who are not protected by legislation, including single people, young adults, the poor and renters in the private sector, who are being failed by the policy decisions taken by the Government. We are seeing more and more of these people on street corners in our cities and in London. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, outlined the measures in the Housing and Planning Bill concerning the sale of housing association properties and introducing more unaffordable rents that will do nothing to help the homeless or those people at risk of becoming homeless. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, mentioned “Cathy Come Home”, and he is right about the effect of that programme and the founding of Crisis and Shelter. I was five years-old at the time and benefitted from a council house that my parents were allocated in Southwark. I also remember the revulsion against the activities of people like Peter Rackham and their effect on the private-rented sector at the time. It is very different today with so few council houses being built and the Government seeing the solution to the problem very much more in the private-rented sector with these expensive rents. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, talked of family hubs in his contribution. I would say to the noble Lord that the Sure Start programme, which has been decimated by the Government, was about those family hubs and I think we need to get back to those programmes.
Can the Minister set out what initiatives the Government are taking to help these people and what the process is for reviewing policy decisions made by the Government? In addition, what is actually happening in London and elsewhere? Can she say how the No Second Night Out programme is progressing? It is supposed to tackle the problem of people living on the streets. What review of the programme is taking place? The Motion asks the Government what steps they are taking to tackle homelessness in light of the current spending review. A proper assessment of the success or failure of government initiatives in this area must be used to inform the spending review. One of the risks for this forgotten group of homeless people is to have no protection from the real dangers they find themselves in. They can be targeted by criminals, who can get them into a life of crime, drug and alcohol abuse and dependency, prostitution—and young lives destroyed. We have too often seen the tragic results of these cases in the media. As my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton said, there are effects on young women, in particular, and I very much agree with the points she made.
I believe some work is needed to look at the effects of government policy across departments and the cumulative effect of those decisions. These are decisions about building fewer council houses, welfare and benefit reforms, unaffordable private sector rents, the reduction of mental health spending, and what services can be provided to asylum seekers where people are left destitute. Taken together, you have a toxic mix of misery, despair and hopelessness. People with mental health problems also make up an alarming number of the people sleeping on our streets, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said. Can the Minister tell us what is being done across government?
Finally, when discussing homelessness, we should never forget the plight of our former service personnel, who make up an alarming number of the people sleeping rough on our streets. Again, what are the Government doing to help these forgotten heroes? Many have suffered mental trauma from what they have witnessed in other parts of the world.
In any debate of only one hour it is hard to touch on all the issues one would like to. It is clear that the picture is bleak and the Government need to sharpen up their act. This debate has been very worth while. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, for enabling us to discuss these issues.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The contributions have been many and varied and have touched upon some of the key issues for society, both now and in the future.
The Government have always been clear that we are committed to supporting the most vulnerable people in our society. During the previous Parliament, we made significant progress in securing the right support for homeless people, not only so they have a roof over their head but so they can get back on their feet. Since 2010, we have invested more than £500 million, which has helped local authorities prevent almost 1 million households from becoming homeless. For example, we invested £8 million in the Help for Single Homeless fund, enabling 168 local authorities to partner up to help some of the hardest-to-reach individuals. These projects are offering support to help people turn their lives around and find long-term solutions. Likewise, our access to the private rented sector programme, which one noble Lord mentioned and which we have funded Crisis to run, has helped more than 9,000 people access privately rented accommodation and the right support they need to rebuild their lives. However, we remain clear that one person without a home is one too many. Protecting the most vulnerable in society and supporting their housing needs is just as much a priority as driving down the deficit. There need be no contradiction between these two aims.
The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, started with the point about rogue landlords and young homeless, and the two may often be linked. Noble Lords will be aware that we will be dealing with this through the housing Bill. Strong cross-party support is emerging for dealing with this really poisonous and irresponsible practice, which is far too prevalent. Young homeless people often find themselves at the mercy of these rogue landlords. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, talked about young homeless in relation to fractured family relationships. Young people find themselves homeless for a variety of reasons but often it is because relationships within the family break down. These are two very important aspects for us to think about.
Despite the need to take tough decisions on government spending, we prioritised the need for investment in this area and increased funding for homelessness programmes to £139 million over the course of this Parliament. As the noble Baroness recognised, we also protected and maintained the homelessness prevention fund that goes to local authorities, which will amount to £315 million by 2020. We have also put in place additional discretionary housing payments to local authorities. We are also assessing, along with homelessness charities and cross-departmentally, other options for preventing more people from becoming homeless, including legislation. A number of noble Lords brought up that point. We are not ruling that out.
The noble Baroness also asked about a national housing strategy. At this point we are looking at the best practice locally but we are not ruling out legislation. I am sure we will revisit this in due course.
The noble Baroness talked about support to local authorities. We know that local authorities are facing challenges, like every area of the public sector, in managing the pressures of homelessness. In addition to maintaining homelessness prevention funding, we have also provided support to help build local authorities’ capacity to manage these pressures, including: funding the National Homelessness Advice Service, which is delivered by Shelter and Citizens Advice, to provide expert training and assistance to front-line staff dealing with homelessness issues; and helping to kick-start the National Practitioner Support Service, which is a sector-led programme to improve local authority homelessness prevention.
My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham talked about his role, 35 years ago, in the Rough Sleepers Initiative. The figures for last year, 2015, will be published on 25 February. He touched on the point of rapid intervention, which is absolutely crucial in this area. He also talked about the No Second Night Out system in England. The result of that has been that two-thirds of rough sleepers in London spend no more than one night out. Two-thirds of rough sleepers in the 20 key areas outside London also spend no more than one night out. We have also co-funded both Tower Hamlets and the City of London in their quite ambitious No First Night Out pilot—in other words, so that people do not have to even sleep rough at all.
The scheme has supported the development of a housing options toolkit to identify clients at risk of sleeping rough—that is how it works—and is providing the rapid intervention service and intensive mediation to support those identified in accessing accommodation. It also includes a safe connections service, supporting rough sleepers from outside the boroughs to return to their home area, and aims to significantly reduce the number of new rough sleepers across the three boroughs.
My noble friend also talked about the interministerial group on homelessness. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, talked about complex needs, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, which is all part and parcel of what that that group is looking at. Its priorities are to reduce and prevent rough sleeping as much as possible. We introduced the world’s first social impact bond in London, which has helped nearly 900 rough sleepers, but we are now looking at a new social impact bond for the most complex individuals, such as those with mental health problems or substance misuse problems—those who are really very vulnerable. We are looking at introducing this very soon.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, talked about the very important issue of domestic violence. That is something that I absolutely homed in on when I became a Minister, after seeing the effects of domestic violence on so many areas of family life and on society and public services. Over the last few years, we have given £13 million to support victims of domestic violence, and I was very pleased that the Chancellor announced funding of £40 million over the spending review period for innovative solutions to prevent domestic violence and support victims.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked about the UKSA report. One thing I can tell her at this stage is that the Secretary of State will be meeting Andrew Dilnot to discuss it. I cannot give her any more information at this point, but I will do when I have it. She talked about out-of-borough placements. I recall her asking me about that during Questions the other day. It is not unusual. Local authorities have a duty to ensure that wherever possible in-borough placements are prioritised, particularly when people need to be within the borough for school or work reasons, but it is not unusual that families are placed out of borough. In the vast majority of cases they will be placed within London—if that is the area we are talking about. She also talked about complex needs, which I have dealt with.
My noble friend Lord Farmer has previously talked to me about family hubs. I fully recognise the importance of early years support for children in difficult families. It is not something that I have forgotten about and we touched on it in the Social Justice Committee. I will take away what he said and consider how working across government we could take that forward.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, talked about why finding a woman with her child on the street at night might be related to domestic violence. I have no doubt that she is correct. The statutory framework is very clear that families with dependent children are a priority for accommodation. That is not to deny that what she saw happens, but there is a framework in place to prioritise them.
The number of households in temporary accommodation is currently 68,500, and the peak was 101,000 in 2004. The number of children in temporary accommodation is currently 103,000, with a peak of 130,500 in 2006. A £5 million fund was announced in December to support 25 areas under the greatest pressure.
I need to wind up, as I am on my 12th minute. I again thank all noble Lords for their contributions on a very serious matter. The Government are well aware of the problem and have prioritised tackling it.
Education: English Baccalaureate
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that children receive a balanced and rounded education in schools; and what effect the English baccalaureate requirements will have in that regard.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have this important debate. I look forward to hearing all noble Lords’ contributions and the Minister’s response. I am only sorry that we do not have more time. I thank the many organisations that have sent me briefings, all of which, without exception, either decry the omission of arts subjects from the English baccalaureate performance measure or wish to see the measure removed entirely. The consultation on the implementation of EBacc closed last Friday, but I hope the Minister will take the contributions made today on EBacc specifically in the spirit of being additional to that consultation.
There is a sense of déjà vu. It is almost exactly three years since, following a huge outcry from educationalists, arts educators and the creative industries, Michael Gove made the announcement that the EBacc certificate would be “a bridge too far”. Yet, three years on, the Bacc for the Future campaign is reconvened, and here we are again with the EBacc strengthened as a performance measure. The newer “progress eight” accountability measure may include arts subjects, but there is every sense from the Government that the EBacc is to be the most significant measure.
There are many reasons why a broad-based or rounded education is a good thing—I would say an essential element of a child’s preparation for life. I will go through some of these reasons and suggest where the EBacc or other curricula might relate to it. I have an 11 year-old daughter who will go to secondary school later this year, so these concerns are very much on my mind. First, I believe that the important thing for my daughter is that her curiosity about the world should be met by her education and that she should enjoy learning. I could stop right there, because that is the most important thing and something it is far too easy to forget in today’s political culture—not necessarily shared by all—which so firmly yokes an idea about future work and assumptions about what employers will want to education, where education has become synonymous with what is termed “academic achievement”.
Personally, I would get rid of all league tables. Germany, which has recently reorganised its school educational system and has 7% youth unemployment, as opposed to our 12%, does pretty well without them. The Cultural Learning Alliance, alongside others, argues against having the EBacc at all, not just because of the arts omission, but because there is, as it says, an already desperately crowded accountability system of measures—five of them now, including three EBacc ones—with the exclusivity of the EBacc as an all-or-nothing measure particularly concerning. This is a long way from education for its own sake.
Secondly, a broad-based education creates as many opportunities as possible, whether it is the history class that fired you up, or that particular art teacher. Children will not necessarily be excited by everything. This is the cardinal mistake that Nick Gibb made in his social justice speech last June. Real social justice is to treat children as individuals who are open to a variety of possibilities. The narrow and, crucially, uniformly set EBacc curriculum of eight subjects, which could be pushed to 10, and the average number of subjects taken at key stage 4 of eight will, once you include statutory RE and PE—and PSHE, which should be statutory—leave very little room, if any, for art, music and drama, or other subjects, including technological courses.
It ought to be emphasised that this is an observation made not just by interested arts organisations. The Association of School and College Leaders, for example, argued precisely this in its EBacc consultation, noting, as many others have, the danger that music and drama courses will end up becoming the preserve of the elite, accessible only to those who can afford private tuition, or, indeed, private schooling. Department for Education figures, quoted by the Cultural Learning Alliance, show that between 2010 and 2014 the number of hours that the arts were taught fell by 10% and the number of arts teachers fell by 11%.
Other subjects, too, are being pushed to the margins—philosophy, for instance, which AC Grayling and John Taylor of Rugby justifiably argued should have its own GCSE. Tom Sherrington of the Headteachers’ Roundtable makes the case for sociology. But what all such arguments make apparent is the increasing lack of flexibility in subject choice. What is the Minister’s reaction to those schools which are resistant to the EBacc, particularly considering that an ASCL survey last year found that a staggering 87% of secondary school leaders are unhappy with the EBacc proposals? One of the conditions, too, of the setting up of academies was that they should provide a broad-based education, which, as I will endeavour to show, the EBacc, by its very nature, opposes.
Thirdly, a narrow curriculum will be a poorer one because a broad-based curriculum is one that, in a good school, will allow subjects to have conversations with each other. I like very much the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner’s description of the international baccalaureate—a more broad-based, balanced and outward-looking curriculum—as one which helps students,
“think critically, synthesize knowledge, reflect on their own thought processes and get their feet wet in interdisciplinary thinking”.
In this sense, an EBacc without the arts should be unthinkable; a core curriculum without the arts will not raise standards but lower them. Students being able to make connections between disparate subjects is not only part of the learning process; it will be that innovation that fires the future.
Finally, a rounded education treats the main areas of education as being of equal value. This is not just good for the pupil; it is good for society that in later life the scientist or technologist should have an equal respect for the artist or creative, and the artist the same respect for science. A broad-based education is not the enemy of specialisation but part of the same process—the T-shape. I do not know whether any of your Lordships have read the remarkable blog by 16 year-old Orli Vogt-Vincent in this week’s Guardian, which describes the prejudice she has had to face at her school, not just from fellow students but from teachers too, in deciding to choose dance as a main subject of study—shades of “Billy Elliot”.
But this kind of experience seems to be becoming increasingly common again, and unfortunately what the EBacc will do is institutionalise this prejudice further, and further polarise subject areas in schools which will not be a reflection of the reality outside. The artist Bob and Roberta Smith made an interesting contribution to last year’s Warwick Commission report when he said that CP Snow’s “two cultures” distinction of science and humanities—for which you can also read the arts—
“had been made irrelevant by … the power of digital technology”.
We have, for instance, a burgeoning video games industry which is dependent—as so much new enterprise is—on a number of different interactive disciplines. It happens to be crying out for fine and graphic artists, but the industry has to go abroad to obtain them. Nevertheless, the latest figures, released by the DCMS last week, show that the creative industries are now worth £84.1 billion, so we must have been doing something right somewhere —at least in the past. Because why then, even using the Government’s own arguments about education and work, is not the huge importance of the creative industries being reflected in a similar status for arts and art and design education in our schools?
Through changing the culture, the EBacc will have an effect throughout all the key stages and beyond. Why, for instance, would primary schools take seriously subjects that are considered inferior at a later stage? The National Society for Education in Art and Design, in a survey of more than 1,000 educators, the full results of which are to be presented at next week’s all-party art, design and craft education group meeting, indicates that in the last five years 53% of key stage 3 art and design teachers report a fall in levels of attainment at secondary transfer, whereas only 6% said that standards had increased.
At present, the EBacc subjects are taken up by just over a quarter of students. The Cultural Learning Alliance has shown that in the last five years take-up of GCSE arts and design subjects, including music, drama and design and technology, among other subjects, has already dropped by 14%. What, then, will be the outcome for a balanced education if the Government achieve their current target of 90%?
I repeat that the vast majority of secondary school leaders oppose the current EBacc as it stands. The National Association of Head Teachers, the NUT, the Creative Industries Federation, the Music Industries Association, the Design Council and the CBI—the list goes on and on. Hundreds of organisations and institutions have expressed concern over the omission of creative subjects from the EBacc as well as its inflexibility.
The EBacc is a flawed measure. It should either be radically reformed, or dropped entirely.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl. Lord Clancarty, for securing this debate. It is very timely given the end of the consultation on the next phase of the English baccalaureate. I join him in inviting the Minister to take note of this debate as part of the responses to the consultation. I agree with everything that the noble Earl said and I do not want to repeat it. Having said that, I think I understand where the Government are coming from as well. That is my starting point.
I am not against maths, English, science, foreign languages, history or geography. I am not against action to promote their learning and to cherish what they offer to the nation. However, I am worried about the way that has been done and the situation in which we now find ourselves.
I remember that when I was first in the job that the Minister is now in, I learned a valuable lesson which sounds easy but escapes your mind. If you say that you have a priority, you are saying two things: first, that I have a priority and, secondly, that I give less priority to the other things. That has been the problem with this story about the English baccalaureate.
I am giving the Government the benefit of the doubt. I do not think they are against music, art, drama, psychology or religious education. I suspect that they access these subjects for their own children and those they care for, so I do not think they are against them. However, I think they have forgotten the point about priorities. When they say that these subjects are important, what is heard is that the other subjects are not important. We should know by now that the English school system will act on that message with a rigour that is unmatched anywhere else in the world. That, therefore, is the problem with picking up the consequences of something that, by itself, was not a bad thing to want.
So we have a problem. One of the problems now is that schools are spending too much time talking about the curriculum and assessment, and how they can fiddle their staffing and their curriculum to get more points through the English baccalaureate. I have sat in too many conversations in the last two to three months where time has been spent on the adjustments that will need to be made to the curriculum to get a higher level in the English baccalaureate. That time should have been spent on teaching, learning and getting better outcomes from students in the classroom. So there is a problem and there is a consequence. The noble Earl made that quite clear.
We are bound by the national curriculum to offer a broad and balanced curriculum. We do not have one. This English baccalaureate is not a broad and balanced curriculum and that, by law, is what we are meant to be achieving. When I tabled a summer debate on the literacy and numeracy strategy, I said, “There is nothing to stop schools doing art, drama and all those things”, and I suspect the Minister may say the same. However, the reality is that schools are not doing so and are losing the facilities needed. The teachers are not being recruited. The time is not being made available.
We have, therefore, two problems. We have people spending time responding to the English baccalaureate and also reality that they are taking teachers away. It is no good the Secretary of State quoting in the consultation King Solomon Academy or Whitmore High School. It is great—fantastic—that they do this and offer the arts as well. However, we cannot have a school system where the law is made up on the assumption that everyone will do the things that Ministers think they should be able to do. On that basis, we should have no need for a school improvement system.
It is not that we are against the subjects of which the Minister is in favour. My question to him is twofold. He has made two mistakes. He has assumed that it is best to pursue a rounded academic curriculum and that these subjects define that. If that is what he believes, he has to defend his belief against all the evidence that shows that it is not the case. Secondly, he has gone back on the most sensible move that, 18 months ago, his Government made towards the Progress 8 measurement. Why on earth has he done so, producing a document two or three months ago that introduces five new accountability measures, all of which involve the English baccalaureate?
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
I stand up with a bit of hesitation, because the previous two speakers have described with great eloquence all that is wrong with forcing the EBacc on whole years of learning in our secondary schools. I am pleased that we have the Question here today because it sparks off a wider consideration about the purpose and aims of education. Obviously, the answer is partly that it prepares young people for life as adults as well as for the world of work. Another element is that it develops individual talents and provides a sense of achievement and self-worth. The question I have asked myself is: what does the EBacc, which is to be imposed on 90% of our secondary-school pupils, contribute towards these aims?
By sheer chance, I chaired a seminar about education in London today where there were contributions from the world of business by a representative of the chambers of commerce, from a think tank, from academia and from a head teacher of an academy trust. Without exception, all agreed that the EBacc consisting of five subjects was not a problem but imposing the EBacc on 90% of school students certainly was. They all agreed that it was a retrograde step. The business leader said that what business wanted was soft skills in young people entering the world of work. He defined these as the ability to communicate, to collaborate, to co-operate in a team, to be critical and to work on projects—none of which he felt would be developed in young people through the EBacc diet. The head teacher was even more outspoken. He was the executive principal of an academy trust. I have asked him if I can quote him but I will not say where it is as I do not want to endanger his future. He said, “The EBacc is disastrous; it is not relevant to the modern world and not appropriate to modern learners.”
I am a school governor in my own town in West Yorkshire. When I discussed this with other governors and the head teacher there, they said they have a real moral dilemma. Do they follow what the Government are imposing on schools, giving a diet of subject matter which is indigestible to a good percentage of the children in the school, or do they try to meet the children’s educational needs? It is not just the EBacc which is narrow; the content of the subject curriculum is also narrow. So not only have we narrowed down what is taught in the broad sense with the five subjects, but we have narrowed down the content of that curriculum. Altogether, we are proposing a narrow diet for our young people when they face the world of work which is opening up. I beg the Minister to reconsider what he is offering.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating this debate. He has made a strong case and, like other speakers today, I find it extremely difficult to understand why the Government are encouraging schools to adopt the EBacc with no cultural component, when all the evidence suggests that the withdrawal of creative subjects and the teacher training in these subjects will have a knock-on effect not just in the cultural sphere but across industry. This seems particularly unwise when our creative industries account for one in 12 jobs and have been the fastest growing sector in the UK economy, increasing by 15.8% since 2011 to 1.8 million jobs and contributing some £84 billion to the UK economy.
Successive Governments have invested heavily in our arts education and this has been the foundation of our current success, with students from around the world coming here to train and absorb our creative know-how. Despite that, we have severe skill shortages. In a recent survey of members by the Creative Industries Federation, education and the skills pipeline was the overriding issue of concern. The migration tier 2 shortage occupation list, which permits the sponsorship of migrants in recognition of severe skills shortages, highlights that our country is already crying out for a combination of creative—in particular, design—and technical skills.
Since the introduction in 2010 of the EBacc, where the emphasis has been on core subjects, there has been a rapid erosion of vocational subjects such as design and technology, and many schools are already cutting back on creative and arts options, which the EBacc measure does not include. No one disputes the value of these subjects; indeed, in different combinations they are essential for the prosperity of the creative sector. However, this focus is contributing to the sidelining of creative subjects, as highlighted by an early research report by Ipsos MORI for the Department for Education in 2012. It found that 27% of schools had cut or withdrawn courses for the 2012-13 academic year, as a direct result of its implementation. Indeed, over the past five years there has been a 14% decline in the number of arts GCSE entries, from 720,438 in 2010 to 618,440 in 2015. Those figures do not even include BTEC qualifications, where arts and design entries have fallen by approximately 20,000 since 2010. On top of that, the number of hours for which the arts are taught in secondary schools has fallen by 10%, while the number of art teachers fell by 11% in the years 2010-14.
In effect, the introduction of the EBacc as a headline attainment measure sends a worrying message that the creative subjects are not a central and essential part of schooling. That is particularly troubling when a recent report, commissioned by the Creative Industries Federation, highlighted that countries such as China, South Korea and Brazil have learned from our success and are investing heavily in their creative education because they, too, can see the economic value of culture.
Another concern is the reduction in career pathways. The Russell Group of universities list of facilitating subjects was used to support the introduction of the EBacc, but it is only one indicator of what is useful for students to study. Creative subjects require different combinations of subjects if they are to continue to produce students for the creative industries. By focusing on a group of subjects that benefit one group of students you may diminish the life chances of another, who are less likely to perform well on these measures.
Evidence has shown that many of the courses that need students to study art and design also have high levels of students with special needs, such as dyslexia. These students epitomise the dangers of what might happen when EBacc becomes the headline assessment measurement for schools and students have to study seven of eight EBacc GCSEs. The fear is that they will struggle to perform in the subjects that the Ebacc requires them to study. At this point, students are more likely to drop the extra arts subjects to concentrate on the required curriculum. I believe that it is irresponsible to introduce measures that are likely to limit achievement for a significant number of students at a time when there is such a demand for their skills.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, like others, I am very grateful to the noble Earl for securing this short debate. The importance of this subject is out of all proportion to the length of our discussion.
I agree with so much that has been said but I shall concentrate on two specific issues. The first, noble Lords will not be surprised to hear, concerns the omission of religious education from the English baccalaureate. I realise that it is not the only omission—I would rather like art, music and much else to be there, too—but I believe that it is a serious mistake that is going to be deleterious to a rounded education.
I believe that the previous Secretary of State, Michael Gove, thought it unnecessary to include religious education since it is a statutory subject. That is true, but it is not enough. During my secondary education 50 years ago—a frighteningly long time—religious education was statutory, although I think it was called “religious knowledge” then. That meant one lesson a week by an uninterested teacher for a form of boys who looked at the 40 minutes as time off or a time to play up. It was good life experience for a future bishop to experience such religious indifference but it was not a rounded education—although it might have been argued that it was quite a good introduction to juvenile sin, not least my own.
The impression given was that religion was a fading phenomenon that we did not really need to bother about in preparation for life. How wrong that has proved to be, for bad reasons as well as good; just as there can be bad politics, there can be bad religion, and there is a lot of it in the world. We need much greater religious literacy to understand the world in which we live and to understand the difference between good and bad religion—for instance, there is a growing danger that we regard anyone who is deeply religious as an extremist. Far more people around the world define their identity through their religion than we seem to understand in a country like ours that has a largely secular mindset, yet the huge rise in the number of students taking GCSE and A-level religious studies in recent years—it has been one of the fastest-growing subjects—indicates the interest generated in the subject among young people. It has been a subject of equal standing with others in a way that it will not be in future, and I think that the decision to exclude it will inevitably be harmful. That is what nearly every religious education teacher that I speak to thinks. So I ask the Minister, whose fairness and passion for young people I admire, either to assure me of a reconsideration or to suggest ways in which statutory religious study might avoid the marginalisation that I experienced at school.
My second point is related not to the baccalaureate at all but to international school links and their significance for a rounded education. I am still a governor of the first academy to be set up in Norfolk, where I was originally a co-sponsor. Last year I was one of a group of governors who met the Ofsted inspectors—happily, the academy got a good outcome—and we were asked the ritual question about “promoting British values”. I commented that what we were seeking to nurture was actually future citizens who had an international outlook. We have very strong links with schools in the Netherlands and the Far East—the latter more able to come here than we are able to get there—but it is quicker to get to Holland from Norwich than it is to London, especially given our train service.
We also try to take as many students as possible on overseas visits. Many who come from the estate on which the school is based and the surrounding area experience very little travel of any sort. In this setting, experience of other cultures is essential for a rounded education. Finding the financial resources is a challenge but it can be done, and I would be grateful to know from the Minister what advice, if any, the department gives schools on international links, and whether Ofsted normally makes any inquiries about such things. The inspectors I met did not seem to be familiar with investigating such things, but I believe that a rounded education needs the widest possible context.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I come to this debate with a general interest in education. I am a school governor at my local primary school, just so that I can occasionally get up and contribute to an education debate and feel that I actually know what is going on in a primary school. I, too, congratulate the noble Earl, not only on giving us the opportunity to debate the issue but on his introduction to it.
I find myself a bit torn. I was listening carefully to the noble Earl when he suggested that we get rid of league tables. I do not think I would go as far as that, mainly because it is an abiding concern of mine that by the time pupils reach level 6, every one of them should be reasonably literate and numerate. If they are not, the cost of trying to achieve that in secondary education is almost exponential by comparison. I do not know what other way that we as governors have of ensuring that we make progress, but that is a whole other debate.
I am concerned about the EBacc because I tend to agree with those who have said that it is restrictive, does not pay enough attention to the creative areas and somehow seems to give a signal that vocational is not quite as good. That might not be the intention but we have to watch for unintended consequences. I have to be honest: I remember us, when we were in Government, basically putting our finger in the air and suggesting that 50% of young people ought to go to university. In some ways I agree with that—it is good for social mobility and aspiration—but speaking to young people showed me that it also sent another signal: if you were not going to university, the vocational route was second-class. I do not think that is what the Government want to signal. It is a real concern of mine that in an era when the Government are, quite rightly, setting themselves a very ambitious target of 3 million apprenticeships do we really want to signal that the vocational route is somehow not quite as good? I do not think that we do. I do not think that would help us in the current circumstances.
I am a bit puzzled about this approach that it has to be 90% and this core curriculum when every other signal that the Government give is, if not quite “let a thousand flowers bloom”, that they are in favour of academies and free schools. They are saying they want that kind of flexibility and want to see new ideas in education emerging. It seems to me that what they are proposing does not quite chime with that.
Some of my colleagues do not necessarily agree with free schools. I am not particularly worried about them as long as they meet decent standards. I think there is no one true path to education, so I am interested in variety as long as it is accompanied by quality. There is a need for a core curriculum, but I smiled a bit when the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, mentioned the dreaded soft skills. I do not know why we use this phrase. They are not soft; they are essential skills. However, while employers ask for them, they also need employees to be literate and numerate, so there are other ways of going about it. The consultation process has not quite ended yet. It will be fascinating to see what emerges from it and whether the Government are prepared to listen and to recognise that they have not quite got the formula right.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
If the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, had the problem that some of her best points had already been made, mine is even worse. While I, too, congratulate the noble Earl on obtaining this debate, I am sorry that he should have had to do so. When the EBacc was first proposed in 2010, there was widespread concern over its omission of arts and cultural subjects. In 2012, as we have heard, the Bacc for the Future campaign was launched to argue for the inclusion of a sixth pillar of creative subjects, including music. As we have heard, most of the EBacc proposals were subsequently dropped in favour of new progress 8 and attainment 8 measures which allow room for creative subjects to be included and were rightly described by Michael Gove as more balanced and meaningful.
Therefore, it was disappointing that last year the Government changed tack once more and announced their intention that the EBacc should be made virtually compulsory for all pupils and be used as the basis of two of the five headline key stage 4 performance measures for schools. Bacc for the Future is indeed back again. With more than 170 supporting organisations, it has had to gear up all over again.
The Government’s motives are excellent. They claim that a compulsory EBacc will enhance the prospects of pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils, by ensuring that they receive a core academic curriculum that allows them to retain options in subsequent education and in the employment market. I heartily endorse this aim, but I am concerned that the proposals will not work for pupils or for the wider economy.
They will not work for pupils because the curriculum is too limited. The message, although unsupported by the evidence, seems to be that, although all pupils should have opportunities to study the arts and creative subjects, they are less important, less rigorous or less valuable than the EBacc subjects—as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said—whatever the particular abilities, interests and skills of individual pupils. As a result, many may be left with much-reduced choice and with their potential talents largely untapped.
The Government claim that the EBacc leaves room for other subjects, but it requires at least seven GCSEs against the average number taken of just over eight, and fewer than that taken by low attainment pupils. Other subjects are likely to be frozen out for more disadvantaged pupils, and that will widen the gap between their schools and the highest performing schools which give proper focus to the arts and creative subjects. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Young, that, if anything, schools seem to be too focused on an academic rather than all-round education. For example, hardly any of the many talented apprentices I have met were steered into the apprenticeship route by their schools.
Nor do I think the current proposals will work for the economy by better meeting the UK’s skills needs. Employers increasingly say they want and cannot get enough of skills such as creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, teamwork, communication, self-discipline, problem solving and the ability to cope with uncertainty. To quote the headmaster of Rugby School:
“We know that, in the world of work, creative vision, entrepreneurial skills and artistic flair are key transformational advantages that derive from studying the arts”.
I am also struck by the lack of focus on digital skills in the EBacc proposals. The report published last February by the Digital Skills Committee, on which I served, argues that digital literacy should be taught as a core subject alongside numeracy and literacy and be embedded across all subjects and throughout the curriculum, but it seems to appear in the EBacc only in the guise of computing as an optional science subject.
I applaud the Minister’s clear commitment to providing a balanced and rounded education for all pupils, but I urge him to listen to the concerns expressed by the Arts Council, Bacc for the Future, the CBI, the Design Council, Edge and numerous others—I could, but will not, go on through the alphabet—and to think again about how best to achieve his laudable aims, both for pupils individually and skills in general. To meet the evolving needs and challenges of the future we need an education system that not only sets high standards and expectations but does so across a broad enough range of subjects to allow all pupils to develop their unique talents, including in the arts and creative subjects, not least music.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, this is a huge issue for the arts world. Sir Simon Rattle told the classical music APPG the other day that he was appalled that music was not a core part of the EBacc. It would be unthinkable, he said, for a country like Germany not to have the arts—and music in particular—as a central subject. Anticipating the Minister’s response let me quickly say that the music hubs have done well and I warmly congratulate the Government on their success, even if it is sometimes sporadic in coverage.
However, that is not enough. It is the profound question—as we have heard—of educational emphasis, priority and national identity that we are concerned about. In Germany, Sir Simon continued, high-ranking politicians are frequently to be seen at concerts, operas and arts events. There is a central thrust and hunger for the arts, not just because of their economic success but because of the role they play in social cohesion. In this country the success of the arts is all the more remarkable for the comparative backdrop of philistinism they have emerged from. Where courts in 18th-century Europe felt the need and desire to employ and commission great musicians, the landed gentry here were more interested in hunting and fishing—I have to put some of my ancestors into this bracket, even if they did, through their goings on at Berkeley Castle with Edward II, inspire Shakespeare and Marlowe to some of their most disturbing lines. The arts have had to fight their way up the ladder.
I am glad to say that we have moved on, but not far enough as this debate articulates because it all begins with education. Ministers here rightly bask in the warm financial glow generated by the creative industries but we need to look to the next generation and the musicians and artists who will refuel and sustain that success. I cannot put it better than Dr Chris Collins and Professor Rachel Cowgill from the National Association for Music in Higher Education who wrote in the Guardian on 2 February—there have been articles in lots of other papers too—that,
“the Ebacc attainment measure in England will reduce the availability of creative and artistic subjects in schools. The adoption of a similar performance measure in sixth-form league tables … has led to an 18% reduction in the number of students taking A-level music. Since creative arts subjects like music tend to be more expensive to deliver in schools, they are all the more susceptible to being axed when times are hard and budgets tight. This slump has made A-level music unviable in many schools and colleges, further perpetuating the decline and resulting in regional deserts where the subject is completely unavailable. If, as we fear, the forced adoption of the Ebacc results in a similar decline for GCSE music, the subject will be decimated in English schools”.
I would add that we are not simply talking about classical music. Think of all those musicians who play in theatres, on backing tracks, on film scores—you name it. Just think too of the effect of access to the arts, both visual and musical, on popular music. John Lennon, David Bowie, Elton John: these are just a few of the names that have propelled this country to the forefront of the world stage and boosted our economy at the same time. Are their successors getting the same opportunities? I rather fear not but I hope the Minister will provide a pleasant surprise.
Lord Storey
My Lords, Britain's got talent. We have a strong creative and cultural heritage. Our worldwide reputation for creative performers, artists, filmmakers, designers, video-game makers and writers is formidable. Tourists flock to our cultural and creative landmarks to experience our theatre, music and heritage. They admire the work of our designers, filmmakers, musicians and performers. Some of Britain’s leading exports are our creative industries, talent and experiences. As George Osborne said:
“Britain’s not just brilliant at science. It’s brilliant at culture too”.
Even Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, said:
“The creative industries are one of the UK’s greatest success stories … Growing at almost twice the rate of the wider economy and worth a staggering £84 billion a year”.
Why would we do anything to put this in jeopardy? The EBacc in its current form will have unintended consequences for our creative industries.
No one disputes the value of the subjects included within the EBacc. But the measure itself, requiring achievement in only a narrow range of academic subjects, will not meet the ambitions and aspirations of many learners, let alone the skills required for a future workforce—the skills that employers require. With the EBacc there is little room for students to study creative subjects. Why do I say that? Because the EBacc requires students to take a minimum of seven prescribed subjects which do not include any arts or creative subjects. “Ah!” shout Ministers, “There is nothing to stop pupils studying further subjects”. But we know from official figures that the average number of GCSEs taken by a secondary school pupil is eight. If the EBacc becomes a reality, there would be little room left for pupils to study creative industry related subjects—music, art, design, technology, drama, and many other subjects would be squeezed out of schools altogether. What then for our next generation of musicians, technicians, designers, artists, actors and the £84 billion industry that Ed Vaizey talked about?
We are already seeing this happen as schools facing budget cuts ditch non-EBacc subjects or are unable to offer the full range of creative subjects. Some even believe that because a subject is not part of the EBacc offer it has not got the same importance and status. Between November 2011 and November 2014, the number of teachers teaching creative subjects declined by 13.1%. The number of hours being taught in creative subjects in secondary schools is also in decline. It becomes a vicious circle, as fewer students being taught or taking creative subjects leads to a decline in the number of teachers being trained, which leads to a reduction in the number of available teachers of creative subjects. As the NAHT said in its submission to the consultation on the EBacc:
“The decline in available curriculum time for optional subjects and the exclusion of creative and cultural subjects from the EBacc will lead to a significant reduction in pupils taking these subjects”.
It is little wonder that universities and businesses, including the CBI, have asked the Government to think again on the exclusion of arts subjects from the EBacc. Perhaps the Minister in his winding-up speech could explain why Michael Gove’s EBacc Progress 8 measure needs to be changed. It offered a better balance for pupils. It maintained the importance of English and maths, and ensured that pupils took three EBacc subjects to give a clear academic core. It allowed a basket of further EBacc subjects of high-quality, non- EBacc or vocational-subject courses. This enables schools to maintain a broad curriculum, offering pupils and parents to choose what is best for their children. Can the Minister also say, with the consultation on the EBacc having been concluded on 29 January, what the means are by which the responses are accessed, evaluated and responded to?
Our competitors would give their right arm to have the success of our creative sector. For example, in China national and regional governments are pouring resources into providing educational support, market activity and financial incentives for the creative sector. Let us not throw this success away. I thank the noble Earl for organising this debate. It is really important.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for promoting the debate and for the persuasive way in which he introduced it.
Despite the views of most education professionals, the Government are determined to press ahead with their aim of having 90% of GCSE students take the EBacc by 2020. We understand that the driving force in this is the Minister of State for Schools, Mr Gibb, who seems to be in thrall to E.D. Hirsch and his theory of the core knowledge system, which above all is characterised by one word: inflexibility.
Labour is not opposed to the EBacc per se. We recognise its value and it is right that every student should have the opportunity to take all five EBacc subjects if they want to, but we do not believe that it should be compulsory. Forcing it on 90% of GCSE students is sensible for neither them nor the long-term needs of the economy. My noble friend Lady Morris said that this is about priorities. By imposing the full EBacc the Government are claiming that foreign languages, and history or geography, are inherently, and in all circumstances, of more value than non-EBacc subjects. If the Minister can point to the evidence to support that theory, I and many others with an interest in education would be eager to see it. It is certainly important to ensure that disadvantaged children are not left with a second-class education. EBacc subjects have a clear role to play in that. Every talented child should study as many of the core subjects as possible, and every encouragement should be given to them by schools and teachers.
We can all appreciate the essential nature of English, maths and science, but for modern and ancient languages, much less so. On history or geography, I must ask, why? The Minister may be interested to know that someone applying to study geography at Oxford University does not require an A-level in geography.
There are other things that should be an equal part of any student’s education. It can surely be argued that the arts and technology are just as important as modern languages, not least because, as the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, said, the creative industries are now such an important feature of our economy. We should not be sending a message to schools and young people that creative and technical subjects are not valued. A great deal has been written about the need to close the divide between academic and vocational education, but with the EBacc the Government are unequivocally promoting the superiority of the academic pathway.
There is also likely to be a major teacher-supply problem, not least in modern languages. Time prevents me from going into detail on that crucial issue, but the National Association of Head Teachers’ response to question 4 of the Government’s current consultation set it out with great and persuasive clarity.
Only 39% of students took the EBacc in the past academic year. Yet already there has been a significant effect on other subjects since 2010—most notably, on what I argue is the key subject of design and technology, for which there has been a 29% drop in take-up. The curriculum should not be driven by the needs of the minority who are going to the most selective universities. Every student should have elements of the EBacc subjects in their curriculum. Equally, they should have artistic and practical elements. Many of the essential work-related skills that the CBI says are in short supply may well be better developed in artistic and practical contexts.
Last week in the debate on adult educational skills, the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, stressed the Government’s promotion of the apprenticeship route as a valid alternative to university. The Government now allow FE colleges to recruit 14 to 16 year-olds directly, and are encouraging still more university technical colleges and studio schools, which will almost certainly not offer the EBacc. To say that these initiatives leave the Government’s position a little confused would be an understatement.
The EBacc adopts too narrow a definition of rigorous academic study. The progress 8 measure, as various noble Lords have said, offers a better balance. I urge the Minister to give more thought to the effects of the proposals before it is too late and today’s children pay the price.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for securing this important debate and I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions. I welcome the chance to explain our thinking behind the EBacc and to share what we are doing to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their background, have the right to a balanced and rounded education that opens doors to their future, prepares them for realising their potential in adult life, whatever their ambitions may be, and, as the noble Earl said, responds fully to a child’s natural curiosity, which is so important.
The Government expect that all pupils should have the opportunity to study a range of subjects at primary and secondary school, including the creative arts. Art and design and music are compulsory subjects within the national curriculum for five to 14 year-olds. The national curriculum also sets the expectation that pupils will have opportunities to study drama as part of the English curriculum, and dance as part of the PE curriculum.
Every child deserves to leave school fully literate and numerate, with an understanding of the history, geography and science of the world they inhabit and a grasp of a language other than their own. These elements form the core of a rounded academic education. I have to say, I found quite a bit of today’s debate extremely depressing—it seemed to infer that we are moving away from some kind of golden age of education in this country. We must realise the appallingly low base that we started from in 2010. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said—I have a great deal of respect for her—we all know that schools respond to incentives. That is why we have to look so closely at the incentives that we put in the school system at this point in time.
In 2010, many pupils, often those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, were being denied a basic education in the core academic subjects. Only 31% of pupils took a GCSE in history, only 26% took a GCSE in geography and only 43% took a foreign language GCSE. These figures are shocking. Between 1997 and 2010, the number of pupils taking the core suite of academic subjects fell from 50% to 22%, as vocational subjects were rated as equivalent to GCSE. I have mentioned some of these subjects—cake decorating, hazard control and fish husbandry—in the past. Some of them were rated as equivalent to four GCSEs. When you take out grammar schools, which account for 5% of education in this country, it means that, in 2010, fewer than one in five pupils educated in comprehensive schools were receiving a core, basic education that one would expect in any country—and certainly in any independent school.
The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, talked about social justice. To get social justice you need social mobility; to get social mobility you need social immobility—you need to give pupils from a disadvantaged background the core suite of cultural knowledge they need to compete with pupils from a more advantaged background. This has been acknowledged across the board, including by Diane Abbott and in studies by Edinburgh University.
The Government had to act and, in 2010, the EBacc was announced as a measure in the school performance tables. The EBacc recognises the success of young people who enter and achieve good GCSEs across core academic subjects. The success of that strategy is clear: the proportion of pupils entering the EBacc has risen nationwide from 22% in 2011 to 39% last year. We have made considerable progress in our school system over the past five years: we now have 1.4 million more pupils educated in good and outstanding schools; last year we had 120,000 more pupils than in 2012 achieving the core phonics ability in reading; and we have many more pupils leaving primary school with the literacy and numeracy skills they need.
Pupils who are eligible for free school meals are half as likely to be entered for the EBacc as those who are not. It cannot be right that where a child goes to school or the wealth of their parents should determine what they study. So, last year, the Government announced that, in time, 90% of pupils would be entered for the EBacc. Proposals to achieve this goal are set out in the public consultation, referred to by noble Lords, which closed at the end of January and to which we will respond in the spring.
As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, mentioned in his speech, as did many other noble Lords, there are concerns that this ambition will damage the creative arts. However, on average, pupils in state-funded schools enter nine GCSEs and equivalent qualifications, rising to more than 10 for more able pupils. This means that there still remains room for other GCSE choices, and Progress 8 will be the key accountability measure going forward. As noble Lords know, this will be the key deciding accountability measure in deciding whether a school is coasting. I certainly do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, that we should abolish accountability measures—all the international evidence is that autonomy and accountability is the right balance.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I did not say that we should abolish them but that I was in favour of them.
Lord Nash
I am sorry; I agree entirely with the noble Lord—we should not. One only has to look at Wales to see what abandoning accountability does for an education system.
I reject suggestions that music and arts are not core subjects. We believe strongly that every child should experience a high-quality arts and cultural education throughout their time at school, which is why at key stage 4 all pupils at maintained schools have an entitlement to study an arts subject if they wish. Our commitment to rigorous arts qualifications is a reflection of the significant and ever-increasing contribution the creative industries make to our country, as my noble friend Lord Freyberg mentioned, bringing in £84 billion a year and outpacing growth and job creation in many other industries. EBacc qualifications help support this growing creative sector, and of course we have introduced computer science.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned music education hubs. The network of music hubs provides valuable extra-curricular activities, after school and at weekends. These hubs also play an important role in supporting music within the school curriculum. One of their many roles is to ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument through whole-class ensemble teaching.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich talked about religious education, which of course counts towards Progress 8. In 2011, 32% of pupils in state-funded schools took a GCSE in RE; the figure is now 46%. I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate that we need to increase our pupils’ religious literacy, which is so important, particularly in the modern world we live in. I know that the Church of England does a great deal of work on this; I attended an inspiring event recently called Living Well Together, and I know that it has a great deal of plans in that regard. As regards international links, quite a lot of work is done by the British Council on this, and I would be very happy to discuss this further with the right reverend Prelate.
I found some of the things the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, particularly depressing. A head teacher said:
“‘The EBacc is not appropriate to the modern world. It is not appropriate to modern learning.’ Oh dear. It sounds like the sort of person who would say that you don’t need knowledge because you can look it up on the internet”.
That is an exact quote from another head—I know it is not from the noble Baroness.
Lord Nash
It was not you, but that was what someone said. Modern cognitive and neuroscience makes clear that you need knowledge to develop skills. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, wants evidence. He mentioned ED Hirsch; if he would care to look at the effect of the Core Knowledge curriculum on the “Massachusetts miracle” in schools there, he would see what an effect such a curriculum can have, particularly on disadvantaged pupils.
Some students at key stage 4 may wish to start an element of technical or vocational study alongside the EBacc. We have of course reformed vocational education. Following the review from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, which we instigated immediately after being elected in 2010, we abolished 96% of vocational qualifications so that we now offer high-quality and valuable qualifications, which employers value. That is also why we also focused on dramatically increasing the quality of apprenticeships.
I hope the noble Lords will recognise that enabling more pupils to leave school having studied a basic academic core is a commitment of the Government—and why we are doing this—which does not preclude the study of additional subjects, particularly creative ones. I am quite sure we can have 90% of pupils taking EBacc; I have absolutely no doubt. I know the noble Lord, Lord Watson, does not like me referring to anecdotes, but when we first arrived at Pimlico Academy in 2008 I remember asking the teachers why so many pupils were doing BTECs. Although the answers came couched in a lot of very politically correct words, they basically said that the pupils could not manage “study” subjects. Well, the same kind of pupils are now managing big time and getting into universities and on career paths which were not previously available to them. From my own experience, children never disappoint if you give them enough challenge and satisfy their curiosity. It may be that when we have 90% of pupils taking the EBacc that we can look again at the incentives that we place in the system and we will, of course, respond to the consultation, but I am satisfied that broadly, for the moment, we have our incentives right and I thank all noble Lords for participating in today’s debate.
Drugs
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Patel of Bradford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the Office for National Statistics’ report on deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales in 2014.
Lord Patel of Bradford (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise the important issue of deaths related to drug poisoning. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lord Hunt for speaking on this today. The Office for National Statistics report on deaths related to drug poisoning highlights a number of concerns which I have been raising in questions and debates in this House for some time. I cannot begin to cover all these issues today. Suffice it to say that I have grave concerns that the Government’s drugs policy may have contributed to the increase in drug-related deaths in England. I am aware that this is a serious assertion and I hope the Minister will take my concerns with the sincerity with which they are meant.
Heroin is involved in more fatal overdoses than any other illegal drug. The most common form of treatment for dependence on heroin is opioid substitution therapy. Under this treatment, the street heroin to which a person has become addicted is replaced by a pharmaceutical substitute, usually methadone. The evidence is clear that this treatment can halve a patient’s risk of death for as long as they remain in treatment but, because relapse is common, the patient’s risk of death increases significantly when treatment ends. So the longer a patient remains in treatment, the better their chances of staying alive. However, rather than being evidence-based, I strongly suggest that the 2010 drug strategy reflects the Government’s concerns that there were too many people on methadone for too long—a point vigorously reinforced by the Work and Pensions Secretary, lain Duncan Smith, who said that he felt too many people were “parked on methadone”. Therefore the Government introduced a payment-by-results system to incentivise service providers to encourage drug users to more quickly complete treatment and achieve abstinence.
What is wrong, you may ask, with encouraging more drug users to become abstinent more quickly? Surely that is a good thing. However, UK and international evidence clearly shows that there are major risks in pressuring drug users to withdraw from treatment. The Government’s own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs stated that there was strong evidence that time-limiting opioid substitution therapy would increase the rate of overdose death. Of course I understand that the Government’s decision-making must include public opinion and there is a fear of being seen as soft on drugs—there has been from every Government who have been in power. However, I know from working with drug users myself for many years that the first treatment a drug user receives must be about stabilising the chaos in their lives, and abstinence should be about providing the right range of treatment options at the right time. The evidence shows that heroin addiction is a long-lived condition, averaging around 10 years, so drug users must be ready to achieve abstinence, because if they relapse after they have left treatment they are at a high risk of fatal overdose, since their tolerance to heroin is obviously greatly reduced.
What has been the result of the Government’s approach? On a positive note, between 2011 and 2012 an estimated 8.9% of adults used an illegal drug. This is the lowest level of drug use since figures were first collected in 1996. The number of people who completed drug treatment, free of dependence, is at record levels. However, perversely, in 2014 there were 3,346 drug-poisoning deaths in England and Wales, the highest number since records began in 1993. Deaths involving heroin increased by almost two-thirds between 2012 and 2014, from 579 to 952.
More worryingly, Public Health England’s own network—the National Intelligence Network on the health harms associated with drug use, which exchanges intelligence on blood-borne viruses, new and emerging trends in drug use and drug-related deaths—reported in December 2015 that the number of drug-related deaths is increasing, and that the rate of increase is probably accelerating. Amphetamine and cocaine deaths have also been increasing in recent years. However, the network’s analysis showed that treatment is protective against drug-misuse deaths.
I have cited a number of facts and figures, but let me put a human face on this and highlight some wider impacts. A number of local areas have conducted their own drug-related death reviews. Some have found an increase in female drug-related deaths, some individuals are parents, some people were released from prison and needed further support and treatment. In fact, in 2010 I produced a national report reviewing drug treatment in prisons and highlighted the importance of ensuring good continuing care for vulnerable people leaving prison to prevent relapses and drug-related deaths.
More people had complex health issues involving repeated presentations to hospital wards and A&E departments. Some have mental problems requiring treatment and repeated admission to mental health wards. They have a dual diagnosis of substance misuse and mental ill health. Only last week, as the Minister will know, we heard that the number of deaths annually among mental health patients in England rose by 21% over the past three years, from 1,412 to 1,713. The number of those killing themselves or trying to do so has also increased, by 26%, from 595 in 2012-13 to 751 in 2014-15. I wonder how many of those people had a dual diagnosis.
In light of this, will the Minister agree to see if an investigation can be set up to look into the causes of the drug-related deaths and the mental health deaths, and to see how many had a dual diagnosis? I understand that an update of the UK clinical guidelines on drug misuse and dependence is expected this year. In fact, I thought it was going to be published by February. These are essential guidelines for all clinicians who provide pharmacological interventions for drug misusers as part of their drug-treatment programme. This is a positive move, but I strongly suggest that it is also time that the Government carried out not just an annual review but, more importantly, a full impact assessment of the current drug strategy. Will the Minister therefore agree to ask the relevant government department that a risk and impact assessment of the current drug strategies be carried out, ensuring that an evidence-based approach be developed that tackles the failures and weaknesses of the current strategy, including, obviously, reducing drug-related deaths; training, employment and housing for drug users; integrating prison and community services; and, as I have already mentioned, the important issue of provision of dual diagnosis?
Finally, we know that there is a major funding issue within the NHS, and this is having an impact on services that work for these vulnerable people. Drug and alcohol treatment are no longer part of the protected NHS spend, but will have to compete for resources in the much harsher local government public health environment, which is likely to result in a reduction in services. In fact, I have seen a reduction in services in many environments already.
As for mental health, suicides among people in touch with crisis resolution home treatment teams, which are there to support people in crisis to stay in their own homes rather than being admitted to hospital, have increased significantly. It has been reported that these teams have lost their funding and have been disbanded or merged into community teams. So their specialist function has been lost, at a time of increasing demand. We also know that the number of specialist mental health nurses has fallen by more than 10% in the past five years.
In conclusion, I ask the Minister to say in his reply what steps are being taken to tackle the lack of funding for drug misuse and mental health services, which deal with some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, particularly those with a dual diagnosis of drug misuse and mental health problems. Because I have the time, I shall also make one other point. I understood that the evaluation of the payment-by-results pilot studies was to be published either last year or early this year. Can the Minister update me on when publication will happen? I look forward to hearing from other noble Lords, and to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, for raising this important issue. The increase in the number of deaths from drugs poisoning is a matter of great concern, since every single death is an indication of failure—failure of individual services and failure of the system of health and care to look after that patient. I refer to “the patient” because my party has always believed that individual drug abuse should be regarded as a health issue, and is not always a police issue. The pushers and dealers, however, are a very different matter.
As has been said, although some are suicides, most of these deaths are accidental, caused by lack of knowledge of the strength of the drugs that people are taking, or someone’s lack of understanding of their own body’s ability to process the chemicals. I will return to that point later. Accidental deaths also occur when a person is not in full possession of his or her faculties and has a fatal accident. I have read the various reports that have tried to analyse the statistics, and that is clearly a very complicated and difficult task, because in many cases there are several causal factors and they are hard to untangle. Few of those who die from drug use have one single simple problem. About one-third of patients abuse alcohol as well as banned or prescription drugs, and many have mental health problems. There is clearly interaction between the various issues.
A recent report called “Solutions from the Frontline” by MEAM—Making Every Adult Matter, an alliance of mental health charities chaired by my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield—calculated that there are 58,000 people who face homelessness, substance abuse, mental health problems and offending behaviour, distributed all over Britain. Of course, not all of them are at risk of accidental death because of their drug problems, but clearly their risk rises because of their multiplicity of needs and the great difficulty that services find in reaching and helping them. The problems get worse because people experiencing multiple needs are also likely to live in poverty and experience stigma, discrimination, isolation and loneliness—and, of course, loneliness is a great mental health and suicide risk. Although the ONS report indicates a large protective factor when people are in treatment, which is encouraging to know, those services are suffering, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford.
I shall concentrate my remarks on dual diagnosis, and on offenders and ex-offenders. According to MEAM, people experiencing multiple needs often have ineffective contact with services, as in most cases services are designed to deal with one problem at a time and to support people with single severe conditions. This can mean that people with multiple needs are more likely to access emergency, rather than planned, services, such as going to accident and emergency rather than their local GP. Accessing services in this way is costly as well as risky: estimates suggest that costs for the 58,000 individuals nationally are between £1.1 billion and £2.1 billion per year. So it is absolutely vital that people who are registered as being addicted to drugs, especially the depressive opiates such as heroin, have their mental health needs assessed and addressed. This is not always happening, partly because of cuts and partly because of shortages of staff with the right experience. Many patients claim that mental health crisis services are not there for them and many have to wait far too long for routine therapies. I do not underestimate the difficulty of dealing with these patients but we must make more effort to do so, for their own sake as well as for the sake of the NHS budget.
The recommendations of the MEAM report include asking the Government to ensure that funding structures prioritise recovery and rehabilitation and allow local areas to develop a flexible response. As part of this, they should consider a new national focus on multiple needs. Locally, commissioners should be accountable for ensuring that local areas have joined-up services and identify where people with multiple needs could fall through the gaps. At the front line, services should involve staff and people with multiple needs working together in designing programmes and the environments where they are to be delivered.
As for drug-using offenders, of course there are a lot of treatment programmes in prison although we know that security in many prisons is poor and they say you can access any drug you like in most prisons. It should, of course, be easier to help addicts when you have them incarcerated in prison than it is when they are part of the general population, and a lot of good work is done. However, I am not convinced that the underlying mental health problems are always addressed in the same way. It is difficult for a lay person like me to understand whether it is the mental health problem that brings people to take drugs in the first place or the drugs themselves that cause mental health problems. I understand it can be either way round, but what matters is to accept that dual diagnosis is not always properly addressed; it is very risky, and we need to do something about it.
The other issue that I would like to raise is continuity of services after release. There is supposed to be a seamless transition into community services but too often that does not happen, perhaps because the services are not there, the person drops out, or the professionals concerned are too busy to work with each other and do not realise how important and effective that is. A very senior psychiatrist told me only yesterday that, if someone gets clean while in prison and then comes out and starts using again, they are at greater risk of dying. While they are under treatment their liver stops having to process the poisonous chemicals in the drugs, so it stops being able to do so. If an ex-offender then starts using again, they should be advised to start on a very low dose and build up, but actually they tend to go back on the high dose they were used to using before they went to prison. This is too much for the body to cope with and it kills them. The dose they were accustomed to before prison now becomes an overdose.
Obviously, we do not want ex-addicts to come out of prison to start again at all but, if they do, they should be made aware of the danger and they should have continuity of care until their rehabilitation is well embedded. Often a patient has very good motivation to keep off drugs but, if something goes wrong in their life, such as losing a job or becoming homeless, the mental health problems recur and they do not have the support or resilience to resist self-medication with drugs that make them feel better.
The mention of resilience brings me to my final point. The roots of mental illness often go back a very long way. We must address the issue we are debating today in the very long term. By that I mean that we need to focus on two things in schools: education about the harms of drug and alcohol use and prevention of mental ill-health among children and young people. We need schools to be able to recognise mental health problems and know how and where to get help. They should also positively promote good mental health and well-being and help their pupils to develop resilient personalities. Of course, we should also go even further back in life and provide mental health therapists in all maternity units and help new mothers bond well with their children, given the crucial importance of attachment to the child’s future mental health. I wonder whether the increase in deaths is not because more people are taking drugs—from what the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, said, that is not the case—but are we getting more mental health problems that push users over the edge?
Good mental health does not happen by accident any more than good physical health. Just as we need to foster good physical health through diet, exercise and avoiding risky behaviours, so we also need to be aware that good mental health can be fostered. This should be part of the healthy community plans of all local authorities as well as schools, but sadly it is often at the bottom of their priority list because they have the money to do only what is mandatory. But by ignoring this we are storing up problems for the future. I would ask the Minister to be kind enough to comment on the points I have made and let noble Lords know how the Government are dealing with them.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly endorse the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and welcome my noble friend’s introduction to this very disturbing and important debate. We have all studied the ONS figures and noble Lords have already referred to the fact that the mortality rate from drug use has been recorded as the highest ever. My noble friend referred to how deaths involving heroin and/or morphine between 2012 and 2014 increased by almost two-thirds, while other figures from the ONS also show increases. It would be fair to ask the Government what their current analysis is of the reasons for that.
My noble friend has said that he is concerned that a change in government policy, because they felt that too many people were, as he put it, “parked on methadone”, has seen the introduction of an incentivised programme essentially to encourage drug users to complete their treatment more quickly and achieve abstinence. However, that has brought with it some perverse consequences. One thing it shows is that there are always risks in trying to incentivise clinical behaviour through some kind of payment or lack of payment, so we need to be very careful. What risk assessment was undertaken of the impact of this change, because it is important not only in itself but in relation to the future direction of government policy?
My noble friend asked two specific questions: whether the Minister will agree to set up an investigation into the causes of these drug-related and mental health deaths in order to see how many had been given a dual diagnosis and, as I have mentioned, a risk assessment of the decision to bring in, as he called it, a payment-by-results approach to discouraging the use of methadone. He asked for another risk/impact assessment of the overall current strategy, and I must say that I very much endorse his recommendations.
My understanding is that Public Health England is investigating the trends around drug misuse deaths. I have looked at its recent publication, but what I could not find was any reference to the issue raised by my noble friend—the policy change to payment by results. In the light of this debate, is PHE investigating that specific issue? Will PHE, which is after all a part of the Department of Health, explore that area?
My noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, also talked about the issue of drug treatment funding and the role of local authorities. I was interested to see the NICE guidance, or at least the local government briefing it produced in May 2014, which provides a lot of good advice for local authorities. I know that advice to local government from NICE is not at all mandatory in the way in which a technology appraisal might be for the NHS, but what is the Minister’s analysis of how far local authorities are following that guidance? Do the Government or NICE itself have any responsibility at all to make sure that local authorities are doing the right thing here?
One then comes to the issue of funding. On Monday, the noble Lord again referred to the amount of additional money put into the health service. He will know that around half has come from other pockets of Department of Health expenditure, including of course the public health budget. Clearly, the concern is that there will be an impact on those services where we depend on local authorities for funding under a public health banner. Again, what assessment has his department made of the impact of the reduction in funding for public health on the kind of community services that are so much more important?
None of this can take place without echoing a concern around mental health issues more generally. We all signed up to parity of esteem. The Government have said that they are committed. I believe that they have issued instructions to clinical commissioning groups about mental health service funding, but word reaches us that the reality is somewhat different. My noble friend Lord Patel has raised an important, difficult specific point. It cannot be divorced from overall considerations about mental health policy. If one considers the four-hour A&E target that is not being met, we know that a lot of people who are coming to A&E one way and another have mental health issues. I cannot help wondering whether for CCGs to reduce funding to mental health services has not been counterproductive in terms of the pressure that it has put on other parts of the system. I accept that my noble friend has raised a specific, serious point. If the Government cannot answer the exact point today, I hope that they will agree to some kind of review so that we see the outcome.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for raising this issue. It is clearly hugely important. He said that this rise in deaths was a direct result of government policy. We should take that very seriously coming from someone who knows so much about the issue. I also thank him for warning me earlier about the likely thrust of his comments.
This debate is particularly timely as we are currently finalising our new drug strategy and thinking about what it needs to say in relation to this important issue. It will take a very close look at the impact of the current strategy. It is due to be published later in the year. The noble Lord’s comments today will certainly be taken into account.
We are especially concerned about the increase in drug-related deaths. Separately, Public Health England is now convening an inquiry into the reasons for the rise. I encourage noble Lords to give their views to PHE. A key part of its inquiry will be an in-depth analysis of the drug-death data. A national expert group will rapidly review the data, including the ONS data, and local experiences to better understand the causes of these deaths and how they can be prevented. That report is expected in a few months. This is not a Chilcot inquiry; it will be out in a few months, and it will include looking at dual diagnosis.
Although my comments today will largely cover England, since health is now a devolved matter, the PHE inquiry will look at experience in Wales and Scotland. Interestingly, both countries have widely differing results, so if there are lessons that we can learn from them, clearly we will do so. I will come back to the specific question about payment by results, if I can, towards the end.
As the noble Lord said, the ONS reports of 2013 and 2014 showed that registered drug-misuse deaths increased in England very significantly from about 1,500 in 2012 to 2,120 in 2014. They are a matter of huge concern and highlight the need for further national and local action. A small part of the increase might be explained by changes in the speed of registration of death. That is probably not significant, but it will be looked at in the PHE review. We are assuming that it will not be material.
Overall, fewer people are using drugs such as heroin. Those that do form an ageing cohort, which means that the health harms from the use of heroin are increasingly concentrated among older, more vulnerable users, particularly men aged between 40 and 49—the “Trainspotting” era, in a sense—and those who have not had recent contact with the treatment system. We may need to accept that because of their long-term drug use, the health problems associated with that and the recent availability of purer heroin, all of which can contribute to a much greater risk of death, deaths may still rise in future years, despite our best efforts to reduce them. Again, that is something that PHE will be looking at very carefully. This means that although overall drug use has declined in recent years and the treatment system has helped many more people to recover—some 70,000 in 2014-15—we need an enhanced effort to help these entrenched users and thus reduce the number of deaths.
Local authorities are best placed to be responsible for drug prevention and treatment because of their knowledge of the local population and its needs. They can approach a system on a place and local population basis, bringing together their experience of local employment, education, housing, social services and the like. That is the reason why this has been devolved to local authorities. Much improvement has been achieved, and the Government are determined to continue that improvement. We have therefore added a condition to the central public health grant which requires local authorities to further improve the take-up of the drug treatment services they provide and to achieve improved outcomes. I will turn to funding later on, if I can.
About half of the deaths involved opiate users. PHE analysis found that most of those who died from opiate overdose were not in treatment and, in most cases, had not been receiving treatment for some time. This emphasises the need to encourage drug users to engage with treatment services, because treatment has a protective effect, as the noble Lord referred to in his speech, and can help prevent deaths. It also emphasises the need for local authorities to ensure that vulnerable drug users outside the treatment system are given advice on how to reduce the risks from drug misuse and are encouraged into treatment—all the more so as heroin is becoming purer.
As mentioned earlier, Public Health England is convening an inquiry into the recent rise in drug-related deaths. The national expert group will rapidly review data and local experiences to better understand the causes of those deaths, how they interplay with other health issues such as mental health, and how those deaths can be prevented. We know that some parts of the country have much higher death rates than others, and PHE’s local centres are working with those areas to understand the factors contributing to those higher figures and what can be done to reduce them: for example, by spreading best practice.
We have also asked PHE to work with local authorities to make sure that services are available to anyone who needs them. So PHE is working with local commissioners and providing them with expert advice, evidence and management information, including outcomes and value for money data. This helps to ensure that services are evidence-based, effective, available, integrated with local health services and supported by local housing and employment policies.
In October 2015, we changed medicines regulations to widen the availability of naloxone. Naloxone is a medicine that almost instantaneously reverses the effects of opiates, and we have made it easier for drug services to supply naloxone to more people who might witness overdoses and could use it to prevent overdose deaths.
Turning to prisons, the thematic report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, Changing Patterns of Substance Misuse in Adult Prisons and Service Responses, published in December 2015, acknowledges that substance misuse treatment provision in prisons has improved very significantly over the past 10 years. I am told that there is strong evidence that evidence-based commissioning by the NHS has had a positive impact on prison health more generally, as well as in this area.
PHE, NOMS and NHS England are working together under the auspices of the National Partnership Agreement to tackle the new challenges presented by new psychoactive substances and the misuse of prescribed medication. PHE recently published a toolkit for custody and healthcare staff to support their response to NPS and is currently delivering a national training programme across the prison estate.
PHE is working closely with the National Offender Management Service and NHS England to improve “through-the-gate” arrangements between prison and community services, including improved commissioning of services. It is also using new post-release supervision arrangements and licence conditions to make sure that prisoners are more effectively engaged in drug treatment after release. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, when people have been off drugs and then come out and go back on to drugs, that can have very severe consequences.
As I mentioned earlier, engagement with good-quality drug treatment has a protective effect. It stabilises people and helps to improve their physical health and well-being. For example, people in treatment for their opiate use are less likely to inject drugs, experience overdose or transmit blood-borne viruses such as HIV and hepatitis C. People in treatment are also more likely to be tested and treated or vaccinated for blood-borne viruses. There were nearly 300,000 adults in contact with treatment services in 2014-15. Over half of the 130,000 patients who left treatment in 2014-15 had successfully completed their treatment free of dependency. This is an improvement on past performance and is helping people to achieve their potential and live a fuller, more rewarding life.
We have commissioned and received advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs about the contribution that opioid substitution treatment such as methadone can make to helping people recover. This is not in the least at odds with long-term prescribing of methadone to protect the health of those who are not able, or not yet able, to achieve full recovery. A question was raised as to whether at the time the policy was implemented—in 2010, I think—an assessment was done of the potential perverse consequences of that policy. I am not aware of whether such an assessment was done, but I can revert to the noble Lord about that afterwards.
Over the last decade, treatment outcomes have steadily improved, but have slowed in the past couple of years, most likely because the people remaining in treatment are those with more entrenched drug use and long-standing and complex problems. This is why recovery remains at the heart of our approach, with the key aim to support people to free themselves from drug dependency for good. We have moved our focus beyond the treatment system, to look more holistically and to include factors that help people recover from drug dependency and fully integrate back into the community.
We know that mental health can be a particular issue for many drug users. Some may use drugs as a form of self-medication for a mental health problem. Some will find that drugs exacerbate or cause mental health problems. PHE is encouraging substance misuse and mental health commissioners to work together at a local level to ensure that the services they commission are responsive to the needs of this client group, and there are clear specifications and transfer arrangements that describe how they will be effectively co-ordinated and delivered. I do not have time to talk about prevention; I thought I would have more time but I have only two minutes left.
The issue of funding is an important area. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, mentioned that the number of specialist mental health care nurses was down 10%. This reflects a more fundamental problem that over the past five to 20 years so much of the budget has gone into acute care. Community and mental health care has unquestionably suffered over that time. It illustrates a much broader problem. It is clear from the mandate of NHS England that parity of esteem is a key part of our policy over the next five years. Each clinical commissioning group’s spending on mental health will increase in real terms. There will be more money available for mental health care.
However, it will still be tough. There is not a lot of money in the system, but we are prioritising mental health care, and I think that, together with the public health grant, which is ring-fenced in local authorities, there will be resources available to tackle what I accept is a hugely difficult, complex and, as we have seen from the figures today, tragic area in which society, not just healthcare, has so dismally failed.
Briefly on the PBR point, the DH has done an evaluation on the payment by results pilots for drug and alcohol recovery, which will be published later this year. The preliminary evaluation, which is already published, suggests that the pilots did not lead to inappropriate pressure to discharge people from drug treatment—but it is preliminary and the full results will be published later in the year. I was going to say a little more about prevention but we can discuss that at another time.
Further Education
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on young people living in rural locations of the area review of further education colleges currently taking place.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests as a fellow of Yeovil College, and I thank noble Lords taking part in the debate. Those of us who hail from rural areas often appear to live in idyllic surroundings and enjoy much that those who inhabit urban areas do not. However, there are many challenges facing us, especially for young people. Last week, my noble friend Lady Sharp led an excellent debate on the future of adult education. Today, we look at the other end of the spectrum: the challenges for young people in continuing their education and training beyond 16. The aim of the current programme of area reviews of FE providers is to have,
“fewer, larger, more resilient and efficient colleges”.
I quote from the paper published by the Secretary of State in July 2015. I believe there are significant disadvantages to this approach, and I especially quail when I read further that,
“the status quo will not be an option”.
While the context of reviews can be adapted to take account of local circumstances and requirements, the statement does not appear to be bear this out.
The FE sector, colleges in particular, has been subjected to a series of significant cuts since 2011. Between 2010 and 2015, funding for 16 to 19 year-olds fell by 14%. The adult skills budget, which made up a significant amount of college funding, has been reduced by more than 40%, while public funding for adult learning is set to be removed completely by 2020. Spending on 16 and 17 year-olds is 22% lower than on 11 to 16 year-olds. It is a further 17.5% less for 18 year- olds, and adult education funding was cut by 28% last year alone.
Students, in particular, have been hit by the loss of the education maintenance allowance and the adult learning grant during the 2010 Parliament. These were weekly grant payments for FE students from lower income backgrounds. FE colleges appear to be hit from all sides. Some 72% of sixth-form colleges have reported dropping courses due to funding cuts, 33% have been forced to cut the more expensive to run modern language courses, and 24% have cut STEM subjects. What are we doing? STEM subjects are in great demand. I live close to the only remaining helicopter manufacturer in the country. It finds it difficult to recruit locally. Schools often take parties of pupils round, and teachers have been overheard saying to pupils, “If you don’t study hard, this is where you will end up”. This is appalling. We desperately need skilled and qualified engineers, and we need to fund colleges adequately to cover the courses their communities need. They know their students and can tailor the courses to fit.
Transport is a major factor which enables young people to access education and training. Young people in FE and sixth-form colleges often have to travel further than those who study at school because of the specialist provision that colleges offer. In a recent survey, the average learner travel time was two hours and 48 minutes per day at an average distance of 11 miles, 51% of FE students cannot always afford their travel costs and 40% of students spend £5 or more a day travelling to their college or place of training.
Across the country local authorities with transport responsibilities are cutting bus subsidies, and bus routes are, at best, less frequent than previously. In many cases, they are axed altogether. This is, of course, not a perverse measure but a reaction to the drastic budget reductions they face in the coming months and years. The Campaign for Better Transport has also highlighted the impact of funding cuts on local bus services. It says that funding for local authority-supported services has reduced by more than £78 million since 2010, meaning more than 2,400 essential bus routes and services have been cut. I live in a village, like many around the country, where there is no daily bus service but is an infrequent service that assists those without cars to go into the neighbouring town to do their shopping, get their hair done, visit the dentist or GP and have a cup of coffee. The timing of the return journey does not allow them to do all of those things on one visit. They have to choose which it will be.
For students attempting to access A-levels, apprenticeships and training, public transport is not an option. Often there are notices in the Post Office from post-16 students asking if anyone can give them a daily lift into town. For those students whose parents can afford to transport them to college, there is choice. For those whose parents are in straitened circumstances, there is no choice. I was lucky in that I lived just over two miles from the FE college of my choice. Even so, there was no transport allowance, and although my parents gave me the bus fare, I often walked in order to save the fare for other treats. If an FE college is 20 miles away, transport will be a major headache. Who is going to transport students across the countryside, even supposing they can find an FE provider running a course that suits their career prospects? Yet again, it will be those on low incomes who have no choice. Will the Minister say just how these young people are going to access the skills they need to achieve their aspirations and take charge of their lives? Will the costs of additional travelling be taken into account during the area review or is this going to be the student’s responsibility?
I note that the area review process has been tested in cities and in a rural area of Norfolk and Suffolk. I trust that the lessons learned have been carried forward, but each area will be different. The local steering groups include representatives from local enterprise partnerships. However, when an FE college is situated close to a LEP boundary, it will serve a very large area indeed and will stretch into the neighbouring LEP’s territory. Will the Minister say whether both LEPs will be represented on the area review in such cases and will the geographical spread of students be taken into account when deciding how the rationalisation is to take place? A distance of 20 miles from one FE college to the next is considerable. If an FE provider is to be closed, rationalised or have the curriculum it offers limited, students will have to travel.
The second principle of the review is:
“An open-mindedness to change for the greater good, irrespective of vested interests and personal preferences”.
That is very laudable. Will the Minister confirm that the personal preference of students will be taken into account as part of this open-mindedness?
I am indebted to the National Union of Students and the Association of Colleges for the extremely useful briefings they have sent me. I saw with interest the report of the Public Accounts Committee in the other place on overseeing financial sustainability in the further education sector which was published on 16 December 2015. Its summary said:
“The declining financial health of many further education colleges has potentially serious consequences for learners and local economies, but the bodies responsible for funding and oversight have been slow to address the problem. Too often, they have taken decisions without understanding the cumulative impact that these decisions have on colleges and their learners. Oversight arrangements are complex, sometimes overlapping, and too focused on intervening when financial problems have already become serious rather than helping to prevent them in the first place. The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and the Department for Education appear to see area-based reviews of post-16 education as a fix-all solution to the current problems, but the reviews do not cover all types of provider and it is not clear how they will deliver a robust and financially sustainable sector”.
The Government would be wise to take note of this statement and act accordingly before the FE sector is altered out of all recognition and not to the benefit of learners and their communities.
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for introducing this short debate. I do not wish to suggest for any reason that I do not understand the challenges that are faced, because clearly I do, but I am slightly more optimistic than she is. I, too, live in the village that I was born in, but ours is much more urban than the area she is from. Clearly, the number of students coming in for further education has been in decline, particularly since we increased the number of apprenticeships, so it is right that the Government are looking to get the best for young people coming through.
To start at the beginning, most of the children who go to school in rural areas actually come out with better results than their urban counterparts, so they are quite resilient. In the academic year of 2013-14, 70.7% of pupils living in rural areas left school with five or more GCSEs at A to C level, compared with 64% of pupils living in urban areas. That trend continues, with the rate of full-time entry to higher education institutions by 18 to 20 year-olds in 2013-14 being higher in predominantly rural areas, at 130 per 1,000, compared with 123 per 1,000 in urban areas.
I declare an interest as one of the patrons of Landex, which represents the land-based colleges. They, too, have clearly been going through challenging times—there are no two ways about it.
The review going on at the moment, as the noble Baroness touched on, is only at the start. Only three reviews have taken place; there is another tranche to come. The review in Leicester and Leicestershire, which is my home, is not happening until September. So the Government have a little while to wait before they can respond fully on the outcomes that we all are interested in.
The concern that the noble Baroness and I share, along with many people in this room, is for transport. My brother is a county councillor, and anybody living in a rural area knows very well that there is a great pressure on councils to provide or not to provide buses. The truth of the matter is that, in many places, buses sometimes run nearly empty, and to sustain them is not on. In some places, on some occasions, it is cheaper to pay a taxi to go and do it than it is to run a bus service. So to me, there are opportunities in the new proposed system. I came from Moulton agricultural college in Northamptonshire, and I have visited many other agricultural colleges. Moulton has its own bus service which goes around the villages picking up the students who want to come to the colleges. That is part of the deal; they know that that is going to happen. It will probably take them an hour to get there, sometimes an hour and a half, but they think that what is on offer at the college is worth doing.
So the question is: do we continue to have smaller colleges offering a more restricted curriculum or do we move to bigger colleges with a very specialist curriculum? Certainly, with the need that the noble Baroness rightly touches on to have more engineers and people with that sort of skill, the more we can do to encourage people, particularly women, to follow some of the STEM subjects and get involved in engineering the better. There is no reason why women should not be doing it. My niece became a mechanical engineer many years ago.
As far as I am concerned, it is a question of needing to reflect on what there is and where it is. I agree with the noble Baroness that there will be some areas that will do it very differently. I was interested to hear in the news this morning that Cumbria, for example, has looked to have a community bus area because there are no buses there. So while I understand the issues, and I thank the noble Baroness for introducing this debate tonight, I look forward to seeing the responses that we get. I hope that they will cover all the colleges, including the land-based colleges, because we all have a lot to offer. At the end of the day, it will be up to business and the review panels to come up with their suggestions as to the best way forward. I hope that we will return to this when the reviews are complete, in another year’s time.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, because I regard this as a fundamental issue. Noble Lords know of my interest in apprenticeships, so they will not be surprised if I focus on them. I have mixed feelings about this issue because I think that it probably is time for a change. I must admit that, given my brief experience as a Minister in this area, I was somewhat disappointed when the Wolf report came out—and that is me using the gift of understatement. It made me think very carefully about how to invest money and outcomes. We should not imagine that simply pouring more resources into something will necessarily bring about a result. It was a disappointing report that made me ask about the quality that is being delivered. Although there are many extremely good colleges, some do not always measure up. Being the glass half full type of person that I am, I probably tend to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, that this is potentially an opportunity if the Government get it right.
I want the Government to recognise that this is a big challenge which they have created. Three million apprenticeships means a lot of training and so on. I keep reminding the Government that if they want to deliver on quality as well as quantity, it is a key part of that. One of the better and smarter policies we introduced was raising the participation age. That is important, and this review will obviously impact on that. We expect young people to be either in education or training, or in employment that encompasses training as well.
I listened carefully to the statistics quoted by the noble Baroness, but I still think that we are facing some challenges. It can be said that we are doing better, but what about the 30%? We need to ensure that those young people are not discouraged and that transport does not present too great an obstacle. I had to smile at the description of walking two miles, because I am a “four wheels bad, two wheels good” person. Two miles on a bicycle would get you there in a trice. More seriously, transport is clearly an issue. If all colleges are going to adopt the enlightened approach of Cumbria, perhaps we can pull it off. However, I do not feel that young people are getting a particularly good deal. We get the Freedom Pass and a triple lock on pensions. We are the people who have benefited from property price increases. What are young people getting? They have a ton of debt because they no longer get EMA, and the possibility of them getting on to the housing ladder is small. I hope that the Government will look at this carefully.
I have said previously to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that it is time that this was looked at in an integrated way. We have LEPs, colleges and local authorities, so we ought to be looking at the best performers, the ones that are creating the most employment opportunities and setting up the maximum number of apprenticeships. The Government ought to be monitoring and reviewing them because if they are doing it well, they are the success stories and we should be building on them.
I share the concern about the funding cuts, because it is worrying to see things like STEM courses being cut. Noble Lords should do as I do and work with the Lords outreach service. Go into schools and ask 15, 16 and 17 year-olds where they are going. Most hands shoot up and the response is “university”, although whether they are all fit for that route is another matter. When you ask them about the alternatives, you are lucky if even one individual mentions apprenticeships. We still have the problem that schools are not fulfilling their legal requirement to tell students about all the career path options. That is important. We will not get more women into engineering and similar occupations—a desire I share—until employers come into schools, some of which do not seem to understand the importance of links with business. We also need successful apprentices to come and tell students what a good opportunity apprenticeships are.
I understand why the Government are doing this review. If we get it right, it will be a great opportunity, provided that we listen to the words of caution.
Baroness Maddock (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this timely debate on an important issue for young people living in sparsely populated rural areas. For a long time, working and learning in the FE sector has been challenging. We have seen frequent changes in funding and in governance. Being a teacher, a leader, or a governor in this sector has been challenging for many years. I saw this at first hand when I served as a governor at Brockenhurst College in the New Forest some years ago. I sincerely hope that this review enables long-term planning in the sector and gives as much control as possible to local communities and the interested parties within them. I am thinking particularly of young people and businesses.
I want to highlight the issues of concern in the north-east of England, in particular in Berwick-upon-Tweed, my home town, which lies at the northernmost tip of England right up against the Scottish border. In the north-east, the proportion of adults qualified to national vocational qualification level 4 is 7% below the national average. The north-east LEP strategic economic plan highlights that by 2020, some 120,000 jobs will require that qualification. The last economic survey conducted by the North East Chamber of Commerce found that 71% of businesses in the service sector and 83% of businesses in manufacturing were experiencing difficulties recruiting staff.
In Berwick-upon-Tweed the sparsity of the population and of college provision only exacerbates the difficulties for young people and businesses. If you are a young person currently finishing your GCSEs in a school that is improving a bit but less than in other parts of the country, your options are very limited. In Berwick there is a high school with a small sixth form. Fifty miles away there is Northumberland College, the only college in Northumberland, which means a long journey by bus. Sixty-seven miles away is Newcastle, where there are many more opportunities. It takes 45 minutes by train but because it is 67 miles away, the journey is pretty expensive. It is clear that transport is a big issue that is preventing those in our area gaining access to education and training, and to a wide variety of it.
The history of paying for transport is mixed. I served for three years on Northumberland County Council and we campaigned to have youth transport paid for. My Lib Dem colleagues took minority control and we were able to do that. I regret that when Labour took over it took that away for the over 16s. I can partly understand why: the budget had gone up because so many people needed it.
Like others, we have had a lot of briefing on this subject, and I am particularly grateful to the Association of Colleges. It has provided statistics showing that the average distance travelled to college by 16 to 18 year olds in the Berwick constituency is 25.5 miles. That is the furthest in the whole of England—they top the league. It is slightly better for the 19 year-olds. When the review that we are debating was announced, the Minister said that he expected policy options to include rationalising the curriculum and considering opportunities for specialisation, merger, collaboration and closure. When there is only one college, there is not much scope in any of those areas.
It is even more difficult because the other providers in the area are not being taken into account: sixth forms. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Bakewell quoted from the 13th report of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee:
“It is unclear how area-based reviews of post-16 education, which are limited in scope, will deliver a more robust and sustainable further education sector”.
The recommendation was that:
“The departments need to demonstrate that the area-based reviews are taking a sufficiently comprehensive look at local provision taking into account all FE providers and school sixth forms, that they are fair, and that they result in consensus on sustainable solutions to meet local needs”.
I sincerely hope that that is the case. I would like the Minister to assure me that there will be no one-size-fits-all solution when this review ends, and that the particular situation I have outlined in Berwick up in north Northumberland will be substantially enhanced by the outcomes of the very important exercise that we are debating this evening.
Lord Lingfield (Con)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for this important debate, and remind your Lordships of my registered interests, including the chairmanship of the new royal chartered Institution for Further Education.
During the last few years, I have had the opportunity of visiting many FE colleges, and I soon became aware of the extraordinary variety of provision among them; this is both a strength and, of course, a weakness. It is clear that there are many first-class institutions, as we have heard, which have quickly learned to adapt to the ever-changing requirements of employers in a high-tech environment. Others, although still good teaching centres, are pursuing courses that are no longer so relevant and not so attractive to students. There is still too much duplication of courses by colleges in the same area. That is fine if there is high demand, but our colleges really need now some closer co-operation among themselves if they are to deliver the best quality while making the most sensible use of resources.
The NAO’s report last year suggested that the financial health of the post-16 sector has, as we have heard, been declining. But many colleges have not been able to respond adequately to this and will face serious financial challenges unless they fundamentally reform their offer and their delivery of it.
Announcement of the area reviews last year, and their commencement in September, quite naturally caused anxiety within the FE sector. Would they recommend the closure or mergers of colleges, which would force redundancies? Would they appreciate the excellent work often done by quite small colleges? What about rural area provision, the proper subject of today’s concerns? I hope very much that, as the rest of the reviews take place in the coming year, these concerns will be alleviated.
The reviews will have to show sensitivity to the fact that FE colleges themselves, and this is an important point, are often significant employers of many people and thus considerable contributors to the local economy. It is particularly welcome that the Government recognise the need to support the sector in the implementation of structural changes that may result from the review by providing access to a restructuring fund. However, it seems plain to me, I am afraid, that the sector cannot go on just as it is. I hope that the reviews will give some valuable insight into how its provision can be improved.
It is helpful that the reviews are looking not just at the physical location of colleges but at how the imaginative use of modern technology can link learners in different ways to different places. There are innovative forms of curriculum delivery that can help provide a wider experience for students, and which could be of use in rural areas.
The reviewers must keep in mind that although they are operating within administrative boundaries, such as local authorities, business and commerce do not do boundaries, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said. It is essential that the wider economic environment is considered. Some specialist colleges will have students from all over the country and could deal with several dozen local authorities.
Very importantly, from my perspective as chairman of the new royal chartered institution, the reviews are looking at quality—this was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Young—and ensuring a strong focus on delivering the right outcomes for learners, including progressing students into high-grade apprenticeships and high-grade technical and professional skills which improve their employment prospects. It is worth remembering that construction-based skills vacancies have more than doubled since 2013, from 5,000 to 11,900, and that of the 900,000-plus job vacancies in England last year, 209,000 were the result of skills shortages.
We most seriously need to attain the Government’s target of 3 million apprenticeships in this Parliament, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, hopes, and to provide better and more advanced education and training to the volume of young people who must progress into these British industries, which in future years will drive our economic growth in ever-competitive world markets. I hope that the area reviews, if carefully handled and, very importantly, based on clear and sustainable factual evidence, will help colleges change to meet these needs now and in the future.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I live in West Yorkshire, where the review has begun, and I am a councillor in Kirklees, which is a large metropolitan authority serving more than 400,000 people. That sounds as if it may be an urban area but it includes very large rural parts. Those of your Lordships lucky enough to have the time to watch “Jericho” or “Happy Valley” will have seen the very landscapes and areas to which I refer. Many young people in my part of West Yorkshire, despite it being largely urban, have similar challenges in accessing further education as do the residents in Somerset to whom my noble friend Lady Bakewell referred.
I have five concerns that I would like the Minister to consider. First, the review does not seem to be responding to the needs of business, which is telling us time and again that it wants the general skills of young people to be improved, as well as their particular skills —more learners and learning more often. Secondly, I repeat the point that others have made about accessibility. Without going into the detail, accessibility in my part of West Yorkshire is similar to that in Somerset, although the distances are not as great as they are in Northumberland. But if you live up in the Pennines in Marsden, which is featured in “Happy Valley”, it can take you a very long time to get to Leeds or Bradford, which is where the expertise in the FE colleges can be based.
My third point is about the rationalisation which is one of the aims of the FE review. I have no quarrel with that. From time to time, you have to have a look at what is on offer to see whether it can be improved for the benefit of all. While that is a rational approach on the surface, however, it does not necessarily take into account how students will react to it. From looking at post-16 access figures for the young people who leave the school where I am a governor, I know that they tend to select—this may sound ridiculous—the colleges which they can access. It is not the colleges that might meet their needs; they select by access. That is a rational approach from their end, but it may not be the best outcome for them or for society at large.
Fourthly, it is totally bizarre that sixth-form colleges are included in this review, but not school-based sixth forms. The post-16 landscape should be considered as a whole, if duplication is to be avoided, which is one of the aims. I have a letter from BIS and DfE to the West Yorkshire leaders. They requested that no more sixth forms in schools be opened because they were trying to do this review. The reply was that:
“There are no plans to prevent any schools from applying to do so … Following an area review,”—
and I find this a bit disturbing—
“we expect regional schools commissioners, local authorities and schools with sixth forms themselves to take into account the review’s analysis and findings when considering any decisions about future post-16 provision in the area. Therefore reports and area reviews may make general observations about opportunities for collaboration, improved progression and signposting and efficiency savings across all providers”.
As a councillor, I serve on a scrutiny committee looking into this review in West Yorkshire. What concerns me is that it is not engaging with other interested parties—high schools, sixth forms, students, parents and staff—whose views we ought to take into account. It is focusing on college estates, curriculum duplication and finance. They are all important, but the voice of learners, staff and parents ought to be heard.
This review is not taking into account the wider issues that are essential if post-16 education is to be accessible, meet students’ needs and enable and encourage participation. I hope the Minister will take these comments into account.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, on securing this debate. It is important because it affects our young people and their potential life. I declare my interest as I was CEO of Tomorrow’s People for 30 years, and much of what I have learned in this field has come from that. I am patron of the Rye Studio School, which serves a large rural area, and governor of a Bexhill Academy.
None of us would be here today if we did not care. I take great comfort from the fact that we all care that the right thing is done for our young people. However, even in better fiscal times, any business worth its salt will look at what it is doing and ask whether it is doing the best it can and whether there are things it should or should not do. I look on this review as an opportunity to do what anyone would to ensure that we are giving the best we can to our young people in colleges. I hope the review will enable us, within those confines, to give up the best to get the better for people.
Rural areas face a variety of issues, and depending on how rural they are, those issues are exaggerated to various degrees. Noble Lords have already raised the issue of the cost of travel, but is the transport going to the right place at the right time to enable people to get to their college? If it is not, how are we going to get them to work? We need to look at this. We have to make sure that people can learn and get to work, and that is where innovation and opportunity come in.
The other issue they face is in making decisions about their lives. Sometimes in a rural area it is all doom and gloom: “There are no jobs”. But in the areas I have been involved in, that is not what we found to be true en masse. I will come on to that more later.
What should young people study for? Is the right thing being laid on? That has already been referred to. What will help them secure work? Who is helping them understand the labour market in which they live to make sure that they undertake the right training? There is a place in East Sussex called Heathfield. It is not as remote as some of the places that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to, but there are issues there. A partnership between East Sussex County Council, the Heathfield Partnership, Tomorrow’s People and the business community has been a real eye-opener. It has been about local solutions and trying to sort the issues that each individual faces, rather than people telling you that you cannot boil the ocean. It is about people and local solutions. They told us that there were no jobs, but the minute we went round the rural community we found jobs. Then we were able to match young people to those jobs and, in all of that, to ensure that they could get to those jobs because there were distances to cover.
One way that was resolved was that the council, the police and crime commissioner and the Heathfield Partnership bought into the Wheels 2 Work scheme, where funding was made available to young people for the loan of a scooter to enable them to get to work. We had a young lad who wanted to become a landscape gardener. An employer took him on and taught him to drive—at his expense. The young lad now has his own van and goes round doing his work. When the boss met him, he took great delight in telling him that every time that van goes out for a day there is £60 in VAT for the Exchequer.
So these are challenging times. The review is challenging but it creates opportunities, including ways to do things in different ways, responding to the needs of young people. If noble Lords had been here earlier for the waste debate, they would have heard the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, refer to sell-by dates. Too many young people have sell-by dates on them and I hope that this review will create opportunities and that we can overcome the challenges to make sure they can be at the right place at the right time and achieve their destiny.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a very good debate and we are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for initiating it. It has been good in several ways. First, it covered the ground. Secondly, we all seem to be broadly agreed about the opportunities that the area reviews may present, provided that they are a genuine exercise aimed at revivifying a key sector. There are also issues that perhaps need to be built into this that are more than just to do with one area and reflect what was in the initial wording for this debate in terms of the rurality issue.
The key question that the Minister must answer when she comes to respond is the quotation that has already been given from the Public Accounts Committee about whether these reviews will actually achieve the laudable aims for the sector. My quote from that committee is slightly different from those already given, but it makes the same point. The committee states:
“With so many parties involved in running the reviews, there may be no clear process for making difficult decisions on the future of individual colleges”.
I think that fits into the general concern expressed both by those who have spoken today but also the PAC, that this is an interesting—others might say brave—way of conducting a review but it will not necessarily come up with results that are sustainable and robust.
The other side of that coin is what would constitute a more robust and sustainable FE sector. Those of us who are concerned about this—I had a job a long time ago in a further education college so I have some experience—worry that a haphazard and not very clear set of procedures has been adopted. As many people have said, those procedures deal only with FE and sixth-form colleges, and others may or may not be involved depending on their individual interests. There is no student voice and no consistent way of addressing that.
If those were not sufficient problems in relation to individual reviews or indeed to the totality of the review process, which of course is still ongoing, there are concerns at the end-point the Minister might wish to help with. Is this genuinely a review for the benefit of the sector and for the young people who will be a part of it or is there a hidden agenda about money? A Minister is on the record saying that the motivating principle is not to save cash. Then he covered himself by saying that it would be quite nice if it did result in reduced costs in the sector. It would be helpful if that could be brought out in more detail by the Minister here when she comes to respond.
Then there is a wider question. What is the Government’s intention here? It is quite hard to read in the Red Book what will be spent in the sector and I think it is probably beyond the capacity of the limited resources behind the Minister today to give a full explanation. Perhaps she could write to us to explain what the Government’s three-year to five-year projection is for spending in this sector as it is complicated, for reasons I want to go on to as well.
So much for the reviews. The rural transport dimension has been very well ventilated by noble Lords who have spoken, who live out in the country and have experienced it in real time. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, mentioned, it is not just about FE and the provision of learning, it is also about future careers, jobs and prospects. These two must be seen through the same prism because if you can train but cannot get a job that is not going to be of any real effect.
There are other concerns, raised by the rather good report from the Commission for Rural Communities which was in the Library’s list of reading for this debate. There is the issue of what has happened to careers advice generally in the country but particularly in rural areas, small villages and towns with people not being able to access advice. There is the question of the Work Programme operated through DWP which does not have a rural component and perhaps needs to be better tailored for rural areas. There is the fact that most local authorities have had to abandon youth services because the funding is not there for that. That element is discretionary rather than a main centre and that will mean that there are not proper and appropriate approaches to youths living in rural areas. Underpinning some of the optimism that might be around this is the question of whether we could think about new routes for flexible learning but that heavily depends on broadband. The Minister gave a visual clue there; for Hansard, her eyebrows went up in agreement that there is still a problem with rural broadband. Perhaps she should be a bit more masked in future when she responds to debates but I think we all get the point that this is not working well. Although there may be investment on the horizon, rural areas are still crying out for the ability to operate to a standard which at least is better than dial-up and that is not happening everywhere.
I end by asking one question which is perhaps a little peripheral to this issue but was raised by my noble friend Lord Young: where do apprenticeships fit into this? The Minister may have read with interest the discussions we had when the Enterprise Bill was going through this House in relation to apprenticeships and the good decision by the Government to try to bring forward a gold standard for what constitutes a proper apprenticeship, getting away from some of what look like apprenticeships in name but are not in substance. That is to be applauded. However, we made many points about that in the debate—roundly rebutted by the Minister at the time—on what would actually be there to change the nature of what was being taught and delivered through the apprenticeships programmes. She felt that there was enough going on for that not to be required. However, she wrote to noble Lords yesterday:
“We need long-term governance arrangement which will support employers to uphold the high quality of apprenticeship standards and be able to respond to the changing needs of business. We intend to amend the Bill at Commons Committee to establish a new independent body; the Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA). It will operate in England, supporting employer-led reforms and regulating the quality of apprenticeships. It will also have a role in advising Government on apprenticeships funding. We expect the IfA to be operational by April 2017”.
That is bit of a U-turn because this was resisted entirely by her during the debate. I would be grateful if the Minister could add a bit to explain what exactly is the IfA, what its role will be and how it will impact the reviews we are assessing today.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for initiating this debate and to all noble Lords for their contributions.
The objective of the area review programme is to ensure that we have sustainable colleges which provide a strong offer to their learners and support their area’s broader economic strategy. Through encouraging greater efficiency, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, the reviews will create the capacity for colleges to reinvest in the offer for their students, so students and improving provision are at the heart of these reviews, driving better quality and greater specialisation. Colleges must be in the strongest position possible to achieve the right outcomes for their learners: outcomes that will enable them to go on to further training or to compete in the job market, confident that their training or apprenticeship has given them a firm foundation on which to build. The area reviews will also enable colleges to help deliver our national ambitions to support young people, including creating 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, rightly said, need to be of high quality. I will come back to apprenticeships later.
To get this right, it is important that the reviews are locally led. Each review will have as its starting point the needs of students and local economic objectives, so I can certainly reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that the business and economic needs of an area are indeed central to the reviews. The views of business will be taken into account. From there, we will examine existing provision and identify the most effective structures for meeting those needs. The review steering groups are composed of a combination of college chairs of governors and principals, local enterprise partnerships and local authorities.
Several noble Lords raised concerns about students. I reassure them that we are keen to engage learners, and the National Union of Students sits on the national advisory group for the programme. It has actively contributed in setting up round-table discussions to ensure that student voices are heard.
As we have already seen from the pilot reviews, which have informed the development of this approach, it will work. Colleges in Nottingham, Norfolk and Suffolk are in a much stronger position now to deliver good quality education to their learners based on the best evidence available to them. Because the reviews are locally led they are well placed to consider the needs of all learners, particularly those in rural areas where access to education is more likely to be impacted by wider factors, such as the availability of transport, which I think all noble Lords highlighted as a key issue, and access to broadband. Most reviews will include a proportion of learners who are considered to be living in rural areas. The first two waves of reviews, for instance, included Solent, Sussex and the Marches and Worcestershire.
The reviews will draw on the best available evidence in each area, including information on how current learners travel to study, the current and future demographics of each area, the potential role that technology can play and the future demand for skills and professional and technical education at all levels. They will develop recommendations about the future pattern of provision for the area based on that evidence. Any recommendations about future provision will take account of travel, access and the availability of the right courses for learners in the area now and in future.
In the north-east Norfolk and north Suffolk pilot review conducted in 2015, there was a significant challenge to meet the needs of learners dispersed across a rural area and dependent on limited travel. The options considered took account of this; accessibility was one of the criteria against which they were judged. For instance, while three institutions were merged no campuses were removed, ensuring that learners could continue to access the provision that they needed.
For students in rural areas this may mean that reviews include recommendations on improvements in the use of technology, as my noble friend Lord Lingfield highlighted: for example, to improve online curriculum and assessment or shared services such as information management. I can assure noble Lords that the reviews will examine how transport arrangements can be improved. This may well include the cost of travel. Because local authorities are also involved in the area review steering groups, they can consider how to align travel with the provision needed. Obviously, different reviews will result in different options, depending on the area, the needs of the students and the provision.
Where combined authorities assume responsibility for the adult education budget through devolution deals, successfully conducted area reviews will provide a firm foundation so that provision for adult learners can meet the future needs of local businesses and students, as determined by the local areas themselves.
The area reviews are being supported by an important review undertaken by Landex, as my noble friend Lady Byford will be aware, of the national offer of post-16 land-based provision in England. We expect Landex to report by early March and its conclusions will inform the wider programme of area reviews. This will ensure that land-based provision, which has an important role to play in supporting the rural economy and often has wider application than the area in which the college sits, is taken into account, to ensure that high-quality delivery is available to meet the needs of employers, whether in that area or more widely.
Yeovil College, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned her close local interest, will be considered as part of the Somerset area review, which is currently scheduled to commence this November. This will provide the opportunity for the colleges in this area to consider the best provision for learners and employers across Somerset, and it will undoubtedly consider the impact of the rural nature of much of that county on current and future access to high-quality technical and professional education.
As I said, business and its needs are central to these reviews. The LEP is on the steering group and involved in the analysis of business demand. An important objective is to align businesses better with the improvement in delivery of apprenticeships. For instance, in Birmingham, as a result of the review, an apprenticeship company is being created with business leadership, drawing on the resources of all colleges. Apprenticeships are very much part of the thinking within these reviews.
Several noble Lords raised further education funding. The coalition Government indeed had to take difficult decisions to reduce the deficit, which included reducing the adult skills provision budget, other than apprenticeships, year-on-year. The Autumn Statement, however, provided a good settlement for FE. Through the new apprenticeship levy, we will see £2.5 billion being spent on apprenticeships by 2019-20: twice the cash amount being spent at the start of the decade. We are expanding our programme of advanced learner tuition fee loans for those over 19. On top of that, we have been able to maintain in cash terms a £1.5 billion per year adult education budget across this Parliament. I will need to write to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, with some of the further details he requested.
The combined adult education budget will provide colleges and training providers with the freedom and flexibility to determine how they use funding, working with LEPs and local commissioners to determine the appropriate distribution of funding to meet local needs best. These reforms represent an overall expansion of funding, meaning that total spending power to support participation will be £3.4 billion in 2019-20, which is a real terms increase of 30% compared with that for 2015-16.
We believe that the current structure of the post-16 education and training sector is unsustainable. We need to move towards a simpler and more financially resilient system which meets the needs of the economy. We recognise that there are circumstances particular to rural communities which the reviews need to take into consideration. Indeed, by referring to different areas, a number of noble Lords have highlighted that perfectly today. The pilot reviews provided an opportunity to test this in Norfolk and Suffolk. To reassure noble Lords once again, that is why we have been clear that the reviews must be tailored to meet local needs, based on the best evidence available and, most importantly, must have learners at the heart of the process.
Baroness Maddock
Will the Minister comment more fully on the reasons why sixth forms in schools in the areas are not included? It seems to me that that is absolutely crazy, particularly in rural areas.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
There is certainly an urgent need to ensure we have high-quality and resilient FE colleges. School sixth forms are included in the initial analysis and general findings but, practically, with more than 2,000 schools with sixth forms compared to 333 FE and sixth-form colleges, it is not going to be possible to cover them in the same degree of detail.
House of Lords
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Female Genital Mutilation: Education in Schools
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Featherstone
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many schools are now using personal, social, health and economic education classes to inform their pupils on female genital mutilation.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, female genital mutilation is child abuse and a crime. An effective multiagency approach is key to safeguarding girls from FGM and schools play an important role in this, as they do in safeguarding children from all forms of abuse. Schools have the autonomy to tailor their local PSHE programme to reflect the needs of their pupils, including teaching about FGM, drawing on the resources and evidence provided by experts and organisations such as the PSHE Association.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
I thank the Minister for that Answer, but in a way she makes my case for me, because we have a safeguarding duty to the 60,000 girls who are at risk. If we do not inform them about the risks of FGM—what to look for and who to go to—then I believe we are derelict in our duty. Does the Minister agree with me that one of the best ways to protect girls is to make teaching on FGM mandatory, whether through PSHE or other means, and will she now commit to do so?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, since 2014 FGM has been included in the PSHE programme of study so that is now an option for teachers, but we believe that it should be up to schools to have the autonomy to reflect the needs of their pupils. Of course teaching about FGM is one option that they can include, but we believe it is up to schools to think about the needs of their pupils and the communities that they serve, and it is for them to decide what best to cover and how best to cover it within their curriculum.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, would the Minister agree with me that, however good schools’ PSHE programmes are—and some are excellent—schools cannot mop up all the ills of society? Would she further agree that this is a highly sensitive issue, which is about the law and violence against women, and therefore needs delivering to teachers and pupils in a sensitive and expert way by people such as the school nurse or a doctor? It is not a case that can be taken very lightly.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, which is why we shall be shortly publishing for the first time statutory multiagency guidance for front-line professionals on FGM specifically, which will apply to schools and children services as well as police and healthcare professionals. It is essential that everybody works together to support any young women who may be in this position and make sure that, as a community, all agencies are working together to help tackle this crime.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
Would my noble friend please update the House on the current state of protection orders?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As noble Lords will be aware, protection orders were fast-tracked last summer to come into place before the summer holidays, so that any girls at risk could benefit from these new orders. Eighteen FGM protection orders were issued between July and September. That is the first set of data that we have.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, while individual prosecutions are matters for the Director of Public Prosecutions, are the Government satisfied that the law is adequate, and will they consider an investigation as to why there are so few prosecutions?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I said, we will shortly issue the statutory multiagency guidance, which we believe will help teachers, for instance, and other professionals to be able to identify this risk more easily and therefore to work with the police. The Serious Crime Act 2015 introduced a new mandatory duty on teachers, social workers and health professionals to report to the police known cases of FGM involving victims under the age of 18. Again, we believe that reports of these cases should assist the police; I have also mentioned protection orders. Therefore, we are building a framework within which professionals can work to help to tackle this crime.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
Does the noble Baroness know how much training the NHS gives to its front-line staff so that they are able to recognise this situation and deal with it?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I say, we are introducing a range of statutory guidance. Since April 2015, the NHS has collected enhanced data on women and girls seen by the NHS who have been subject to FGM. The second quarter of this data from July to September 2015 reported that 17 girls under 18 had come to the attention of the NHS. Therefore, with the enhanced data collection, the guidance we are introducing and our attempt to join up the NHS with schools and the police, we are starting to see progress in helping professionals identify this issue.
Baroness Corston (Lab)
The noble Baroness referred just now to the role of schools. When I represented a multicultural constituency in the other place, one of the things that used to concern me was the instance of girls being suddenly taken away for long holidays, and we tried very hard to raise this with schools to see whether they were being taken away for this purpose. It would be useful to know whether this is included in the guidance to teachers. I point out to those colleagues who have been in this House for quite a while that nobody here ever raised this issue for as long or as often as our late friend Baroness Rendell—Ruth Rendell. I suggest that we set up some initiative on FGM in Ruth’s name.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I will be very happy to take the noble Baroness’s suggestion back to the department. As regards the question she raised about teachers being able to identify this, I went on to the PSHE Association website to have a look at the section on FGM, and the issue that the noble Baroness raised is mentioned there, as are a number of other useful elements of guidance. As I have said, with new statutory guidance coming in and the updating of the safeguarding guidance for schools, we are attempting to get as much information to teachers as we can so that they can play their role in helping to protect young women.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, can I come back to PSHE? The Minister has highlighted its importance—indeed, the Government’s own website says how important it is. Will she confirm that PSHE has to be taught only in maintained schools, so that the 70% that are academies, as well as free schools, do not have to teach it? Does she not think, given the importance of PSHE and this issue, that it should be taught in all schools and that advice and guidance should be given to all schools?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
We state clearly in the introduction to the national curriculum that we expect all schools to deliver high-quality PSHE. Of course, the noble Lord will be aware that, when inspecting, Ofsted considers how a school ensures the spiritual, moral, social and cultural needs of its pupils. Ofsted inspects all schools—maintained, academies and free schools—so this enables PSHE to be considered in a proportionate and integrated way as part of their inspection.
Female Genital Mutilation: International Action
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Chidgey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of current campaigns and programmes sponsored and executed by western governments and international non-governmental organisations aimed at eliminating female genital mutilation and cutting practices in African countries.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Verma) (Con)
My Lords, since 2008, the UN estimates that 13,000 communities representing 10 million people have declared that they will abandon FGM. DfID is the largest ever donor on FGM, investing £35 million over five years, and that support is accelerating the progress we have seen since the PM co-hosted the Girl Summit. Across Africa, women, politicians, young people and religious leaders are campaigning for a change, and we stand strong in our support.
Lord Chidgey (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Since 1965, 24 of the 29 countries in which FGM practices are concentrated have enacted decrees or legislation related to outlawing them. Yet nearly 50 years later in Guinea, for example, 96% of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 49 are still suffering FGM, while 80% are victims in a further eight countries. In all, some 125 million girls and women born since 1965 have been abused in this manner. Given the overwhelming case for the abandonment of these practices at all levels and recognising the legal, social and moral norms that control them, what specific action are the Government taking to support UNICEF and other in-country programmes with human and financial resources?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that in 2014 we co-hosted the Girl Summit with UNICEF. At that summit we secured 500 signatories to a charter and more than 170 commitments from Governments, civil society and individuals. We are putting £35 million in place over the next five years, but this is a deeply bedded social norm. It has been there a long time. It will take time for people to come to terms with removing it. We have seen progress. Since our summit, there have been summits in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Uganda, and last year there was an African Union-led summit in Zambia.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that I worked as a nurse in Sudan? I saw the horrific effects of the most radical form of FGM, with agonising complications. I saw how many women, offered some amelioration—for example, following episiotomy for childbirth—refused help in terror of their husbands’ and families’ reactions. What more can be done to ensure that these DfID programmes effectively reach local communities and families, who are critical to the eradication of FGM? At present, many of these programmes do not reach grass-roots level.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I know of the experience of the noble Baroness and the work that she does in this area. It is right and proper that we work with the countries where this is prevalent. If we are to change social norms, we need local communities on board with us. All our programmes in all the countries in which we operate put girls and women at the centre of everything we do.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I remind the House of the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, who introduced the first legislation on this issue. Baroness Rendell then picked up the fact that people were being taken abroad outside our jurisdiction. She did wonderful work and put through the next part of the legislation.
I followed the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, which is where the work started. It is clear from the time that she and I spent there that it takes a long time to change cultural attitudes—even in this country, which was the first to pass an equal opportunities Act. It all takes time but we must not give up. The young Kenyan girls who took a court case in their own country set an outstanding example.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friends Lady Gardner and Lady Trumpington, and to Lady Rendell. By raising these issues consistently we are able to achieve some of the changes and an acceptance that we must do much more to get rid of this heinous crime. My noble friend Lady Gardner is absolutely right; we must continue to try to change something deeply embedded.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister share my concern about the efforts made by UN member states to minimise the number of SDG indicators, possibly eliminate the FGM target altogether and retain the current restriction on measuring FGM in only what they call “relevant countries”? Does she agree that, if the FGM indicator is limited only to specific countries or eliminated completely, millions of women and girls will remain invisible? Data on the targets will not be collected and no one will know if states are making progress towards ending this vile process.
Baroness Verma
The UK fought hard for the universal acceptance of human rights—that they are for everyone—and this is a human right. The noble Baroness will therefore be aware that we will continue to ensure that there are indicators to reflect FGM.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, as the Minister will know, the Girl Generation was set up in 2014 by my noble friend Lady Featherstone, when she was a DfID Minister, to combat FGM in 17 countries—initially in Kenya, Zambia and Nigeria. What targets have now been set for the Girl Generation and how is DfID supporting them? What is DfID now doing to ensure that the targets are achieved given how important it is to protect these girls?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for her work as a Minister to champion the issue of violence against women and girls. It is absolutely right that we continue to pursue this hard by monitoring, evaluating and finding ways of working to help Governments to enforce and put in place legislation, frameworks and policies. That will assist the work that was done by the noble Baronesses, Lady Featherstone and Lady Northover.
Airports: Expansion
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Earl of Glasgow
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are fully committed to choosing either Heathrow or Gatwick for airport expansion, or are still considering other options.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, on 14 December 2015, the Government formally announced that they accepted the Airports Commission’s case for new runway capacity in the south-east, as well as the commission’s three shortlisted schemes; namely, additional runways at Gatwick or Heathrow, or an extension to the existing northern runway at Heathrow. The Government will not be considering any other options.
The Earl of Glasgow (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Unfortunately I am disappointed by it. There is some confusion in my mind, and perhaps in that of the Government as well, as to whether this airport expansion is primarily to provide extra capacity for the crowded south-east or whether it is to establish an up-to-date hub airport to rival those in Europe. If it is to establish a first-class, international hub airport, surely it is better located outside the south-east. Will the Government not consider Birmingham, linked of course to HS2? That option presents far fewer problems than those facing Heathrow and Gatwick; it is much closer to Britain’s centre of gravity and is half way to the aspirational northern powerhouse.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As far as the expansion of south-east capacity is concerned, the Government are committed to the findings of the Airports Commission. That is in no sense to take away from the importance of our regional airports. Indeed, all regional airports, including Birmingham, mentioned by the noble Earl, are already benefiting from increased investment and are an important part of UK plc’s competitive global offering across the world.
Lord Skelmersdale (Con)
My Lords, given that this state of affairs has been arrived at after something like 20 years, is it now considered fairly urgent that we should think about a completely new airport?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I think that I have made the Government’s position quite clear. The commission was set up by the previous Government under the guidance of the current Prime Minister in 2012. It reported its findings. It was a comprehensive review. As I said in my earlier Answer, the Government are committed to its conclusions and the three options it presented, all being viable options. We will proceed on those. The commission also said that the decision needed to be made and the airport needed to be operating by 2030. That is certainly the timetable that the Government are committed to.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, is it not the case that the Airports Commission was set up by the previous Government as a means of keeping this particular ball in the air because the Government were not prepared to make a decision? That was at a direct cost of at least £20 million. The ball has now been kicked firmly into the long grass and every so often the Transport Secretary kicks it further away from a decision. If the Government really believe that the decision to increase airport capacity is urgent and important, how much longer will they dither over this issue because they do not want to make a political decision?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The Government have been quite clear: the reasons for further consideration included environmental issues such as air pollution—a subject close to the noble Lord’s heart. This is not about keeping things up in the air. On the contrary, it is about getting those things in the air down on the ground.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, I think the House is calling for my noble friend Lord Tebbit.
Lord Tebbit
My Lords, should we not recollect that major international airlines cannot be compelled to fly into airports they do not wish to go to? Should we not all agree now that the alternatives to Heathrow are not Birmingham or Stansted, but Schiphol, Paris and Frankfurt? Either we can have the business in this country, in London, or it will go to the continent.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend raises an important point. On the first element, the commercial decisions on air slots are very much for the airlines to make. As for the competitiveness of London vis-à-vis competitors in Europe, that is one reason why the Government are committed to further expansion of air capacity in the south-east.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, has anyone actually asked passengers what they want? Has there been a recent independent survey of the views of passengers in the north and the Midlands? There is considerable resentment among both business and leisure passengers about the problems they face in travelling so far to reach a hub airport in the south of England.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
On the subject of specific surveys, I will write to the noble Baroness about those two areas. However, as she is no doubt aware, Manchester, for example, will also benefit from £1 billion of investment over the next 10 years—and there are other regional airports. Indeed, I was looking forward to a question from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton—but I may pre-empt that if I add that Luton, too, has benefited. Further to the noble Lord’s previous question, I am glad to say that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State recently visited Luton and saw the excellent facilities there.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, will the Government clarify the questions that they are now asking about extra runway capacity, and the options that they do not believe were fully addressed or answered in the Airports Commission report? Which bodies and organisations are they now asking to provide views and information on the questions that they are still asking?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As I have already said, some of the criticisms of the commission’s report were about environmental issues, particularly noise and air pollution—and those are part and parcel of the Government’s further considerations. All relevant bodies making representations will be part of that consultation process.
Baroness Tonge
My Lords, can the Minister promise us faithfully that we will have a decision on expansion at Heathrow Airport after the elections for London Mayor?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I can assure the noble Baroness—I speak for all my noble friends on the Front Bench and beyond—that we always seek to give answers faithfully from this Dispatch Box.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that airports policy is now being co-ordinated by Sir John Chilcot?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
That may be the noble Lord’s view; it is certainly not mine.
Health: Zika Virus
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Earl of Selborne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the World Health Organisation’s warning on the spread of the Zika virus.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
My Lords, we welcome the WHO recommendations, and the Government are considering our response. PHE’s experts are liaising closely with WHO and other agencies to understand the developing evidence and give the best advice possible. Given the serious implications of a link with microcephaly, the current travel advice is highly precautionary. Those travelling to affected areas should review this advice, pregnant women should consider the need to travel and all travellers should take scrupulous bite avoidance measures.
The Earl of Selborne (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that reply. It is helpful to know that there is a rapid response call for research applications aimed at tackling the Zika virus. Does my noble friend agree that the immediate priority is to eliminate the species of mosquitoes which spread the virus? Will the Government support field trials with Latin American nations into the release of genetically modified non-replicating mosquitoes, as recommended by the Science and Technology Committee in December?
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, I think we are the second biggest contributor of funds to WHO and have just contributed £6.2 million to its emergency contingency relief fund. I think that the work that we have done in the UK on developing genetically modified mosquitoes to combat this disease and other diseases spread by mosquitoes will almost certainly play a very major part as we go forward.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, since there is no prospect of an early vaccine to deal with Zika, is not the only show in town which could deliver an early answer to Zika the genetically modified mosquitoes to which the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, referred? This is a mosquito that has been modified so that its offspring die off before they can develop, and it is a mosquito that transmits both the dengue and the Zika virus. Since there has been astonishing success in the Oxitec company’s trials in parts of Brazil which, after the release of hundreds of millions of the modified mosquitoes, has virtually extinguished dengue, should the Government not support and fund extended trials by this company in Brazil? That would be extremely good not only for the reputation of British science but for the economy, since this is a field in which Britain leads the world.
Lord Prior of Brampton
There is no doubt that the work that we have done in this country on developing genetically modified mosquitoes will play a very large part in tackling Zika and other infectious diseases of this type. Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, has convened a science committee which is meeting either today or tomorrow to assess the issues raised by the current outbreak. I am absolutely sure that she will be considering what the noble Lord has said as part of our response.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, obviously effective control is essential, but since the WHO declaration we have had news of a sexually transmitted case of the virus. What lessons are the department taking, or what can they take, from this in terms of guidance and action in this country, particularly for travellers?
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, there has been one case where Zika may have been sexually transmitted—I use the words “may have been” advisedly because it is not proven. Indeed, the link between Zika and microcephaly is not yet scientifically proven. There seems to be a strong probability that that is the case, but we should bear in mind that Zika was first identified back in 1947 in Africa and since then there has been no such connection with microcephaly, although in Brazil there appears to be a very strong connection now. There has been one case in Texas, where there may have been sexual transmission and the advice for men who are sleeping with women who may become pregnant is to wear a condom.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, while absolutely agreeing that we should carry on supporting the science of genetically modified mosquitoes, it may be that mosquitoes that are already genetically modified for dengue can do the same job for Zika, but we do not know that. Much more important is the recent report and questions about the assessment of the spread of the Zika virus. The Minister has just referred to sexual transmission, but that applies to any bodily fluids, not just sexual transmission. The other worrying thing is that the common mosquitoes have now been found possibly to be infected by Zika. That is a much more worrying prospect, because they are much more widespread.
Lord Prior of Brampton
I understand that the common mosquito which we find in southern Europe could potentially carry Zika, which I think was reported in the Times today. There is as yet no evidence that it does carry Zika, but it is something that we need to watch very carefully.
Baroness Seccombe (Con)
My Lords, is the fever notifiable, so that a record is kept of this event?
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, one of the problems of this illness is that four out of five people are asymptomatic—they have no symptoms. For many of the others, the symptoms are such that it is a very light cold or light flu. That is one of the problems with this illness.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
With the Olympic Games coming up, are particular precautions being considered and are you in contact with the organisations dealing with travel to the Games?
Lord Prior of Brampton
Comprehensive travel advice is on a number of different websites. The Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have been notified and the information has been cascaded down, so I think that there will be enough travel advice as we near the Olympics.
Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that in Brazil around 80,000 women die from unsafe abortion because of the lack of provision there? This figure will surely increase as a result of this terrible disaster. Is there any way that our Government can put pressure on the Brazilian Government to allow safe abortion in that country?
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, that strays slightly away from the brief that I have on the subject today. May I take that on consideration? I will raise it with my honourable friend in the other House, the Minister for Public Health.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, are the aeroplanes coming from the countries where there are these mosquitoes being sprayed?
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, that is something that is under consideration at the moment. It varies from airline to airline—that is the truthful answer at the moment—but we are considering whether all flights from areas that have Zika virus should be sprayed.
Housing and Planning Bill
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Housing and Planning Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:
Clauses 12 to 22, Schedule 1, Clauses 23 and 24, Schedule 2, Clause 25, Schedule 3, Clauses 26 to 61, Clauses 1 to 11, Clauses 62 to 90, Schedule 4, Clauses 91 to 97, Schedule 5, Clauses 98 to 110, Schedule 6, Clauses 111 to 113, Schedule 7, Clause 114, Schedule 8, Clauses 115 to 117, Schedule 9, Clauses 118 to 122, Schedule 10, Clauses 123 to 133, Schedule 11, Clauses 134 to 136, Schedule 12, Clauses 137 to 142, Schedule 13, Clauses 143 to 159, Schedule 14, Clauses 160 to 163, Schedule 15, Clauses 164 to 169, Schedule 16, Clauses 170 to 176, Schedules 17 and 18, Clauses 177 to 182, Schedule 19, Clauses 183 to 186, Schedule 20, Clauses 187 to 193, Title.
European Union: United Kingdom Renegotiation
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I will now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place yesterday. The Statement is as follows.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on progress with our renegotiation. The House has now had the chance to study the documents published by the European Council yesterday. I believe that this is an important milestone in the process of reform, renegotiation and referendum that we set out in our manifesto, and which the Government are delivering. We have now legislated for that referendum and we are holding that renegotiation.
Let me set out the problems that we are trying to fix and the progress that we have made. First, we do not want to have our country bound up in an ever closer political union in Europe. We are a proud and independent nation, with proud, independent, democratic institutions that have served us well over the centuries. For us, Europe is about working together to advance our shared prosperity and shared security; it is not about being sucked into some kind of European superstate—not now, not ever.
The draft texts set out in full the special status accorded to the UK and clearly carve us out of further political integration. They actually go further to make it clear that EU countries do not even have to aim for a common destination. This is a formal recognition of the flexible Europe that Britain has long been arguing for. In keeping Britain out of ever closer union, I also wanted to strengthen the role of this House and all national parliaments, so we now have a proposal in the texts that if Brussels comes up with legislation that we do not want, we can get together with other parliaments and block it with a red card.
We have also proposed a new mechanism to finally enforce the principle of subsidiarity—a principle dear to this House—which states that, as far as possible, powers should sit here in this Parliament, not in Brussels. Every year the European Union has to go through the powers it exercises and work out which are no longer needed and should be returned to nation states.
Secondly, I said that we wanted to make Europe more competitive and deal with the rule-making and the bureaucracy that can cost jobs here in Britain and, indeed, across the European Union. We asked for commitments on all the areas central to European competitiveness. We want international trade deals signed, the single market completed and regulation stripped back. All these things are covered in the draft texts. There is a new proposal for specific targets to reduce the burdens on business in key sectors. This will particularly help small and medium-sized businesses, and there is a new mechanism to drive these targets through and cut the level of red tape year on year.
Thirdly, we are absolutely clear that Britain is going to keep the pound—in my view, for ever—but we need to be just as clear that we can keep the pound in a European Union that will be fair to our currency. Put simply: the EU must not become a euro-only club. If it does, it would not be a club for us, so we called for a series of principles to protect the single market for Britain. We said that there must be no discrimination against the pound, no disadvantage for businesses that use our currency, wherever they are located in the EU, and no option for Britain ever again to be forced to bail out eurozone countries. All these principles are reflected in the draft text, which is legally binding, and, again, there is a mechanism. Britain has the ability to act to uphold all these principles and protect our interests. We should be clear: British jobs depend on being able to trade on a level playing field within the European single market, whether in financial services or cars or anything else, so this plan, if agreed, will provide the strongest possible protection for Britain from discrimination and unfair rules and practices. For instance, never again could the EU try its so-called “location policy”—that the settling of complex trades in euros must take place only in eurozone countries. These principles would outlaw that sort of proposal. These are protections we could not have if Britain were outside the European Union.
Fourthly, we want to deal with the pressures of immigration, which have become too great. Of course, we need to do more to control migration from outside the European Union. We are doing that and we will be announcing more measures on that front, but we need to control migration from within the EU, too. The draft texts represent the strongest package we have ever had on tackling the abuse of free movement and closing down the back-door routes to Britain. It includes greater freedoms for Britain to act against fraud and prevent those who pose a genuine and serious threat from coming into this country. It includes a new law to overturn a decision by the European Court which has allowed thousands of illegal migrants to marry other EU nationals and acquire the right to stay in our country. It has been a source of perpetual frustration that we cannot impose our own immigration rules on third-country nationals coming from the European Union, but now, after the hard work of the Home Secretary, we have a proposal to put that right.
There are also new proposals to reduce the pull factor that our benefits system exerts across Europe by allowing instant access to welfare from the day someone arrives. People said that Europe would not even recognise that we had this problem, but the text explicitly recognises that welfare systems can act as an unnatural draw to come to this country. Our manifesto set out four objectives to solve this problem. We had already delivered on two of them within months of the general election. Already EU migrants will no longer be able to claim universal credit—the new unemployment benefit— while looking for work, and if those coming from the EU have not found work within six months, they can now be required to leave. Now, in these texts, we have secured proposals for the other two areas. If someone comes from another country in Europe, leaving their family at home, they will have their child benefit paid at the local rate, not at the generous British rate, and, crucially, we have made progress on reducing the draw of our generous in-work benefits. People said that it would be impossible to end the idea of something for nothing, and that a four-year restriction on benefits was completely out of the question. But that is now what is in the text—an emergency brake that will mean people coming to Britain from within the EU will have to wait four years until they have full access to our benefits. The European Commission has said very clearly that Britain already qualifies to use this mechanism, so, with the necessary legislation, we would be able to implement it shortly after the referendum.
Finally, let me be absolutely clear about the legal status of these changes that are now on offer. People said we would never get something that was legally binding—but this plan, if agreed, will be exactly that. These changes will be binding in international law, and will be deposited at the UN. They cannot be changed without the unanimous agreement of every EU country—and that includes Britain. So, when I said I wanted change that is legally binding and irreversible, that is what I have got; and, in key areas, treaty change is envisaged in these documents.
I believe we are making real progress in all four areas—but the process is far from over. There are details that still need to be pinned down and intense negotiations will take place to try and agree the deal with 27 other countries. It will require hard work, determination and patience to see it through. But I do believe that with these draft texts, and with all the work that we have done with our European partners, Britain is getting closer to the decision point. It is, of course, right that this House should debate these issues in detail. So in addition to this Statement, and of course a Statement following the Council later this month, the Government will also make time for a full day’s debate on the Floor of the House.
As we approach this choice, let me be clear about two things. First, I am not arguing, and I never will argue, that Britain could not survive outside the European Union. We are the fifth largest economy in the world and the biggest defence player in Europe, with one of the most extensive and influential diplomatic networks on the planet. The question is not could Britain succeed outside the European Union; it is how will we be most successful? How will Britain be most prosperous? How will we create the most jobs? How will we have the most influence on the rules that shape the global economy and affect us? How will we be most secure? I have always said that the best answers to those questions can be found within a reformed European Union. But let me say again, if we cannot secure these changes, I rule nothing out.
Secondly, even if we secure these changes, you will never hear me say that this organisation is now fixed—far from it. There will be many things that remain to be reformed and Britain would continue to lead the way. We would continue to make sure that Europe works for the countries of Europe, for the businesses of Europe, for the peoples of Europe and, crucially, for the British people who want to work, have security and get on, and make the most of their lives.
So, if we stay, Britain will be in there keeping a lid on the budget, protecting our rebate, stripping away unnecessary regulation and seeing through the commitments we have secured in this renegotiation. This will ensure that Britain can truly have the best of both worlds: in the parts of Europe that work for us, and out of those that do not; in the single market; free to travel around Europe; and part of an organisation where co-operation on security and trade can make Britain and all its partners safer and more prosperous, but with guarantees that we will never be part of the euro, never be part of Schengen, never be part of a European army, never be forced to bail out the eurozone with our taxpayers’ money, and never be part of a European superstate.
That is the prize on offer—a clear path that can lead to a fresh settlement for Britain in a reformed European Union: a settlement that will offer the best future for jobs, security and the strength of our country; a settlement which, as our manifesto promised nearly a year ago, will offer families in our country security at every stage of their lives. That is what we are fighting for, and I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Leader of the House for repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement. I also thank the Government Chief Whip for extending the time for Back-Bench contributions. I know that the noble Lord understands the need for that and also for a more substantial debate on this matter in the near future.
Let me make it clear at the outset that we broadly welcome the Statement. I readily confess to some degree of relief that the Prime Minister is finally making at least some progress on his aim of seeking a new relationship with the European Union. I do not think I am alone in finding that the Prime Minister’s rhetoric has been, perhaps, the opposite of what one would normally expect from a good negotiator. This is not a game. This is not an issue in which internal party political divisions should have any role at all. The only objective must be the national interest: an interest that brings jobs, investment, prosperity and a continued influence in the world; greater protections for British workers and increased opportunities for our businesses; and that keeps us safer, both at home and abroad. What has been outlined so far appears to be a step in the right direction. However, as I think the Leader conceded, it is more of an agreement to agree than a detailed and finalised deal, but it is none the less welcome and we look forward to further clarification and expansion on the detail of how the proposed negotiation will work in practice.
We on these Benches welcome that important and hard-fought advances such as employment rights and improved environmental protections have not been negotiated away. They are tangible benefits for British citizens and it is right that they are protected. Whatever the future arrangements, I hope that the Prime Minister will ensure that British workers are never left behind in standards and rights at work.
I want to be clear that my party will campaign to keep the UK in the European Union, not least because we believe it is increasingly impossible for countries to be fortresses in our interconnected world. Many of the most serious challenges, including crime, terrorism and climate change, affect all countries and are best met by co-ordinated European and worldwide action.
Many noble Lords will recall the hugely informative debates we had on the coalition Government’s bizarre hokey-cokey of opting out then opting back in again on crime and criminal justice measures. It was clear then, and the Government had to concede, that meeting the challenges of serious and organised crime—drug trafficking, fraud, child abuse and paedophilia, and people trafficking—could effectively be tackled only through the EU. I remain of the view that one of the strongest cases for the European Union is the effectiveness of our co-operation on serious crime. The threats and challenges we face will not go away by voting to leave. That established co-operation means that we are better able to detect crime, bring criminals to justice and, therefore, protect our citizens.
It also illustrates one of the failures of politicians, and others, on this issue. There has been a complete inability to talk about the EU so that people outside Parliament know what we are talking about—even in the Statement today. For most people, an emergency brake is in a car. The language of EU directives, qualified majority voting and other terms that most people never normally use does not begin to explain why our membership is so important. We need to talk about the Europe-wide environmental measures that make our beaches and coastal waters cleaner and safer, about consumer protection to stop customers being ripped off, about rights at work, about jobs, about justice and about catching criminals. These are the issues that really touch people’s lives.
There is a huge challenge for all of us in this House and our colleagues in the other place, as well as our national media and opinion-formers. That challenge is illustrated by what could be described as the more colourful headlines, front pages and commentary that the Prime Minister has faced since his return. This debate is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for many millions of people, each with one equal vote, to have their say about our country’s future place in Europe and the world—although, sadly, not for the 16 and 17 year-olds whose future is dependent on the outcome of that vote. The debate should not be only one of persuasion. It should be one of education and providing straightforward, honest and accurate facts and allowing people to reach their own decisions.
Noble Lords will recall that during the passage of the European Union Referendum Bill, your Lordships’ House secured concessions from the Government on the importance of significant information provision in advance of the referendum, including agreement to report back on: the rights of individuals within the UK, including employment rights; the rights of EU citizens living in the UK; social and environmental legislation; law enforcement, security and justice; the effect of withdrawal on Gibraltar; the right to apply for financial support from EU structural funds; and support for agriculture and research—although, sadly, not our call for the Treasury to report on the financial impact of the UK voting to leave. That is such an important issue and I ask the Leader to raise this with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor in the interests of a balanced and informed debate. If I have one plea for politicians and the media, it is that this debate should provide more light than heat. As Thomas Jefferson said:
“The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate”.
Finally, as my colleague the leader of the Opposition in the other place told MPs yesterday:
“The Labour party is committed to keeping Britain in the European Union because we believe it is the best … framework for European trade and co-operation in the 21st century, and in the best interests of people in this country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/16; col. 928.]
No doubt, many in your Lordships’ House—on all sides—are of the same view. I trust also that everyone in this House understands that, should the UK vote to leave the EU, our country, our companies, our universities and our people will still have to follow its rules when doing business with its institutions or when travelling to the remaining member states—all without any further say in making those rules.
Reform is a constant process. It is not an event. The most effective way to reform an institution is through patience, explanation, persuasion and the building of alliances—often across and outside the normal political boundaries. That is something that noble Lords understand well.
It would be helpful to your Lordships’ House if the Leader of the House could today provide some of the detail that so far is missing or set out the timetable in which that will be provided and your Lordships’ House given an opportunity to debate it. The sooner the proposed reforms are agreed and clarified, the sooner we can step up the campaign to keep Britain in Europe and end the damaging uncertainty that has been created around our continued membership.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)
My Lords, I, like the Leader of the Opposition, thank the Leader of the House for repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement and also for the arrangements for Back-Benchers to raise questions on this important issue. In his Statement, the Prime Minister said that a full day’s debate would take place following the Statement after the European Council later this month in government time in the other place. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to make a similar commitment with regard to a debate in your Lordships’ House.
The draft plan before us represents meaningful reforms that can strengthen our economic co-operation with Europe, can bring jobs and growth to the United Kingdom and indeed, as the noble Baroness said in repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement, will provide strong protection for Britain from discrimination and unfair rules and practices. Indeed, the provision prohibiting discrimination on the basis of official currency or legal tender seems to be a particularly strong passage in the texts that have been released.
The Prime Minister referred to the legally binding nature of any agreement. Will the noble Baroness the Leader of the House amplify that when she responds? Would these agreements be legally binding and come into force when the United Kingdom notified the Council that there had been a decision in the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union?
While we on these Benches were somewhat sceptical of the political motives of the Prime Minister in seeking a referendum, it is nevertheless a reality. My party will use the campaign to deploy a positive case for Britain remaining within the European Union. We stand united against the idea that Britain should be isolated, sidelined or alone. We believe that, together in Europe, the United Kingdom will be a stronger and more thriving nation.
In the European Union, Britain is part of the world’s largest single market, allowing our businesses to grow and prosper. In the European Union, neighbours and allies support each other in what remains the world’s most successful project in peace. In the European Union, our citizens have more opportunities to work, to travel and to learn than ever before, ensuring that our children and grandchildren have ever greater prospects and opportunities. In the European Union, together we can protect the natural environment and tackle climate change more effectively. In the European Union, together we are stronger against terrorism and against those who despise our liberal and modern way of life, and we can together tackle more effectively the criminal gangs who peddle illegal drugs and weapons and engage in human trafficking.
These are important arguments that we need to deploy in the referendum. Does the noble Baroness the Leader of the House therefore accept that, while the reforms in this particular package are welcome, the referendum debate itself will need to go beyond the details of the renegotiation and take into account the wider benefits of European Union membership and the costs of leaving? Will the noble Baroness confirm that the Government’s message during the referendum campaign will not just be about the finer details of this package, but about the further and more important values that are at stake?
In the light of the changes made in your Lordships’ House to the European Union Referendum Bill, will the Government ensure that there is a realistic assessment of what Brexit would look like and its disadvantages for the United Kingdom? Can the noble Baroness assure your Lordships’ House that the reports on the consequences of withdrawal and alternatives to membership will provide a meaningful analysis?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I was very pleased to repeat my right honourable friend’s Statement about this important issue of Britain’s role in, and relationship with, Europe. We were elected as a Government to lead a process of reform and renegotiation and to hold a referendum on the EU. Many said that what we had set out to do would be impossible, yet we have already legislated for that referendum and we now have a draft text on the table that puts forward significant reforms in each of the four areas that are of greatest concern to the British people. The important thing to stress is that this is about addressing their concerns and the things that they have highlighted, all too often, over a very long time about Britain’s relationship with the European Union.
Before I address some of the specific points that were raised by the noble Baroness and the noble and learned Lord, I would say that, contrary to the way in which the noble Baroness described my right honourable friend’s approach to his responsibility, he has been very careful in his approach and very diplomatic. He had a plan which he was keen to put forward, negotiate over, hopefully achieve agreement on and then implement. What he has achieved so far is something that no other British Prime Minister has yet achieved in terms of coming to this Parliament and saying that there is the chance now to bring back powers to the United Kingdom from Europe. That is incredibly important.
The noble Baroness referred to one of the things we already achieved in the coalition Government: the justice and home affairs opt-outs. That was unprecedented in terms of us renegotiating our agreement with Europe on something that was very important. Both she and the noble and learned Lord talked about the use of language and about putting forward the positive case for Britain’s membership of Europe during the referendum campaign. That is clearly an important aspect of any campaign. The Statement from the Prime Minister that I have repeated was very clear that there are real benefits to the United Kingdom being in Europe, which we would lose if we were no longer part of Europe. He was also very clear in his Statement that it would be possible for the UK to survive outside of the European Union.
The noble Baroness asked about details missing from the documents that have been published and put forward by the Commission. This is a live negotiation, and those details are still to be discussed and debated. The Prime Minister is hosting the Syria conference today, which he will take as an opportunity to talk to other Heads of Government. He is travelling to Europe at the end of this week, and there will be another European Council on 18 and 19 February. A lot of this is still very much in play and up for negotiation, so I am not able to provide more detail on anything that is missing.
However, I assure the noble Baroness and the noble and learned Lord that, after the next European Council, I will, as is customary, repeat the Prime Minister’s Statement in this House. We do not yet know whether the Prime Minister will reach an agreement at that European Council, but in his Statement yesterday he committed to a full day’s debate in the other place after an agreement is reached. I am quite confident that we will be able to secure some time, in government time, for a debate in this House to discuss whatever the Prime Minister is able to agree, although I stress that we cannot be sure that that will happen at the European Council that is taking place later on this month.
The noble and learned Lord asked me about the legal status of the documents. It is very clear, because Mr Tusk has made it clear, that these are legally binding documents; they are irreversible. If the Prime Minister reaches an agreement with the other member states that he wishes to put forward to the people of this country, for them to decide then that they want to remain in Europe, after that decision is made then they will take operational effect—they will become operative—immediately. There are some elements that will be legally binding straight away. The deal will take effect straight away.
There will be some measures that are identified in the draft deal that will require some secondary legislation, perhaps through the European Parliament, but because of the way in which the Prime Minister has approached his renegotiation with Europe, a lot of the different institutions and people involved in this process have already come out and said that they are ready to respond and to do what is necessary in this case—in that case, in the European Parliament. We are confident that we will be able to make full progress should that deal be made, should the British people decide that that is what they want, because of the way in which people have already responded.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, we are now into an extended period of Q&A of 40 minutes. I recommend to the House that we be succinct in the questions that we lay and that we go round the House in our customary fashion. This should enable everybody to make a point.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that none of the important objectives set out in the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech three years ago has been achieved? He committed himself then to securing a “fundamental, far-reaching” reform of the European Union. These inconsequential scraps are certainly not that. He committed himself to the process of returning powers from the Union to the individual member states. That has not been achieved. The principle of the acquis communautaire remains in place, as does the passerelle clause of the Lisbon treaty which entrenches it.
He promised full-on treaty change. No such treaty change has been secured. On ever closer union, is my noble friend aware that the Solemn Declaration on European Union agreed in Stuttgart in 1983 explicitly commits the European Union to the ever closer union of the member states of the EU? Did the Prime Minister seek to have the Stuttgart declaration revoked, and, if not, why not?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I have huge respect for my noble friend and for his position and views on Britain’s relationship with the European Union. He has been involved in lots of negotiations in Europe over a significant period of time. From my perspective as a relative newcomer to this kind of thing and as a member of the Government, I look at what the right honourable David Cameron, our Prime Minister, has achieved. Let us not forget that it is Donald Tusk who has published this set of draft proposals, not the Prime Minister. Let us look at what he has come forward with. The Prime Minister has achieved something that nobody before him has achieved. On ever closer union, we will see for the first time institutions in Europe that we have criticised time and again for using the treaties and their preambles to try to extend the scope and power of union no longer able to do that. I think that is a massive step forward.
Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as chairman of the European Union Select Committee, I shall focus on the role of national parliaments. The text proposes that the Council will discontinue consideration of draft legislation in the event that reasoned opinions are sent representing more than 55% of the votes allocated to national parliaments. That is certainly welcome, as far as it goes. How will the new procedure interact with the existing reasoned opinion procedure, which will be considered by the House in its next business today? How can it be ensured that this new tool is of practical as well as purely symbolic value? What steps will be taken to put in place an effective mechanism for national parliaments to work together?
Last week in evidence to my committee the Foreign Secretary stressed the need to establish a more effective support machinery to co-ordinate the work of national parliaments. Can the noble Baroness confirm that the Government will actively work on such developments alongside this draft agreement?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The noble Lord is right to point out that the next business of your Lordships’ House is on a reasoned opinion, using one of the mechanisms that currently exist for sovereign parliaments to make their views known. The draft text proposes that parliaments have much greater power, with a red card, than they have currently. Clearly, a lot of the detail is still to be sorted out on mechanisms that would be used and how the red card would interplay with the yellow card. I think it is safe to assume that having at parliaments’ disposal a power that they do not currently have to block legislation would be a strong incentive to them to be more active than they might have been when they had at their disposal only a yellow card. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is right to suggest that there might be greater co-ordination between parliaments across Europe to ensure that they get to the minimum level to have real and dramatic effect with the use of this new power.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, does the noble Baroness accept that many of us on this side of the House welcome the progress that the Prime Minister has made towards enabling him to argue the case for remaining in Europe in the coming referendum? However, if he is to win that case, would he take advice from Members of this House that he should not spend his time, as he did yesterday in the other place, trying to rally Eurosceptics against Brexit? Rather, he should make a positive and patriotic case for Britain’s membership of the EU. This should not be a “project fear”, but a “project hope”.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am grateful to the noble Lord for offering his support to the Prime Minister, although I do not agree with how he described the Prime Minister’s approach to this. The Prime Minister has put forward a series of changes that address real concerns of the British people—British people who see real value in being a member of the European Union, but, quite frankly, are a bit fed up with it and the way it operates. The Prime Minister set out to renegotiate some of the terms that address those matters, whether it is around welfare or powers taken away from us. If he gets an agreement that he is satisfied is a good deal for the British people, then in the course of the next few months he will want to talk to those who are uncertain, a bit unsure and a bit undecided. Being successful in trying to persuade people requires any of us who seek to influence the views of others to be respectful of those who are currently unsure which way they might want to vote. We very much hope, whatever it is that the Prime Minister is battling for, that they vote with him.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, can I ask my noble friend two precise and related questions? Yesterday the Prime Minister said in the other place that the emergency brake would be applied “shortly after the referendum”. First, does that mean that no combination of other member states can stop us applying that emergency brake in any circumstances? Secondly, he said that where benefits are paid in respect of beneficiaries not in the United Kingdom, they will be paid,
“at the local rate, not at the generous British rate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/16; col. 926.]
Will the computer at the department of pensions be up to doing that job?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am happy to reassure my noble friend about two things on the emergency brake. First, the Commission has made it clear that in its view the emergency brake would apply immediately, assuming that the British people decide that they want to remain in Europe. It is worth reminding ourselves that not only has the Commission said that but President Juncker also said yesterday that this was a good deal in response to the failure of the previous Labour Government to protect the UK from an increase in immigration from the accession countries when they had opportunity to do so. This has been signalled as a ready-to-apply and will apply immediately if this is what the British people vote for.
Secondly, as far as benefits at local rate are concerned, the Prime Minister outlined our response and reaction to what is in the Tusk proposal. Clearly, we are confident that if that is what is in the deal and package we would be able to administer that arrangement.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, will the noble Baroness the Leader confirm that it is the United Kingdom that is the member of the European Union and that it does not matter if any principality, province or nation of the United Kingdom votes differently? It is the decision of the people of the whole of the United Kingdom that will be decisive in the referendum.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I want to take this rare opportunity to say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that I agree with him.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House and the other two Front-Bench spokesmen for their statements. I agree that the Statement marks a significant shift on all four of the Government’s priorities in the renegotiation. I also welcome the noble Baroness’s statement about the legally binding nature of the package that the President of the European Council—not the Commission, by the way—has put on the table. This differentiates it very much from the Stuttgart declaration, which never was and is not legally binding nor does it have any legal force.
First, can the noble Baroness say that the use of the deposit at the United Nations of a legally binding text which was first introduced for Denmark at the time of the Maastricht treaty resulted in all the commitments in its renegotiation being honoured in the spirit and the letter? That is a very important point.
Secondly, while a good deal of mockery is sometimes unleashed on the complexity of this document, particularly in the pages of the press, it is not avoidable for a legal document of this nature not to be complex. If we look at any of the Acts passed by this House, we see that they are not light reading either. The reason is the same: they have to be legally applicable and deal with the legal complexities of the situation that they are set up to face. We should broaden the debate beyond this package when the campaign starts because there are far more important issues even than these to be discussed, but I welcome this Statement.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am grateful to the noble Lord, both for his contribution and for picking up on my misuse of “Commission” when I should have been saying “Council”. He offers a great deal more experience of the European Union and its institutions, the European Council and indeed the United Nations. I am happy to confirm what he just said, particularly his comparison to Denmark. What is proposed in this document is very much in line with what is in place for Denmark, which has existed for over 20 years and remains absolutely legally binding.
Lord Spicer (Con)
My Lords, the Prime Minister says that we will never be part of a European superstate, but what about the acquis communautaire? It is intrinsic to the treaty and has to be addressed. What about the court, which always supports the acquis? What about the polemics of this? The draft agreement in front of us today has in it the objective of not only a single economic state but a banking centralised state, and therefore a fiscal centralised state, and therefore a federal state. The BBC hinted last night that there was a secret plan to deal with these issues, which are fundamental so would require major treaty changes. If that is true, I would be very interested to hear more about this, as I am sure the House would. Is such a plan being worked up on the side? If so, when will we hear about it?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
What is recognised in the documents that have been published is that treaty change may be required in some areas but, until that treaty change occurs, the text will be legally binding; as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, it will be deposited in the United Nations. This is not about avoiding treaty change but about legally binding irreversible decisions, acknowledging that, where treaty change is necessary, that will happen at the appropriate point. The decision document—the first and lengthiest of the documents published by Mr Tusk—makes clear that the European Court of Justice will be required to take account of that document when it is considering any of its judgments.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, there have been quite a number of Eurosceptics who over the past 48 hours have criticised the Prime Minister for not bringing back a provision that would enable our Parliament to opt out of any EU legislation that it wanted whenever it wanted to. We should be absolutely clear about one thing: they are entirely and bitterly opposed to our being part of the single market, whether as a member of the European Union itself or by negotiating, if that proved possible, some access to the single market from outside. The single market is a single regulatory space. If individual members of the single market could pick and choose what they wanted at any time, it would not be a single market; it would be 28 separate and very fragmented markets. If we tried to negotiate access to that market from outside, not only would we not be able to pick and choose in that way—we would have to accept all the rules and regulations—but from then on we would have no role whatever in formulating those rules and in the legislative process.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The noble Lord is certainly right to point out that if the United Kingdom was not a member of the European Union, the way in which it would access the single market would be substantially different, because other countries with a different kind of relationship with the European Union might be able to establish the advantages but do not have an opportunity to influence the rules and how they apply. However, there are people in this House, the other House and the country at large who have long-standing principled views about the European Union that I very much respect. For the first time in over 40 years, we are giving everyone the chance to have their say and decide whether they want to vote us in or out of Europe. I do not want to diminish anyone who has a different view from someone else on this. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, during any campaign on this it will be important that we communicate fairly and effectively with those who have yet to make up their mind about the benefits and otherwise of what is proposed.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, the Government assume that our membership of the EU single market has been good for our economy and that we benefit from the foreign trade arrangements that the Commission is able to secure because of its “clout”. I therefore ask the Government whether they have read a game-changing new analysis from Civitas entitled Myth and Paradox of the Single Market by Michael Burrage. If not, will they do so? It shows that four much smaller countries—Chile, Korea, Singapore and Switzerland—have done hugely better from their free trade deals than we have with the Commission negotiating our free trade arrangements on our behalf. Of course, if we left the political construct of the European Union we would keep our free trade with the rest of the single market—which is all we need—because we are its largest client. They need our free trade much more than we need theirs so it will continue.
I do not have time to deal with the shattering uselessness of the rest of the Prime Minister’s deal, which I understand we shall debate properly soon, but I thought I would ask this question in the mean time, and I look forward to the noble Baroness’s reply.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am confident that those who are closely involved in this process have reviewed every text, document and so forth. I personally have not; I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. The Prime Minister has made clear in his Statement that there are great benefits to being in the European Union that include access to trade. He is also clear that the United Kingdom could survive outside the European Union, but he wants to secure Britain’s membership in a reformed Europe—to negotiate something that would stack up for the people of this country and was then, in the end, for them to decide on.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, is not the fair and sensible verdict on this deal process so far that it is so far, so good? However, will the Minister accept that the really key word in the whole of this debate, and in the processes to discuss in the European Union, is “reform”, which lies at the centre of what I understand my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to be trying to achieve? Would it therefore not be best if London and the UK became—far more than at present—a strong source of ideas for the revitalisation and fundamental reinvigoration of the deeply troubled European Union rather than just a demander of concessions? Is that not the way we now want to go?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
As always, my noble friend has spoken wise words, in that this is not just about trying to get concessions. It is about starting a reform process in Europe. I disagreed with what the noble Baroness said about the way the Prime Minister had approached this because, by starting this, he has kick-started within Europe a recognition that that institution has to change for all its members to prosper. More can be done. He hopes that he can achieve an agreement that will lead to us staying in a reformed Europe and for that to be the beginning of the process, not the end.
Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)
I wonder if the noble Baroness is aware that, for those of us listening to the Statement today who were involved in the 1975 referendum, there was a strong sense of déjà vu as the same arguments went on after Prime Minister Wilson’s renegotiations? I am reminded of my great predecessor Jo Grimond saying, when we were haggling over the terms of entry into the European Community, that it was as though at the time of the Reformation people were not able to make up their minds until they knew what price the monasteries were likely to fetch. When we get to the referendum, can we operate at a slightly higher level?
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, is it not clear that the European Union is incapable of dealing with the greatest challenges which face it— monetary policy and migration—and that it is in decline relative to the global economy? Is it not also evident that supranational political institutions that disregard national sentiment do not endure and that the European Union fails to command the loyalty of its constituent peoples and can therefore be expected to disintegrate, just as did the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia? Should not British policy accord with the march of history?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That was an interesting lesson in history, but at the moment we are concentrating on trying to get a better deal for the British people as regards their current membership of Europe, which I will focus my remarks on today.
Lord Higgins (Con)
Will my noble friend agree that there is an increasing danger—I drew attention to it on Second Reading of what is now the European Union Referendum Act—that voters will express their views as to whether the negotiations have been a success rather than on the more fundamental issues, which will otherwise get crowded out of the debate, and that we will lose the vote in favour of remaining in as a result? Also, should we not be too preoccupied with the rhetoric about ever-closer union when the two main planks of European policy, the euro single currency and free movement of people, are tearing the Union apart? We ought to try to get reform on those matters. However, having said that, the Prime Minister is making progress and I hope it will continue.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am very grateful to my noble friend for his comments and his support. I agree that people will consider how to vote based on their view of the success of renegotiation—although I keep having to preface my remarks by saying that the Prime Minister has not yet reached an agreement with Europe; as he said in his Statement, he has not yet ruled anything out as regards the next steps. Notwithstanding the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, about a higher level, I am sure that we will see lots of debates about the detail. Some things will be of particular concern to certain people, while for many others there will be an instinctive reaction to the debate rather than attention to the detail, and we will have to cover all people’s interests in this important matter.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, whereas British membership of the European Union costs in net terms about £10 billion now, if we left, presumably we would still want to be a member of the single market. After all, half our national trade is there, but on the Norway model—the only rational basis for that membership—that would cost about £7.5 billion. Will the Government explain that over the coming weeks? Admittedly it is less, but not that much less, and we would be bound by future rules determined in Brussels, without our Ministers accountable to our Parliament and our elected parliamentarians accountable to their voters in Britain being able to influence them. That does not seem much of a bargain—we would pay but have no say. Does the Minister agree?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I agree with the noble Lord’s analysis. When we get to the campaigning stage, it will be important to help people to understand that there are most definitely alternative models, but that they come with costs and disadvantages that people will need to be aware of if those are the routes they want to pursue.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the fact that our Prime Minister has had to spend months going all round Europe to secure a minor change to our benefit legislation indicates just how far we have lost the ability to determine our own affairs, which should be at the heart of the referendum campaign? Does she agree with Sir Stephen Nickell, from the Office for Budget Responsibility, that even the plan to stop access to in-work benefits would have “limited impact”? How far does she expect that plan to enable the Government to meet their target of reducing overall immigration to the tens of thousands from a net figure of 380,000? What is the Government’s estimate of the reduction in immigration that will be achieved by that benefit change?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The first thing I would say to my noble friend is that the Prime Minister has spent several months in Europe, negotiating a new deal for Britain. Some of the changes we have already made to welfare benefits and how they apply to people coming from European Union countries do not require any involvement of the European Union, so much so that we have got on and put them in place. Since the election, any European Union citizen coming to this country and who seeks a job will not be able to claim jobseeker’s allowance. If, after six months, they have not found a job, they will be required to leave. These are two of the four commitments that the Prime Minister made in our manifesto.
The other changes covered by the draft proposal set out in the documents address the remaining issues by introducing a sense of fairness that people in this country feel is needed. They are about ensuring that people are not able to take out before they have put in. My noble friend mentioned evidence that was given by Sir Stephen Nickell of the OBR about the effect on immigration. The value of these welfare payments to an average family is about £6,000, so people coming to this country get £6,000 immediately. This is quite a strong incentive for some. While I might not be able to provide a figure from this Dispatch Box today as to how many might be affected if this were no longer available, I am sure it would affect some people.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
My Lords, when will the Government support and promote the European Union and the single market which was a creation of this House and Lord Cockfield? We now have another finance commissioner in Brussels promoting the Capital Markets Union, which is the subject of the next debate. We could say to the British people that not only are we promoting small businesses having access to money and supporting British firms and the consumer by taking advantage of it, but we are also promoting the economy and the City of London for the benefit of all. For goodness’ sake, speak up.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I agree with everything that the noble Lord has said and I think the Prime Minister’s Statement reflects that. It reflects the fact that there is real advantage to the United Kingdom in being a member of the European Union and we will keep on saying so unless and until he gets to a point where he is not able to agree new terms with the European Union and he decides that it is not in the UK’s best interests to pursue it.
The noble Lord is right. If we are able to achieve what the Prime Minister hopes to achieve, then the noble Lord can rest assured that there will be a positive case made for the benefits of Europe.
Lord Tugendhat (Con)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Statement. I believe that the Prime Minister and his fellow Heads of Government all deserve congratulations on having reached a position where the essential objectives of the United Kingdom Government are well on the way to being achieved, while the essential fabric of the European Union is maintained. This is a considerable achievement.
Does my noble friend agree that it is in the interests of the United Kingdom—whether we are in the European Union or whether we are outside—to have unrestricted access to the single market? Does she agree that this is an enduring British interest? If we are to have unrestricted access to the single market, this will have to be taken into account in relation to any agreement on free movement of capital or free movement of people. What has been achieved in relation to immigration is that a formula has been worked out which will enable Britain to do what it needs to do to restrict immigration while not undermining the essential principles of the single market.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Yes, I agree with my noble friend’s assessment. He is quite right that access to the single market is not just about access to trade. It brings with it many other benefits. To partly pick up on my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, my noble friend chaired one of the cross-party committees that reported on TTIP, which we know is ongoing. We do not have that trade agreement in place yet, but this House, cross-party, came out very much in support of TTIP. It is of huge benefit to all members of the European Union. I would point to it as a reason for us wanting to stay in the European Union and I very much hope that all sides of the House agree. I note that the leader of the Opposition in another place was very sceptical and indeed critical of TTIP, but I hope that it is something on which we can join together in promoting as a good thing for Britain.
Lord Jones of Birmingham (CB)
Does the Minister agree that in main street UK this debate and the whole issue of reform will be reduced to a grubby little debate about immigration instead of what reform of this amazing group of 520 million people should be, which is how to enable southern Europe to make enough money to compete with northern Europe, and how to enable the whole lot to be globally competitive in Asia’s century? Why does not reform from the Prime Minister mean that instead of using our taxes to subsidise someone growing olives in Greece we use the same money to skill them up so that they would be welcome immigrants in our country because they would qualify for a job, or they would be qualified in their own country to attract inward investment to work there? If we continue to base southern economies in Europe on exporting olives and importing BMWs, they will go bust.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am not sure that I agree with the noble Lord that the debate on the referendum will resort to being purely about immigration. Indeed, we all have a responsibility to ensure that it does not. In the answers that I have given to other questions already today, I hope that I have highlighted and reassured noble Lords that there is a positive case to be made, and we would have to make it if that is what we were promoting.
However, while I very much understand where the noble Lord is coming from and the arguments that he had just made, it is important that we do not diminish the concerns of people of this country about the current situation on immigration from Europe to the United Kingdom by saying that it is not something that should be addressed. It is part of the package of measures that the Prime Minister sought to negotiate because it concerns people. It concerns them for good reason, because there is a sense of unfairness and injustice about the way that the benefit system works for those who come here from other countries. At the same time, I am also clear that the people of this country are very positive about the important contribution that is made by immigrants from wherever they come.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
Would the Minister agree that the debate will soon have to look at the historic aspirations of the British people? The Minister referred two or three times to the yellow and red card systems—a football metaphor. Taking that metaphor a stage further, would she not agree that the people on the terraces are not little Englanders—to take England for a moment, as opposed to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? They want to be in the Champions League just as at the same time, they want to be in the Premier League. There is no contradiction between the two.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, as is clear from the exchanges today, and yesterday in another place, many parliamentarians want to play a vigorous part in the forthcoming referendum campaign. Can the Minister guarantee that the timetable of the two Houses will be arranged so that there are not impossible clashes, and there is a proper opportunity for parliamentarians on both sides to conduct an elevated and proper campaign?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
We shall of course ensure what we can in providing opportunities for people to debate in this Chamber, but clearly it will be up to individuals how they use their own time during the referendum campaign.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has been trying to get in for some time.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, on the increased subsidiarity provisions that have been agreed, so that some decisions that have in the past been taken at European level will now be taken within the UK, can the Minister confirm that decisions on devolved matters will henceforward be taken in the National Assembly for Wales, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am afraid I shall have to write to the noble Lord on that one. It may be a bit of a technicality. Maybe we just have not got that far in the negotiations; I do not know. But if I can offer any more information in writing, of course I will.
European Union Subsidiarity Assessment: Electoral Law of the EU (EUC Report)
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee on the European Parliament Proposal for a Council decision adopting the provisions amending the Act concerning the election of the members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage (7th Report, HL Paper 87).
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak to both the Motions in my name on the Order Paper. Before I begin, may I place on the record my thanks, and that of my committee, for the work of the incredible staff who serve the committee—particularly Tim Mitchell, a truly talented lawyer, who drafted this report?
In 2009 the treaty of Lisbon introduced new procedures that gave national parliaments the responsibility of policing the application to European Union legislative proposals of the EU’s principle of subsidiarity. It is a responsibility that I, and my colleagues on the EU Select Committee and its six sub-committees, take very seriously. The draft report that forms the basis of this debate was produced by the European Union Justice Sub-Committee, which I chair, and subsequently approved by the European Union Select Committee.
The report recommends that the House should submit to the European Union institutions, under Protocol 2 of the EU treaties, a reasoned opinion stating that it considers that the European Parliament’s proposal for reforming the EU’s electoral law does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. This is a rather timely matter, coming just after the recent debate.
This is the eighth time since 2009 that the European Union Select Committee has recommended this course of action to the House. Unusually, though, this is the first time that the committee has recommended that a subsidiarity reasoned opinion be issued against a legislative proposal brought forward by the European Parliament. That has never been done before.
As the report explains,
“The principle of subsidiarity provides that, in policy areas which do not fall within the exclusive competence of the European Union, but where competence is shared with Member States, the Union can act”—
the following words are a quotation from Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union—
“‘only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States’”.
That, of course, is the principle of subsidiarity. In this way, in order to comply with the principle of subsidiarity, European Union action must be both necessary and add value, as compared to action at the member state level.
The European Parliament agreed this particular significant legislative proposal on electoral reform on 11 November, and sent it to the UK Parliament on 11 December. The intention behind the proposal is to reform the European Parliament’s electoral procedures before the 2019 elections. To this end, the European Parliament has proposed a number of new rules and a range of amendments to the existing EU legislation governing elections to the European Parliament. Somewhat surprisingly, given the power in the treaty under which the proposal has been brought forward, it also includes provisions seeking to clarify the Parliament’s role in appointing the President of the European Commission.
The proposed legislation has been brought forward by the European Parliament under a specific legal basis in the EU treaties calling on it to do so. In late November, as required by the treaties, the European Parliament sent its proposal to the Council. The member states must now agree to the proposal unanimously. Therefore, national vetoes will apply. Key aspects of the proposal are summarised briefly in paragraphs five and six of the report.
In addition to the committee’s two substantive subsidiarity concerns, to which I will turn in a moment, a number of important procedural requirements have not been followed by the European Parliament. These include a requirement to communicate legislative proposals to all national parliaments. This, in turn, sets the timetable for the issuing of reasoned opinions by national parliaments. But it appears that the Dutch Tweede Kammer, the House of Representatives in the bicameral Dutch Parliament, has only very recently received notification of this proposal—indeed, in the last few weeks. Therefore, the application of the usual eight-week window within which national parliaments can issue reasoned opinions is unclear. Does it date from then or back to the date when we, the UK Parliament, received it? Nevertheless, in the interests of issuing a reasoned opinion in the time, we are proceeding on the basis that the deadline expires tomorrow—5 February.
In addition, the European Parliament has failed to accompany its proposed legislation with a,
“detailed statement making it possible to appraise compliance with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality”.
That detailed statement is a requirement by the subsidiarity protocol to the treaties. To our mind, that is a significant omission and makes it very difficult for individual national parliaments to undertake their treaty-imposed obligation to assess the compliance of EU legislative proposals with subsidiarity. I say that as someone who is supportive of the European Union, but it really does fail to live by the standards it has set itself. The absence of a detailed statement should be a matter of real concern to this House.
The assumption underpinning the principle of subsidiarity is that decisions to legislate should be taken as closely as possible to the European Union citizen. The report notes:
“Any departure from this presumption should, therefore, be justified with sufficient detail and clarity so that EU citizens, and their representatives in national parliaments, can understand the”,
reasons for EU action. The Parliament’s failure in this instance makes any assessment virtually impossible. That was the view taken by my committee and endorsed by the full EU Select Committee of this House.
The report argues in paragraphs 12 to 15 that,
“this omission constitutes a clear failure to comply with the essential procedural requirements in the Subsidiarity Protocol”.
The report notes that such a procedural failure is also,
“a ground for judicial review under EU law”.
The report addresses, further to these procedural matters, two aspects of the proposal that my sub-committee believes are difficult to justify in subsidiarity terms—a difficulty exacerbated by the Parliament’s procedural failures. The proposed rules governing the selection of candidates for election to the European Parliament, in particular the imposition of a gender balance requirement, have caused us some reflection. I should make it clear that most of us are wholly supportive of gender balance and want to see that come into being, but this is not the power in the treaty with which to do it. In our view, it really should not be done at the European Union level but by member states in a way that is appropriate for the different nations.
The other matter of concern is the proposed expansion of the existing right to vote in European elections for all EU citizens resident in the EU, to encompass all EU citizens regardless of where they live—in or outside the EU. This seems to be creating an unlimited right to vote in the European Union for citizens, wherever they live in the world, for ever. As we know, European Union citizens who are nationals of a member state are usually confined to a 15-year limit when living abroad to exercise the right to vote. We feel that that incredible extension should be taken at the national level.
The report argues that the European Parliament’s failure to produce the requisite detailed subsidiarity statement, taken in conjunction with the two provisions I have just mentioned, justifies this House’s conclusion that the proposal does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. Once the preliminary issue of subsidiarity has been concluded, my sub-committee will soon begin its formal scrutiny of this proposal.
Lord Garel-Jones (Con)
What is the opinion of the noble Baroness—I am not sure of this myself, which is why I am asking the question—on the process of renegotiation the Prime Minister is currently involved in, whereby what is now called the yellow card would be substituted by a red card? Would it mean that national parliaments could block this proposal if they deemed it the right thing to do?
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
The situation is difficult to imagine. What should be happening here is very clear: a statement should normally be made explaining the justification, but subsidiarity is the primary principle that should be applied. Our concern was that not only was there a failure in terms of the normal proprieties, but that some of the proposals did not fit with subsidiarity at all in any event. We have not moved on to the second stage, but for the moment, I would rather leave the question of whether introducing a red card would somehow mean that one would be able to prevent it automatically. I am sure that my advisers would have an answer to that. We feel that this is precisely the kind of failure that gives the European Union a bad name. We are calling them on it, because if anything upsets citizens in the member states, it is the failure of the Union itself—here, it is the Parliament—to live by its own rules. Really, it is about conforming to the rulebook and that is the reason for this Motion today.
Once the preliminary issue of subsidiarity has been concluded, we will scrutinise the proposals in the normal way. But we are really concerned about the EU’s failure to live up to the standards it has set itself. That is the sort of thing that discredits the Union and causes alarm to many people within the United Kingdom just now—and I say that as someone who is a great supporter of the European Union.
I commend this report to the House and I beg to move.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I am a member of the European Union Select Committee. Unfortunately, I was not present at the Select Committee’s discussion of this proposal; if I had been, I would have said some of the things I am going to say now.
I, of course, do not in any way apologise for, accept, or try to defend what appear to have been administrative mistakes in not sending documents in time to this Parliament or to the Tweede Kamer in the Netherlands; I know nothing about that. Clearly, if people have been remiss in not meeting deadlines, they should be held to account. I totally agree with my noble friend’s comments on that point. However, I am much more concerned with the substantive point she makes, and particularly with the second resolution, which I oppose in principle. I hope that I will have a chance to vote against it but I do not suppose that I will. However, I certainly do not want it said that it went through this House without any voice of dissent at all.
In the Motion before your Lordships, the second resolution says that this proposal of the European Parliament should be set aside on the ground of subsidiarity. It seems to me that any democratic parliament worthy of its name is accountable to its own electorate. Any democratic parliament worthy of its name is responsible, and should be responsible, for its own rules and procedures. It should not be beholden to any organisation outside. It should not be under the command of any outside authority or it is not a democratic parliament. In this case, of course, the European Parliament was set up by the member states through the treaty—we all know that. All parliaments, by definition, have to be set up by somebody other than themselves. This Parliament, which we have the honour to serve, was set up by kings of England—Edward I and subsequent monarchs—who summoned it. That does not mean to say that we expect the monarch or, indeed, the politically elected Executive branch—the Prime Minister or the Cabinet—to fix our rules of procedure or our methods of operation. It would be scandalous for anybody to suggest that and everybody would quite rightly think that that was a threat to the democratic independence of this House. No one has, of course, ever suggested that.
On that basis, it is perfectly reasonable that the European Parliament should make its own proposals for its own future procedures, including for its own electoral system. That is totally right, and it is right that it should do it. Above all, the application of the subsidiarity principle against its doing so seems to me entirely absurd. Of course, only the European Parliament is in a position to judge the functionality of any set of rules or procedures in relation to itself. To ask 28 different national parliaments to make their judgment is crazy. It would probably take 1,000 years for them all to agree on the rules to be adopted and they would not be in a position to assess the functionality and merits of any proposals of that kind in the way that people sitting in the European Parliament would be able to do. Therefore, on both pragmatic grounds and grounds of principle, I oppose this resolution. The principle of subsidiarity—indeed, my noble friend has just cited that principle—deems that matters should be decided at the European Union level only when they cannot be better decided at the level of the member states. I think I have said enough to indicate that this matter certainly could not be effectively decided at the level of the member states—that would be an absurdity. It must be decided at the centre by the European Parliament itself. On that basis, I oppose the second resolution.
Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the report which her sub-committee prepared for my EU Select Committee. I echo her words of thanks to members of that committee and to the excellent staff in drawing this together. It will already be clear from the exchanges that this is an interesting and, to some extent, unprecedented, coincidence in matters connected with process and substance. What we have heard so far has clearly shown deficiencies in a procedure in which, in fairness to the European Parliament—to which I will return in a moment—it has relatively new experience as a co-legislator. Therefore, we can perhaps condone the explanation relating to fault for this matter, although we should not allow it to go unchallenged.
I was not minded to speak in this debate—and will do so only briefly—had it not been for the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford. He and I have known each other for quite a long time. I have huge respect for him and very much enjoy and value his contributions to our Select Committee. As he rightly said, he was not available on the relevant occasion. However, it would have been more helpful had he shared his concerns and dissent with the chairman of the sub-committee and/or myself. With pre-notification, I am sure that we would have done our best not to warn him off but at least to have seen whether we could accommodate those concerns or reflect them in our report. As noble Lords present who have had experience of negotiation will know, we are in the position where in effect a late card has been played and it is a little difficult to handle it at this stage.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I apologise for any discourtesy but, as soon as I saw this resolution on the Order Paper, I mentioned to my noble friend my opposition to it and invited her to make any comments that she wished to make. She made no comments to me on that occasion and I therefore assumed that she did not wish to have a discussion with me on the subject, but I would have been delighted to do so.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, we are now, as it were, in the Chamber and we need to take the argument as it goes. However, for the avoidance of doubt—I hope this reassures the chair of the sub-committee—if any noble Lord is minded to take the temperature of the House, I am very much inclined to defend the sub-committee’s recommendation. I put that on the record.
However, let us take that as past. I add two other points. We have a Motion for a reasoned opinion. We have good reasons for asking for that. Indeed, we made it clear in the report we prepared some years ago for your Lordships’ House on the role of national parliaments—that has already been touched on in relation to the current European negotiations—that a reasoned opinion deserves a reasoned response. In entering a reasoned opinion we seek to enter a dialogue with, and gain an explanation from, the European Parliament, not with the purpose of subverting this move but of getting it into the right order with the right conclusion—no more and no less than that.
That leads me to my final point. When we debated this matter in the Select Committee, I was concerned to make it clear to its members that I would not like it to be seen as an oblique or indirect attack on the European Parliament itself. Some people in these Chambers seek to downplay the role of the European Parliament and even, occasionally, to question its legitimacy. I do not share that view. My view of parliamentary sovereignty is that it is better to have two levels of application and scrutiny than only one. I think that we have a joint and complementary role. I would not claim any great virtue in it but I have laboured long and hard to try to dispel any illusion that we are in any sense at war with Members of the European Parliament and its leadership. This is, I hope, a friendly discussion about procedure and a slightly more substantive one about the levels at which we take this argument forward. It is not a declaration of war or an attempt to create difficulty. I very much commend our report to the House.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, I had not planned to speak in this debate but the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, provoked me to add my tuppence worth. I should clarify to the House that I speak in my capacity as the chairman of another sub-committee of the EU Select Committee—the sub-committee on financial affairs. It is true that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, holds original, interesting and enormously important views, from which certainly my sub-committee benefits every week—week in and week out—and we are very grateful for his presence there.
I, too, was not present when this matter was discussed and when I saw it on the Order Paper I took it upon myself to find out what it was about. I came to the view that—as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and the chairman of the EU Select Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, have said—it was not a provocative gesture but the utilisation of a mechanism that has been hard fought for by this Parliament. This mechanism should improve dialogue and make us co-operate better, because it is an early warning system. It allows us to say, “Hang on, there is an issue here and we need to discuss it”.
I am slightly disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, did not suggest to me that he had opinions on this. I would, of course, have fed them into discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. Speaking only for myself, but as a member of the EU Select Committee, I absolutely support the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.
Baroness Neuberger (CB)
My Lords, I speak as a member of the EU sub-committee on justice. I, too, pay tribute to our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and to our advisers, who have been brilliant. There is very little to add to what has been said but I want to say something about why we felt this was so important.
One argument worth adding is an emotional one. A degree of irritation was felt at the report coming out just before Christmas at a time when parliaments were going in to recess around Europe and there was not time to respond. We have heard that both Dutch Houses did not get it, as far as we can see. We did get it but with very short notice, hence the rush to bring it to your Lordships’ House. So I think there is a degree of irritation.
This is a procedural issue. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, I am rather sympathetic to the report—at least to the matters within on gender equality. I think that that is great but it is not the point we were looking at. It is important to emphasise that we all felt that at a time when there is considerable criticism of the European Parliament and of European institutions more generally, it would have been better—hence this iterative process we hope to engage in—had they stuck to their procedures so that we could stick to ours. We were unanimous on this and I think that for all of us that was the strong argument. Therefore, I think that this should be supported.
Lord Inglewood (Con)
My Lords, unlike the previous speakers I am not a member of the EU Select Committee or its sub-committee. But I was a Member of the European Parliament for 10 years and during that time served on the Legal Affairs Committee and the Constitutional Affairs Committee. It is a truism that it is very important that the European Union, and the European Parliament within it, works on the basis of conferred competencies. In other words, it can only do what it is permitted to do by the treaties that set the institutions up.
As I mentioned, I served a considerable number of years on the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the EP. It is one of its characteristics that in a chamber of enthusiastic pro-Europeans, it is one of the most enthusiastic parts. We saw only a few weeks ago, in the discussions on tax credits between this House and the other place, that parliaments are always angling to gain a bit of territory. You see this in a pronounced form from time to time in the European Parliament. But the important point about this proposal was mentioned at the outset by the noble Baroness: subsidiarity has nothing to do with the merits of the subject in question. The only issue is whether the European Parliament, in its proposals, which are after all not legislation but only draft legislation, has overreached itself. Having looked at it—although not at great length—I think there is a strong case for saying it has.
A separate but important aspect is whether the appropriate procedures have been adhered to. It seems pretty clear that they have not. Therefore, we are looking at a proposal from the European Parliament in the European legislative system, which, as currently drafted, breaches the principle of subsidiarity and which, in any event, has been brought forward in a flawed manner.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I am a member of the sub-committee and I would like to put on record how good it is to serve on a committee chaired by my noble friend. She is a very effective chair and I think everybody on the committee recognises that and is rather inspired by her from time to time. It can be quite entertaining to watch her irresistible charm being put to the cruellest effect.
This report is very important. Of course, all of us who serve on committees that produce reports think that every report is important. But this is a particularly significant one because it touches on much wider issues, which are very close to the current negotiations led by our Prime Minister. I will touch on some of those wider issues.
History is a long process over many decades and centuries. It will examine the proposition that Europe might have had a more effective and powerful story had it gone for a confederal as distinct from a federal approach. Sometimes, what confederations produce has stronger meaning than top-down federal institutions. But that will be resolved in history. It just leaves me to say that I do not believe that the negotiations in which our Prime Minister is involved will be anything like the end of the story. This debate will go on for a long time. Indeed, in much of the evidence that we took this kept coming up as a reality.
I am totally convinced that strong parliaments come from struggle. If we look at our own Parliament, we see that a great number of struggles led to its evolution. We like to talk about it being the most successful parliamentary system in the world. We would do just as well to remember our forebears who struggled, and fought on occasion, to make that a possibility. There is an inevitable struggle going on within the history of the European Union. The struggle is for the kind of Parliament we want. That will go on. If the Parliament is to be effective and to mean anything, it will create awkward occasions. But that does not mean we have to succumb to everything it says. Its recommendations will always be stronger if they have been thoroughly tested. If they do not stand up and are rejected, in the long run that will be a good thing for the evolution of the Parliament itself. The distinguished chair of the EU Select Committee made the point—and I am very glad that he did—that we are not in a war but in a meaningful debate about strengthening institutions. So there our report is highly relevant and should be taken very seriously.
However, there is another issue. I do not know what the perfect description of democracy is and I always feel a bit concerned about people who think they do, because the whole concept of democracy is being tested all the time and going through evolution and change. But for democracy to be successful it must be about empowering citizens—empowering people to be part of the process of the formation of policy that affects their lives. That is what it is about, and that means accountability is very important. One of the fundamental weaknesses of the European Parliament is that it is too remote from people.
I therefore look at the proposition of the European Parliament itself and say that I do not think it is helpful. Should we not be looking instead at how we strengthen the indirect representation of parliaments at the European level? How can a hard-working Member of the European Parliament, many of whom work very hard and with great dedication—the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, was no exception in this respect—on a whole range of issues at the European level with which they are confronted, be effectively part of the politics of the community in which they are living? The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, was a very good exception because he was very much part of the politics of the community in which he lives—I know because I live adjacently to it. But it is asking a hell of a lot.
Similarly, how do you breed a sense of relationship to the big issues that are coming before Europe if national parliaments have no direct feeling of responsibility for Europe? They can have the luxury of being negative, rather than facing up to the responsibility of making a positive contribution. There is a lot to be thought through here. The European Parliament has been getting a bit ahead of the game on this one and may actually be kicking into its own goal—well, perhaps not its own goal as an institution, because it may have institutional ambitions, but in terms of what it is theoretically there to achieve.
I am very glad to have been part of this. It is always extremely challenging for somebody who is not a lawyer to sit on a committee on which there are so many effective lawyers arguing so well, but it is an extremely stimulating committee on which to serve, and our chairmanship is tremendous and has a great strength about it, and is all the time facilitating our work. I hope the House will take this report very seriously and endorse it.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I, too, have the honour of being a member of the sub-committee and I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said about our marvellous chair. I will spare her blushes and not repeat it—he put it far better than I would anyway.
As another non-lawyer on the committee, perhaps it is helpful for me simply to put succinctly what I believe this matter is about. A case for subsidiarity was not made. We are asking for one to be made. It is really that simple and if, rather to my surprise, this does test the mood of the House, I hope we will all support that proposition.
Lord Cashman (Lab)
My Lords, I speak on this subject for the very first time on behalf of the party. Having spent 15 years in the European Parliament, it is a great privilege. The European Union Committee is regarded very highly by the Parliament, the Commission and the Council. Therefore, I see absolutely no reason why a reasoned opinion should not be sent. It would certainly be welcomed by the Council and the Commission.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, put his finger right on it. What we are dealing with is an own-initiative report of the Constitutional Affairs Committee. Like the Legal Affairs Committee and various other committees, when it is not taken too seriously it jumps ahead of itself and puts forward its wish list to the European Parliament. There are some excellent recommendations in the report and I urge your Lordships to read it, as well as the draft proposal, which is annexed. Interestingly, this wish list had to be deferred from going to plenary after it was voted on in committee because there was not enough widespread support for it to gain a majority. It therefore went to the Strasbourg plenary in November.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Kennedy on her chairmanship of the committee and absolutely endorse her reference to the excellent work done by the staff of that committee and, indeed, by the staff who serve us throughout the House. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for his chairmanship of the EU Select Committee. During my 15 years in the Parliament, whenever the European Union Committee visited, it was taken seriously by all Members across the political spectrum.
In this instance, we have an own-initiative report that was agreed at the plenary and was duly sent to the Commission, the Council and the President of the Parliament. There was reference earlier to whether a red card would apply after the Prime Minister’s completed negotiations. A red card operates now, not for the Parliament but indirectly because the Westminster Parliament can make its views known to the Minister and the Minister will then vote against or for in committee. This proposal, if it is to be amended, will have to be agreed unanimously. Interestingly, as I said, there are some good proposals and some that are perhaps indicative of the European Parliament jumping ahead of itself. One is to shift from unanimity to qualified majority voting.
I also advise your Lordships that under the leadership of Dame Glenis Wilmott, the Labour Member of the European Parliament voted against the report, for a number of reasons: ideas of transnational lists—not national or regional but pan-European; internet voting; pan-European party names and logos on the ballot papers; and issues over the single candidate for the EU Commission President. As my noble friend Lord Judd said, all parliaments—particularly the European Parliament and the European institutions, which are so defamed and misrepresented, certainly in the British media—need to make themselves less remote. Indeed, in the body of the report which goes to make up the amended Council decision, that is the stated intention.
Issues of gender equality were mentioned. But I should point out that the proposal calls for gender equality on the list and not in the make-up of Members going to the Parliament. That is to be decided by the voters, whether the lists are open or closed. It also calls for greater openness and transparency in how parties actually select their candidates. That is to be welcomed. It also recognises that as the Parliament, and indeed the Union, has grown in size, it needs to do more to connect with its citizens and the concept of European citizenship.
It is not my intention to detain your Lordships further but I want to make these closing points. As I said, it is an own-initiative report. The moment the clock starts ticking vis-à-vis consultation is when the Commission or the Council produces its draft and then sends it back to the European Parliament to be amended. Thus, the clock starts ticking on consultation and spreading the document further afield than the Commission, the Council and the Parliament.
I welcome the reasoned opinion. It is a good, proactive measure, again signalling the importance of this Parliament not just to subsidiarity and proportionality. Equally, it warns governments, including our own, about how we believe they should proceed when amending the Council decision on European elections. Therefore, I wholeheartedly endorse the work of the committees. I endorse both Motions before us and thank noble Lords for being so patient as I have rambled through my 15 years of experience. I hope I have put it to some good use.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, did not ramble at all. He was very eloquent. I thank the European Union Committee for its report and, much more importantly, for its work in the round. The list of your Lordships who devote time and energy to its work is long, but I thank them all, in particular my noble friend Lord Boswell and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. This committee is a shining example of this House at its very best, picking to pieces legislation and exorcising the devil from the detail.
Before turning to the specific details of this issue, I shall put it in context—context of critical importance. Over the weekend, I reminded myself of public opinion of the European Parliament, since this seems to be the nub of the issue that the proposals are trying to address. The European Parliament is, according to the Parliament itself, suffering from a problem: declining participation rates in its elections. In the early 1980s, voter turnout was over 65%; in the last elections, it had fallen to beneath 42%.
It is worth noting, too, what voters think of the Parliament. Over the weekend I spent a few hours looking in the bowels of the European Parliament’s website. According to its November Eurobarometer survey, while seven out of 10 voters think that it plays an important role in running the EU, just one in four voters has a positive view of the Parliament. Those who do not trust the European Parliament outnumber those who trust it. The main reason given for not trusting the European Parliament is that it is,
“too far away from ordinary citizens”,
as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said. I say this without any glee or satisfaction, but this is the worrying backdrop to the proposals for the reform of European law that the Parliament has itself proposed.
As has been said, these are proposals from some of those in the European Parliament. They believe that this voter apathy and mistrust can be tackled in part by changing how the elections themselves are conducted. They are perfectly entitled to their views and I do not wish to impugn their motives. It is always worth considering whether voter engagement might be improved by changing electoral processes. However, I question, gently, as did the noble Lord, Lord Judd, whether this should be the priority of the European Parliament now, with all the other enormous problems that we are facing.
Consider what voters across Europe have told the European Commission are their priorities. According to polls conducted for the Commission itself last year, immigration, the state of the economy and unemployment are voters’ top three priorities. A relentless focus on identifying credible solutions to these problems in a way that respects national sovereignty is the way to increase public engagement and trust in the European Union.
This brings me to the proposals themselves. As I was reading them, the wise words of the Dutch Government,
“European where necessary, national where possible”,
were ringing in my ears. It is not necessary for Europe to micromanage the system for European elections, whereas it is both possible and desirable for national governments to do so. Unsurprisingly therefore, the Government do not agree with these proposals as they stand. For example, there is no public support for details of European political parties to appear on ballot papers, or for harmonised quotas of women candidates at European elections. Such provisions on electoral law should be a matter for national parliaments and individual political parties.
The Government therefore share the concern of the committee that the proposals do not comply with the principles of subsidiarity and that the issues that they are designed to address should be decided at a national level and not at European level. As the members of the committee have pointed out, there are concerns with the level at which the action is proposed, concerns on whether the measures suggested are proportionate to the issues being addressed and concerns as to their added value.
I shall focus briefly on two particular proposals that the committee has highlighted. The European Parliament has proposed that the lists that the political parties put forward at European elections should ensure gender equality. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, the Government believe that democratic institutions make the best decisions when they have a mix of people with different skills, backgrounds and experiences from across the country. We must ensure that women are better represented across all walks of life. The proportion of women in the British MEP group and that among MPs at Westminster have risen steadily over the years and I hope and expect that they will keep rising in the future. The Government do not, however, consider that it would be right to mandate a legal quota in order to effect change. Nor would it be right to install a one-size-fits-all solution for all countries and all political parties within them.
It is also proposed that EU citizens, including those living or working in a third country, should be able to vote in European elections. Of course, UK law already provides that British citizens living abroad—whether in another member state or otherwise—may register to vote in European elections in the UK for a maximum of 15 years after they were last registered to vote in the UK. The same time limit applies to voting in UK parliamentary elections. The Government are committed to scrapping the rule that bars British citizens who have lived abroad for more than 15 years from voting and will introduce stand-alone legislation to deliver this as a permanent change in due course. However, the Government share the committee’s concern that this sort of issue should be decided at a national level.
I shall also comment briefly on the European Parliament’s proposed changes to the way that the President of the European Commission is selected—the so-called Spitzenkandidaten process. The position of President of the European Commission is obviously important, so changes in this area need to be forensically scrutinised. If there are to be changes to the way the President of the Commission is selected, these changes must be seen as wanted and necessary by all member states. Consensus among member states is absolutely vital. The Government remain of the view that selection of the Commission President should remain a European Council decision and based in current EU law. The European Parliament has the right to draw up proposals under Article 223(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union regarding the election of its members and it is within its rights to propose measures relating to that. However, it is the scope of these measures, both individually and as a whole, that is problematic where they breach subsidiarity.
Finally, there is the issue of the veto. All member states would need to approve the proposals in order for them to take effect. Perhaps anticipating some nations’ opposition to these proposals and their tenor, draft Article 14 proposes to remove the veto for these matters. This, too, is unacceptable, as it would be wholly inappropriate for issues such as these to be decided by QMV.
Therefore, the Government wholeheartedly share the committee’s concerns on subsidiarity, both in terms of the content of the proposal and as regards procedural aspects. An important part of ensuring compliance with subsidiarity is the requirement for EU institutions to provide a robust assessment and justification for why an objective can be better achieved at EU level. As the committee has highlighted in its report, the case has not been made.
It is worth noting that the UK Government are not alone in having reservations regarding these proposals. During early discussions, other member states have expressed concerns on these proposals. Some 16 chambers from 10 member states have signed a letter to the European Parliament expressing their concerns on procedure regarding national parliaments. Similarly, a number of parliaments are considering issuing reasoned opinions on these measures.
All too often, the EU has exercised power in areas where decision-making could and should be done at a national, regional or local government level without interfering with the operation of the single market or the effective functioning of the EU. The EU must respect the layers of government that are closest and most accountable to European citizens, and national parliaments have a key role to play in ensuring that happens.
In conclusion, politicians across Europe wish to increase political engagement and trust in politics. This Government believe that the way to do this is by strengthening the role of this Parliament and of all national parliaments. Europe should focus on advancing our prosperity and security—the issues that citizens care about. For these reasons, the Government cannot and will not support the draft proposals that the committee has so expertly scrutinised.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, I thank all my noble friends for their participation in this debate. We have learned a lot about the importance of dialogue, which is the message that comes through from the Motion.
My noble friend Lord Davies mentioned to me last night that he would be opposing the second Motion. We did not have any discussions about it, because I was speaking to amendments to the Immigration Bill and it was not a time when I could enter into a discussion with him. However, I hope that, having been absent from the discussion in the Select Committee, he has been persuaded after having had the benefit of hearing the good reasons why we reached the conclusion that there should be a reasoned opinion and why the report was created in the way that it was.
As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, this is not about being antagonistic towards the European Parliament but about pointing out why procedure matters. It is very important for the relationship between member states and the Parliament in the European Union. These ways of working are important and it is how you inspire trust. I hope that the House will support the Motion and that my noble friend Lord Davies will, too.
European Union Subsidiarity Assessment: Electoral Law of the European Union
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
To resolve that this House considers that the European Parliament Proposal for a Council decision adopting the provisions amending the Act concerning the election of the members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, for the reasons set out in the 7th Report from the European Union Committee (HL Paper 87); and, in accordance with article 6 of the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, instructs the Clerk of the Parliaments to forward this reasoned opinion to the Presidents of the European institutions.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion in my name.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn) (Con)
The question is that the second Motion on the Order Paper in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, be agreed to. As many as are of that opinion will say content.
Capital Markets Union: A Welcome Start (EUC Report)
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Harrison
That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Capital Markets Union: a welcome start (11th Report, Session 2014–15, HL Paper 139).
Lord Harrison (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to introduce this EU Committee report, Capital Markets Union: A Welcome Start. A year and a day ago, the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, gave evidence to the EU Economic and Financial Affairs Sub-Committee—which I then had the honour of chairing—in advance of the publication of the European Commission’s Green Paper Building a Capital Markets Union on 18 February 2015. We undertook a short inquiry into the Green Paper, of which this report is the result. The report is based on our evidence session with the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and on a discussion among interested parties on 10 February. Incidentally, Jonathan Faull, who was then the right-hand person of Commissioner Barnier, participated in that discussion. I thank Katie Kochmann, who was our policy adviser, for convening that very important discussion, and John Turner and Stuart Stoner, who have been the clerks of the committee. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, for allowing me to speak today, and to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho, who I know cannot stay for the whole debate because he is going to another part of Europe—deepest Northamptonshire.
Capital markets provide, among other things, an alternative to bank lending for business. The Green Paper stressed that the market was fragmented, leading to overreliance on banks and problems for small businesses in accessing funding. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, told us that,
“the purpose of Capital Markets Union is to make it easier to link savings to growth and to channel savings from anywhere in the EU to be invested in businesses anywhere in the EU. The goal is a true Single Market in capital”.
The Green Paper makes many references to the fact that, in the United States, capital markets make up a higher proportion of the borrowing and lending market. By contrast, in Europe, bank-based funding makes up the majority of those channels into the economy. The key theme of capital markets union is about rebalancing and generating greater diversification of funding channels. As indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Hill, from the beginning the process would be legislation-light and involve reviewing legislation, proposing it only where necessary. Might the Minister reflect on whether that has been achieved, as we are in midstream? Perhaps he could also think about the Dutch presidency, which has made this a focus of its six months. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us of any discussions he has had with his Dutch friends.
As well as suggesting ways to diversify financing sources, the CMU Green Paper suggests methods to reduce fragmentation in the financial markets, to strengthen cross-border capital flows—incidentally, only 6% of capital flows at the moment are encouraged by cross-border financing—and to improve access to finance for businesses, especially of course for small businesses. I wonder again whether the Minister will reflect on the importance of small businesses, which I think we have not always permitted, allowed or released into the workings of the European Union single market.
The paper identifies challenges such as the fact that investment in Europe remains heavily reliant on banks—something like 80% of finance in Europe is drawn from banks, whereas in the United States more like 80% is drawn from the capital markets. That is a very important difference. What more has been done to reduce the barriers and make the rules and market practices, which differ for certain financial products across the European Union, more helpful? There is also of course the inhibiting cultural element in that shareholders and corporate debt buyers rarely invest across borders. Again, what more can we do about that?
As the title of the report suggests, the committee welcomed the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and, later, the Green Paper. We concluded that the proposals could,
“provide an opportunity to create a … Single Market in capital by diversifying funding and improving investment opportunities across the EU”.
We also noted that:
“The proposals aim to spread and mitigate risk throughout the financial system, while at the same time tackling … regulatory and administrative barriers and the cultural obstacles to growth”,
which I have talked about before. We also said:
“We particularly welcome the commitment to ensuring that Capital Markets Union is for all 28 Member States”,
which is very important for us now, especially in the Government’s negotiations, which are coming to some kind of fruition, and not just for the eurozone countries. In addition, we noted that a fully developed capital markets union would help to absorb any future asymmetric shocks across the union that might be prompted, thereby, of course, reducing the vulnerability of the European Union economy.
The Commission advocated a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach, consulting so-called shareholders widely. It also advocated a gradual process over a number of years, with the first stage being introduced through a capital markets union action plan later in 2015. That action plan was indeed published in October last year on the basis of responses made to the Commission’s consultation, among which our report figured.
I will not enumerate all the actions proposed in the plan but will talk briefly about some of those which have been introduced. Again, I encourage the Minister perhaps to reflect on the many actions of those he would seek to enhance and endorse. The action plan recognises that banks are lenders to a significant proportion of the economy and act as intermediaries in capital markets, and therefore will play a central role in capital markets union. The Commission has therefore introduced a securitisations regulation with the aim of creating a framework for simple, transparent and, indeed, standardised European securitisation to free up capacity on banks’ balance sheets and provide access to investment opportunities for long-term investors.
When we took evidence last February, we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted. I am so pleased that she is contributing today, as she has spent five years saving British bacon in her role as the chair of the appropriate European Parliament committee. She told us that securitisation had not been particularly problematic in the European Union but had suffered reputational damage because of the US subprime crisis. I look forward to her comments on that. The European securitisation market had regrettably shrunk in terms of issuance volume from €367 billion in 2009 down to €156 billion in 2014, with barely half of that volume placed with investors.
We therefore welcomed the priority placed by the Commission on building a high-quality securitisation market on the grounds that these markets had a key role to play in managing and transferring risk in the financial system and lowering the costs of funding and restoring growth and jobs to the top of the agenda. We cautioned, however, that there were obstacles to achieving greater standardisation and transparency for small business securitisations thanks to the intrinsic informational asymmetry. We need a more common and recognised system across what is actually being offered.
The proposed securitisations regulation was the first legislative action emanating from the CMU action plan to be introduced, and a general approach was reached in Council before Christmas last year. I understand that trilogues are taking place between the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament. I am particularly alive to concerns that fragmentation could occur between those securitisations which are indeed standardised and transparent and those which are not—again, perhaps the Minister might reflect on whether he shares concerns in that area—and between the EU and other international regulatory regimes. Under securitisation, there are 29 criteria which it will be very important to comment on.
Alongside the CMU Green Paper, the Commission launched a review of the prospectus directive. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, told us at the time that it was important to review the prospectus directive to see if it was possible to reduce burdens on issuers, to make it easier and more affordable to raise funds. The consultation paper noted in particular the lengthy, complex and expensive process of getting a prospectus approved by the national competent authority, and that practices at a national level differed considerably.
We welcomed the review, noting that it was important to ease the burden of issuers, particularly small-business issuers, and to increase the consistency of approach to liability and sanctions across member states. However, we did warn that consumer protection must not be weakened, as doing so might reduce the demand for any new financial instruments that might be devised. A balance needs to be struck to ensure that markets are attractive, both for issuers and investors.
The action plan included a proposal to modernise the prospectus directive. What has emerged is a new regulation to replace it and, again, I look forward to action to help small businesses publish a prospectus. Again, the Minister might like to reflect on that. He also might like to reflect that of course we mention in our paper peer-to-peer lending, which is not my lending him five bob for a cup of tea, and crowdfunding, both of which have enormously increased. The finance firms have doubled their lot in terms of peer-to-peer lending from last year, from €2.2 billion. Christine Farnish, the chair of that section of funding, said that that industry is a real alternative to the traditional lenders, which are typically the banks.
I will conclude by briefly touching on the implications for the role of the United Kingdom. We concluded that the CMU project was a significant opportunity for the UK positively to promote the importance of capital markets, benefiting not just the UK economy but the EU as a whole. We encouraged the Government and the UK financial sector to share best practice with other member states while recognising that the United Kingdom could itself learn from others; I look forward to hearing from the Minister in a minute.
I did take the opportunity, when the Statement was repeated by the Leader of the House just now, to make a suggestion about capital markets union. The single market was the creation of Lord Arthur Cockfield in this House when he was the British Commissioner 20 years ago. I wonder whether the Government might become more positive about what they are intending to do by holding this referendum, get on the front foot and say that there are benefits from the single market which are considerable for the European Union and for the United Kingdom. In collaboration with the Dutch presidency, why not invite the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to be a chair or at a meeting which promotes and reports on the capital markets union, something where the Prime Minister might actually stand up and say, “This is why we are in the single market and in the European Union, because it helps the City of London, it helps small businesses, it helps consumers, and it helps us become abuzz and alive again as a trading nation”? I beg to move.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, first, I thank our late chairman—if I call him that it is in the right sense—the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for his huge contribution to the work of the sub-committee, which I am privileged still to sit on. He did an enormous amount of work. This report is another testimony to the success he achieved, but he would not have done it without the support of the backroom team. I also give my personal thanks to Stuart and Katie for their hard work, and to John Turner, who is now filling that role.
At the seminar we held about a year ago on 10 February, Hugo Dixon said of the CMU that it is,
“a slogan in search of a policy prospectus”.
What an indictment. The principles of the free movement of capital were enshrined in the treaty of Rome, which is 59—nearly 60—years old. It shows how little has been achieved in those 59 years and how much has yet to be achieved to meet the aim of the principles of the treaty of Rome.
In that respect, we are extremely fortunate to have the present Commission. It is a vast improvement on the previous one, but they will not all be like this. In particular, we need to look at the role of my noble friend Lord Hill. His title is worth bearing in mind and is very relevant to the debate. He is the European Commissioner, Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union. For the first time, the Commission has given the right title for somebody to get on and do the job.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, mentioned some of the needs for a capital markets union. It is quite clear that the banks are struggling and not meeting their objectives. It is worth remembering that new lending in the eurozone is lower today than it was 10 years ago. That is a terrible indictment of our financial system in Europe and bad news for all our companies.
The collapse in lending has now got to the state, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, where roughly 80% of companies’ debt comes from the banks, whereas in America it is under 20%. That is a huge area that the EU needs to improve on. We must retain our banks. The capital markets union must complement how the banking system works, but the figures I have given show that a huge structural problem needs to be addressed. A good capital markets union will address not just that structural problem but others, such as the pensions problem in Europe, which is grossly underfunded and needs finance, and the infrastructure problem. With the banks pulling back from infrastructure problems, how will Europe raise the €2 trillion of investment that it needs in telecoms, transport and energy infrastructure by 2020?
Europe needs to build bigger and better capital markets. According to figures that have been given to me, there has been a shortfall of more than $1 trillion a year between what European companies raised in capital markets and what they could have raised if we had operating in Europe a proper system of capital markets, as developed in the US. On 26 different measures, European capital markets are only half as big and deep as they would be if they were in the US. That is the size of the problem we face.
The action that the EU has already taken has been good. There has been substantial progress and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will update us. A regulation on securitisation and an amendment to capital requirements has been proposed, but perhaps more importantly, it is worth stressing that the drafting of the prospectus directive has been revised. This shows that the Commissioner is prepared to return to a problem to try to get a better solution. In evidence to us, which noble Lords can find on page 50 of our report, Jonathan Faull showed how difficult it was to get agreement on the prospectus directive. It was about getting the balance and what was required for the SMEs, and keeping investors interested without imposing excessive burdens. The fact that this has been revisited—we hope that progress will be made on it—shows that the Commission is more interested in listening to the concerns and in trying to get a sensible solution.
A number of problems still remain, some of which the report drew attention to. I highlight the first one in particular. In paragraph 90 we refer to the fact that significant obstacles remain, and to the problem of the financial sector being treated as silos. Has any progress been made on this? If no progress is made on that front, the capital markets union will never be the success it should be.
Paragraph 11 addresses a more difficult area that the Government alone cannot tackle: the problem of culture. There is a big difference between the culture of the EU financial market and the UK financial market, as was pointed out to us by a number of experts. There are differing “entrenched cultural norms”, and saving trends tended to be “compartmentalised” within different member states. The attitude to business failure is very different and insolvency laws are different, as are cultural and legal traditions. I was particularly struck by comments made during our seminar by Sharon Bowles—now the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles—who, luckily, is with us today. It shows the advantage of this House that she is back in a legislative Chamber. She raised exactly these points, and I look forward to hearing what she has to say and hope that she will expand on them. Unless the culture can change, it poses a serious hazard to sensible implementation.
There are also problems, as I said, surrounding insolvency law, security laws and tax. I ask my noble friend: is the Commission being too slow in tackling this? Do we expect a speedier response in future? Is the Commission doing enough to protect the retail investor and the consumer? There has been limited progress on this front. These are difficult issues. It is quite natural for the Commissioner to tackle the easy problems first, but as you start to dig deeper these are the problems that need to be addressed. I would like an update from my noble friend on that.
Another problem area is the Government’s response, which was one and a half sides of A4. That in itself was not so bad, as they had given a full reply to the CMU Green Paper; my concern is that the Government are so in agreement with the committee. That makes me think this is quite an easy ride. It is not. This will be a long, slow, drawn-out process. Given the amount of enthusiasm shown, we have to pay twice as much attention to the detail—I see the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, nodding. I am reminded of the financial transaction tax: not until our report came along did the Government wake up to the hazards. We will need to be very certain that the Government are alive to any pitfalls before us.
I want to return to one other matter before I conclude. These are the problems in Europe. There have been a number of different measures assessing how the market works throughout Europe and the relative depth of the capital market across Europe. As I said, it is not even. In fact, on every measure the rest of Europe is behind the UK. Therefore, to a lot of the countries we are talking a language they do not understand. We take it for granted. We have been brought up with it in this country. We know what the financial sector is. For many in Europe, it is not as easy as we think it is: it is much more complicated. I ask the Government to make certain that when the Prime Minister is doing his rounds, he explains in words of one syllable what the differences are and how important this is.
I wish the CMU well. Industry has to play its part. The Government cannot do this alone. Industry has to change, adapt and be very proactive to get these measures, which will bring so much benefit, on to the statute book.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl. I agree with the points that he made and agree particularly warmly with his very generous but justified tribute to our chairman, my noble friend Lord Harrison, in the previous session. He was a really perfect chairman and there was no day when we felt that we were not extraordinarily well chaired. This report is just one of the accomplishments of the committee under his chairmanship. I thought at the time that he would be an impossible act to follow, but we now have a new, very effective chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, who is taking part in the debate this afternoon. Both these chairmen have the four qualities that seem to be essential for the role. They are always enthusiastic, they are always conscientious, they are always decisive and they are very fair. They may have differences in personality—they are well-known and respected Members of the House—but they have those qualities very strongly.
There are three important considerations in this issue of a capital markets single union. One is a central and obvious one for this country: we have a great deal of human and financial capital invested in the City of London. We stand really better than anybody else in the European Union to benefit from the emerging capital markets union, if it is in fact a real success. That has obvious implications for growth in this country, and for the generation of employment. This is of considerable—indeed, exceptional—national interest within the single market for this country.
Secondly, my noble friend Lord Harrison has made the point well that there is general agreement that it is necessary to try to provide a wider source of finance in the form of both working and long-term capital for British industry and commerce, as well as for continental industry and commerce. The 80% market share in the field of the banking system in the single market is a healthy state of affairs neither for business, commerce and industry, nor for the banking system. To introduce a greater measure of competition and greater sources of finance of this kind is an important undertaking. Again, there is strong welcome for it from both sides of this House and across the whole of the European Union. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, has a task and is being looked to by many people to accomplish it successfully, and I trust and hope that he will.
The third important consideration in this context is that there has been much talk about the relative inadequacy in the euro area of mechanisms allowing for some stabilisation in the event of asymmetric shocks. As the House knows, there is a lot of controversy about the degree of transfer payments that ought to be provided for to make a successful euro area. Whether or not we are members of the euro, we all obviously have an interest in the success and stability of that area.
What is immediately apparent to any observer is that in the United States, which is obviously a successful currency union by whose experience we ought sensibly to allow ourselves to be guided, the capital markets play a major role in that stabilisation process. That is not to say that there are not elements in that process played, importantly in the United States, by federal funds and federal government money, but it is clear that the capital markets play the major role there. That is because in a single-currency area, you eliminate exchange risk for investors within the area, which is one of the automatic results in creating the currency area in the first place. One of the advantages of creating the euro in much of the European Union has been that that effect has been generated. People are therefore naturally inclined to hold more widely diversified portfolios, going across the whole of that area. If they want to buy a pharmaceutical, automotive or retail share for their portfolio, they will not be limited by what is in their own country—previously they would have been, because they would not have wanted to incur foreign-exchange risk in many cases—but they will look equally well at a share or bond in one of those particular sectors in any other country that is part of the same currency union. That process takes some time to develop. It would be unrealistic to expect that we would have achieved the same levels of diversification in the euro area as has been achieved in the United States, but the process is ongoing and it is an important one.
The United States is working very well at present. Texas and Oklahoma lose out from the fall in the price of oil, but California, New York and Massachusetts gain. At the same time a lot of people in Texas have shares and bonds in or other claims on companies in California, New York or Massachusetts. They gain that way. Equally, a lot of investors in those three states will have claims on Texas and Oklahoma; they will share in some of the losses. There is a sharing of risk and a stabilisation mechanism there, and it is desirable that these should develop in the European Union. It will do so pretty much automatically if we can make real progress in creating a capital markets union.
I would like to make two further points to add to the considerations in our report. One is a matter that has become more serious since we published the report. In many ways I am sorry that it has taken us so long to have this debate. Nevertheless, it gives me an opportunity to talk about a new threat. On a recent visit to Brussels I was informed that the Commission may well not be pursuing the idea of an insolvency directive, whose objective would have been to create a common insolvency law throughout the European Union. If that is the case it is regrettable, and a serious reverse for the prospects of the capital markets union. If the point does not appear immediately obvious, I shall explain why. Any investor is concerned with the claims that he or she will have in the event of insolvency. Insolvency does not preoccupy many people if they buy a AAA-rated bond or a blue-chip share, but logically it becomes a disproportionately important issue at the riskier end of investment. For example, private placements, peer-to-peer lending—that has already been referred to—and venture capital are precisely the areas that we want to see expand and where we are at a competitive disadvantage to the United States, where those sources of funds are much more developed. So that is quite serious.
If an investor is confronted with the possibility of such an investment in another country with whose insolvency laws he is not intimately familiar, or not as familiar as he is with his own, he probably will not spend tens of thousands of pounds or euros on getting legal advice on the regime and jurisprudence in insolvency in the country in which he is thinking of making an investment. He probably will just not make the investment there. He will probably make it in his own country, and will not therefore get the single market or the capital markets union effect that we are trying to go for. Insolvency is very important and in my view that objective must be pursued energetically. I hope that the Minister can tell us in his winding-up speech that the Government are committed to an insolvency directive and whether they are doing anything to push the initiative forward. That is very important. The Government appear to have quite a lot of influence in the European Union, if the events of the past two or three days are anything to go by, so I hope that they will add that to their agenda.
My other point is that at present there are two initiatives in the EU in the capital markets and financial area that currently are separate, but that separation is not sustainable, viable or logical. There is a project of banking union and a project of capital markets union. It so happens that we are part of the capital markets union—a very big part, I hope—but not of banking union. I do not quite understand why we are not a part of banking union; in our sub-committee, presided over by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, I have asked many experts why we are not and I never get a very respectable answer except “politics”, which in my view is not a respectable answer to an important issue affecting the national interest. First, if we are not members of banking union, it seems that we shall face higher compliance costs in this country because banks operating across the EU will have to have compliance operations covering their activity in the euro area, or in the banking union area, and different compliance arrangements in this country, which is not part of the banking union. That is very undesirable.
Secondly, there will be the inevitable temptation to go in for regulatory arbitrage, which is bad from an economic point of view because it is distortionary and, of course, makes a mockery of the whole system. Thirdly, I do not think that the distinction is robust, viable or sustainable. Take, for example, shadow banking, money market funds, securitisation and indeed the development of a secondary market in securitised bank loans: are those to do with banking union or with capital markets union? The answer could be both as they could be categorised as either, so it is not a very sensible distinction to make. If we try to make it again, we will have regulatory arbitrage, costs, confusion and a lack of transparency and certainty—all the things that we are trying to avoid by creating a capital markets union in the first place. That would be very perverse and unfortunate, and I hope that people will think very seriously about that because this is an area where there is unfinished business and which is very important to this country.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the two senior members of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who I am delighted to see is on the road to recovery after his recent illness.
Listening to what the committee says about the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, it feels, sitting in the chair as I do now, as if he is a very hard act to follow. However, it is a stellar committee served by a stellar secretariat, and I have great pleasure to be leading it at this point in time.
The noble Lord has covered the main elements of the proposals that foreshadowed the subsequent action plan launched by the noble Lord, Lord Hill, in late September last year to bring about an improvement in capital markets in the EU. Given the wide spread of issues that other noble Lords have spoken about, I shall confine my remarks to one or two current issues that have come to light since the report was published.
In commenting on the publication of the committee’s report, I express the committee’s frustration that the business managers of this House do not seem able to schedule business in any sort of timely manner. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, is not here to hear this. That is a widely repeated refrain across the sub-committees yet just the other night we rose at 7 pm, and there have been many similar previous occasions. So we come to a situation where, by the time we finally discuss matters covered by a report as long ago as 20 March 2015, a lot of water has passed under the bridge regarding things that are of huge import to this country’s financial sector.
I should add that the UK’s financial sector does not hold back. On the Commission’s Green Paper consultation on capital markets union, which is the subject of this report, 95% of the responses came from the United Kingdom, with 65% from Belgium—presumably because organisations based there have an interest in it—and 57% from France. This demonstrates that the UK not only engaged actively but did so because it will be a huge beneficiary of the proposed changes, as we were told across the board when we visited Brussels last week.
To quote the noble Lord, Lord Hill, in the Financial Times last September when he launched the Action Plan on Building a Capital Markets Union:
“This is a good example of the practical benefits that membership of the single market can bring. But to make the most of it, and to help influence the rules which will set the terms of engagement for years to come, the UK needs to be shaping the system—not looking on while others set the rules”.
These are very wise words in the now excitable atmosphere of the UK renegotiation.
We have seen over 40 legislative and non-legislative measures in the area of financial regulation since the crisis of 2008. Many of them have been necessary, but it has taken some time for the scale of the problem of illiquidity in capital markets to become apparent, for the rigidity of national insolvency laws regarding capital markets—something commented upon a moment ago by the noble Lord, Lord Davies—to be overcome, and for the retail financial services sector to be kick-started across the EU, which is sorely needed. The EU economy is roughly the same size as that of the US but its equity markets are less than half the size. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, estimated that if European venture capital markets were as deep as those in the US, over the past five years EU companies could have raised an extra €90 billion of badly needed investment.
I said I would update the House on one or two of the measures, and the House has already heard from noble Lords on both of them. One of them concerns securitisation, the first major piece of work undertaken under this heading. It is intended to create a simple, transparent and standardised framework for the regulation of securities in order that a prudent and diligent investor in asset-backed securities will be better able to analyse and price the risk involved. This should considerably reduce the capital charges imposed on banks and insurers when they invest. It will also bring much-needed transparency to the pricing of risk through standard templates and require originators, sponsors and original lenders to retain risk of not less than 5%. In other words, it will ensure that those investors and insurers have a dog in the fight, albeit a very small dog at 5%. That shortcoming was exposed during the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2008.
The UK has a significant interest here: it accounted for 22% of European securitisation issuance in 2014 and 46% of the investor base. However, the proposals have come under fire as they do not envisage an overarching regulator determining whether a securitisation meets the criteria required. This criticism is mainly from France, I should add, where the concern is that only the biggest investors would have the expertise and resources to enter the market, but this remains a valid concern, as the urgent need is also to enable SMEs to access capital markets more readily. I hope that in due course, as the proposals bed down, the secretariat of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, will have another look at this.
A further change has come about with agreement on Solvency II, which came into force on 1 January and will impact the insurance industry hugely as it revises and updates the current solvency framework in the EU. It does this through reducing the risk of insolvency, reduces losses to policyholders and gives an early warning to supervisors so that they can intervene promptly if capital falls below the required level. It intends to promote confidence in the financial stability of the insurance sector though creating a more level playing field. It has taken a long time to get here—its origins go back to 2002—and its effects will undoubtedly take some time to work through, but overall, despite the reservations of some parts of the UK insurance industry, I argue that it can only be a good thing to level the playing field.
We are in the middle of scrutiny of the Prospectus Regulation and it is too early to say where this will end up. However, since the Minister is here, I hope that he will take on board the following thoughts: that we as a committee find it a little frustrating that we do not receive more feedback from relevant Ministers as to their consultation with stakeholders. This regulation will considerably impact on the SME sector raising the threshold definition of an SME from €100 million to €200 million in market capitalisation. It would be important for us—particularly in the case of regulations where we are the backstop of scrutiny—to hear what industry voices have said and what their discussions with the Treasury have revealed in terms of our scrutiny function.
Finally, let me turn to the issue of economic governance as set out in President Tusk’s detailed proposals on Tuesday. The section on economic governance says that eurozone members should respect the rights and competences of non-participating member states. He goes on to argue that facilitating the coexistence between different perspectives within a single institutional framework is important and that the equality of member states before the treaties should be upheld.
I accept that it is still early days but there is a need for clarification on a number of fronts. Mr Tusk refers to discrimination in the text but goes on to say that different treatment must be based on objective reasons. The question arises as to how we define objective reasons and whether it is to be left to the court to adjudicate between objective reasons on the one hand and action arising on the basis of financial stability on the other, an area where differential treatment is allowable. I suspect that differential treatment will be allowable but only up to a point, and the question will be: which point? I hope the Minister will be able to relate these concerns back to the negotiating team.
Today’s Financial Times says in its headline that the safeguards’ impact on the City remains unknown. This is not a party political point; it is imperative that we gain clarity on this before the European Council and its final conclusions on the negotiation on 18 and 19 February.
To conclude, the sub-committee’s report is titled Capital Markets Union: A Welcome Start. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, has started on this exercise. We wish him all success in delivering the capital markets that Europe so badly needs.
Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am not so sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, will actually get an answer to the question she has just posed in time for the onset of the referendum campaign and the declaration from the European Council negotiations, but I hope she will. I hope the Government will be able to respond because it is a very pertinent question.
Despite the fact that it has taken a long time for this debate to be held—I agree with the complaints about that—I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for opening this debate and for having been such a successful chairman of this sub-committee. I do not want to embarrass him but I am reminded of that famous joke about a human cannonball who was injured—not seriously, I hasten to add—in a circus in Britain some years ago, and the ringmaster wrung his hands in panic and said that it would take him years to find another man of the same calibre. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for having been such an excellent chairman of this committee. In this case there is another person of the same calibre—in this case a woman—namely the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, so we welcome her and wish her well in this committee.
It is not an easy task to promote this document and these recommendations because the timetable is long, and that is likely to mean that it is going to be depressing as well, but we have to really press hard, particularly with our natural authority as one of the leading marketplaces of the European Union and the strength of the City of London, where as we know the biggest dealers in the euro are found. It has to be pressed very hard and I hope the Government will do so, perhaps in contrast to their rather restricted enthusiasm about being an integrated member of the single market syndrome for financial markets as we are for the single market in physical products. They are not so keen on other aspects of the European Union membership obligations that we have in respect of the items that have been enunciated in the negotiations for the referendum campaign.
I regret that very much because I think we need to maintain our enthusiasm for the European Union anyway. In this field it is much more difficult because, as other speakers in this debate have said, the level of development in other countries is much lower. This is one where we are ahead; while Britain has improved in recent years, none the less we sadly find that we are behind other member states in industrial performance and behaviour. The Government talk in the referendum negotiations about the need for enhancing competitiveness in Europe, and I agree entirely. They mean different aspects of course but it is amusing to reflect that we are the only large member state that has a huge trade deficit of rather ominous size, whereas the other large members states—Germany, Italy, France and, I think, Spain—have a considerable trade surplus with Britain. A little bit more modesty in that context would come in handy, but in this particular area we are ahead.
I was a long-standing practitioner many years ago in the stock markets in the City of London. It is interesting to see how we have always maintained that lead by bringing size, capacity and influence of operation together; then the big bang really enhanced that. To some extent this is a kind of European-wide big bang exercise, not promoted just by private enterprise but also by legislation, as was the case in Britain. France followed with its own big bang a year after Britain and other countries followed suit. However there are still areas of lack of development. For instance in Germany, the biggest and most successful economy, surprisingly we find that financial markets are much less developed, notwithstanding the promulgation 14 years ago, I believe, of the Finanzplatz Deutschland scheme which helped to open up German stock markets. They opened up quite considerably at the margin but only a little bit proportionally. Therefore Germany also needs to take an interest in this field, because there are very strong beliefs there in the single market aspects in general and there should be on financial things as well. Their industry and smaller, Mittelstand companies are dominated by their relationships with the banks.
That is an aspect of how the culture takes a long time to change and patience is needed for that to happen. In other countries it can be quicker, particularly in the new member states where these matters may be much less developed, and therefore are more likely to be able to operate on the basis of new proposals coming from the Commission, which would gradually integrate these markets more and more.
I was delighted too when the noble Lord, Lord Hill, went to be the Commissioner for Financial Services and Markets. We were sad to lose him as Leader of this House—a very capable Leader with a sense of humour, which you need in that position—and he is now becoming a very successful Commissioner with exactly the right portfolio from the point of view of this country. We wish him well on his very hard-working and patient track to success, which will take some time.
I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, when he was referring to the advantages in the United States of the open market system, the vast amount of money raised in the capital markets and the various desirable and productive effects of that. However, perhaps he should not get too carried away because in contrast to that the worrying problem in the United States is the level of debt that has been accumulated in the public sector and by Government, as well as elsewhere. The level of debt in the United States is a very serious problem and we need a balanced view of that. As long as everybody in the world is prepared to accept the greenback as the world’s leading reserve currency, then it is all right, but as the federal debt alone in the United States is $17 trillion, and half the states and 40 American cities are technically bankrupt, then that has to be held in check because one day it might collapse if an alternative reserve currency comes along. Lo and behold, look how close the euro is getting to the US dollar in terms of international banking payments transactions—the measurement of all transactions throughout the world every day. It is now six points behind the US dollar whereas a few years ago it was miles behind. The euro, therefore, is in reality not like it is in the view of the chauvinistic British press; it is a very successful currency in general, with three or four members who find it difficult to keep in recently, and most of them are solving their problems—now even Greece, with eight parliamentary votes in favour of the strict measures, has been able to do that.
I therefore hope that the Minister will reply to the various questions he has been asked. This is an excellent report, and I wish the Government well in pursuing this portfolio.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, I add my great appreciation of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. I spent four years on the EU Economic and Financial Affairs Sub-Committee, which he chaired. There were, shall I say, widespread views among the members of that committee, but we never had any problems in putting together sensible papers, and it was very much due to his most courteous and constructive chairmanship. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, his successor, will be an equally good chairman. I always thought that it was wrong that the committee should just be a sub-committee of the EU Committee, because it is an incredibly important committee. It is at the front line of looking at all the stuff that comes through, such as whether we will have a financial transaction tax, and goodness knows what; it is a crucial part of our interface as a member of the EU. I also add my congratulations and appreciation that my noble friend Lord Hill got the job—he is a decent and sensible person and will cope with some things that urgently need doing.
To me, the “EU” bit of the capital markets is in fact not so fundamental; Europe needs more capital investment—it does not matter where it comes from. London has been the key place for channelling international capital, much of it into Europe, and America is probably the largest private equity and venture capital investor in Europe already. As we know, the problems are that the banks cannot lend more and that there is a super-rated dependency on banks anyway, but debt problems and so forth limit what the banks can lend to SMEs anyway, and the euro crisis killed cross-border bank lending within the EU. Therefore what is left, which is crucial, is the need to get more equity money to SMEs. I think my noble friend Lord Hill described his task as channelling savings from anywhere in the EU to be invested anywhere in the EU; I would amend that to say “to channel investments from anywhere to be invested anywhere in the EU”.
I pick up the point which the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, made, which is that there is a pretty strong lack of willingness within the EU to invest in other countries; I think 94% of EU citizens very much shy away from any sort of financial involvement in other countries. That task of just increasing capital flows in the EU will very much come from London, and on the back of the US. I hoped that I would learn today about how my noble friend Lord Hill has been getting on in achieving the action plan that he drew up last September, and indeed, I have learned some quite important points. However, something slightly disappointed me.
I remember when we had our session with my noble friend Lord Hill, I made the point to him that the enterprise investment scheme—I declare an interest as chairman of the EIS Association—has raised a lot of high-risk equity capital for SMEs: about £12 billion or £13 billion. France wisely came over to look at what the UK was doing, copied us and put in a similar scheme, which is gaining some momentum. I suggested to my noble friend Lord Hill, “Why don’t you try to persuade each of at least the main economies within the EU to put in their own EIS-type scheme?”. However, not only has nothing happened, but, unfortunately, the EU Competition Commissioner has decided to attack the UK’s EIS schemes, holding a sort of pistol to our head in terms of state aid approval, and has required a great deal of complications and for money which a company can raise under EIS to be significantly reduced. Worst of all, she has required us to put in a 2025 date for ending the enterprise investment scheme. Who knows whether that will happen? I thought it quite extraordinary that, where the EU desperately needs more capital flows for SMEs, you have the Competition Commissioner of all people deciding that she wants to get rid of the EIS arrangement for raising risk equity for small companies. As regards the measures, a small company—the size is determined by the number of employees and the size of the balance sheet—could raise up to £5 million a year under the EIS scheme, but now it has a cap it cannot raise more than £12 million over its lifetime, whereas it was £5 million a year unlimited.
I do not know how successful things such as peer-to-peer lending or crowdfunding have been on a cross-country basis. Mostly, what has happened has been organised through London and some of it through Guernsey. However, I have some reservations about such arrangements, because I cannot help feeling that, when a bad economic period inevitably comes, there will be significant losses on peer-to-peer lending; for some people it does not matter if rich people lose money, because “They can afford it”, but if it is not rich people, people will claim that they were misled and did not know what would happen. I also got a huge shock when I noticed that peer-to-peer lending had been exploited in China to develop a Ponzi fraud that has involved 880,000 people and £5.3 billion, so there is some vulnerability to fraud there.
The Government have not exactly shouted from the rooftops but have been realistically supportive of the capital markets initiative. They have been keen to kick-start securitisation, develop the private placement market and to enhance SME credit information through non-legislative means. The UK Government have been strongly opposed to any attempts to establish a system of pan-EU supervision on the grounds that this would be prolonged unhelpful distraction, which is probably true.
To come back to London and its importance and contribution, just yesterday afternoon I spoke at a conference on the most esoteric subject imaginable: the difference between what is known as NPPR—the old, historic rules, under which if a fund wanted to market itself in Europe, it got permission from the Government directly—and AIFM passporting, which is supposed to enable you to market a fund across EU members. To my amazement, 350 people turned up at this seminar, not to hear me in particular but because of the subject. That is a classic example of what London is doing. In this case, London has a mixture of UK, US and other nationality funds raising money and marketing themselves in Europe and then very much investing the proceeds in Europe, so the middleman role in London is actually happening loud and clear. I ended up thinking that it is motherhood and pie. Of course we want a much bigger and more effective capital market across Europe. We want to have as effective a market as the USA. What the EU could do to improve things is limited—quite a lot of the constraints are cultural—but it is happening slowly and London is completely at the centre of it.
Going back to my comments about EIS and the Competition Commissioner, the EU can shoot itself in the foot and, by what it has been doing, damage the very objective it is seeking, which is more capital flows for SMEs. Let us hope that we do not get any more of that. Otherwise, let us get a move on and do things.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I declare my financial services interests as entered in the register, in particular as a non-executive director of the London Stock Exchange Group and Prime Collateralised Securities ASBL.
I welcome this report. It is now some time since it was published and events have moved on, as envisaged and suggested in the report. I have been widely quoted in it, including a contribution from the seminar on pages 31 and 41, so I feel somewhat as if I am being given a fourth and fifth bite at the cherry.
I thank the previous sub-committee chair, the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, the new chair, my noble friend Lady Falkner of Margravine and all noble Lords who have served on both the former and present committees for their interest and attention when I have given evidence on this and other reports.
The most frequently asked questions about CMU, especially in the early days, were “Why?” or “What’s changed?” or “What’s new?” I will dwell on those for a moment because I think they answer some of the questions about culture that were raised earlier. As has already been pointed out, CMU is founded on the freedom of movement of capital set out in the Treaty of Rome, so one way or another we have been aspiring to it for rather a long time. There has always been deep envy of the liquid capital markets in the United States. To try to emulate those, we had the financial services action plan which was a big step in the right direction.
More recently, the financial crisis and major international initiatives on systemic risk, coupled with the review of that financial services action plan, stimulated the 40 or so pieces of financial markets legislation between 2009 and 2014 which I had the privilege of negotiating. Consumer protection, culture, systemic risk and limiting both contagion and arbitrage were key objectives in that legislation.
One might ask what is left; in one sense the answer is “Not a lot”, other than getting all that legislation fully functioning and tweaking it where necessary. A stocktaking consultation has just closed, but quite a lot of what has been legislated still awaits secondary rule-making. It will not be operational until 2017 or 2018, in just the same way as the UK’s own legislation on ring-fenced banks is taking a while to get fully functional. So stocktaking needs to be an ongoing story.
However, the response to the great financial crisis—to give it its historic name— shifted shape over time and eventually turned to incentives for increasing capital markets rather than just worrying about them. It could be seen that the same old factor of deep markets had helped the US to be less reliant on banks and to recover more quickly. On top of that was the policy response to bailing out banks, which made rules to protect national balance sheets—usually rendered as protecting taxpayers. That was done through a process of bailing in bondholders—that is, converting them into equity—which means they are no longer let off the hook.
That then raises the question: who are the bondholders? They are, of course, investors, many of them institutional investors looking after the savings and pensions of ordinary individuals—workers and taxpayers. The situation where a failing bank causes knock-on failures has to be avoided. So spreading the “bail-inable” bonds in a wide market is an important corollary to rules about sharing out a failed bank’s losses.
There are some who suggest that capital market union is more relevant for the eurozone. This is an interesting point which is both true and not true. It is true that the monetary union’s construct, without mutualisation of sovereign debt, urgently seeks to decouple banks and sovereigns and to have mechanisms to spread risk. So it is not surprising that the European Central Bank was first in the recent calls for a financial markets union, later renamed the capital markets union. Even though the ECB says that it does not want to be the supervisor of the capital markets union, it has a big influence on the culture and thinking around the whole project.
I said that it was not true in one sense. It is not true also in the sense that the logic of having better capital markets to stimulate jobs and growth, to have less reliance on banks and to be able to spread risk to the market rather than a national balance sheet applies outside the eurozone as well. To spread it wider than the local shock is better for stability; institutional investors have multi-currency exposures anyway.
All this drove the CMU proposals and, despite some mutterings, it is jolly useful to have mood music from all sides that capital markets are good. Some of us have tried really hard to create that. Until now it has been countries from within the eurozone that have been far more sceptical about the benefits of markets, had underdeveloped markets themselves, and have held back market-opening proposals or simply have not understood what it was all about. That has made legislative negotiations on markets matters excruciatingly difficult—although, despite the pain, the UK did rather well. However, this shows again that there is a change in culture and that the future looks brighter on this horizon.
Does eurozone enthusiasm mean that it would try to do things for itself? Would this stimulate attempts to rival the City and construct different rules about what had to be done in the eurozone? Any suggestion of that was jumped on very quickly, even as there was the turnaround in mandate from the old Commission and Parliament to the new. Common sense has broken out all around in accepting that the UK and the City are a major asset and central to the CMU project. The current Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, made bold statements to that effect at a very early stage.
Whether the eurozone countries choose to have a single supervisor is still being touted around, but it is a trickier project than banking union due to the number and diversity of market participants and with no substantial organisation to bolt it on to. This assumes it is true that the ECB does not want it.
However the eurozone might choose to share supervision or not, the economic governance section of the draft EU reform documents clarifies that the UK can retain its own supervision. The answer to those who wonder why we are not part of a banking union is that it is the link between supervision and sovereignty, rather than the link between rules and sovereignty.
How much the eurozone might need a subset of rules for itself will depend a lot on attitudes after EU reform, but I cannot see it as constructive for the eurozone to be overly clubby or for the UK to be overly aloof. Neither leads to an effective capital markets union. I referenced the draft EU reform document and I must say that, on balance, what is in the economic governance section is very good in its intent, but I am pretty desperate to get my hands on some of the drafting.
As the report highlights, it is a good start to do those things that will not get bogged down: the simple, safe securitisation that has been referred to. But of course it is not always that easy to do things simply. You fall between self-certification—can you do due diligence?—and having outside certification. So we are back to something that might be criticised, such as rating agencies, or do you ask a regulator to do it? Most regulators do not want the liability. That is one conundrum that awaits to be resolved.
On adjustments to the Prospectus directive, I recall the discussion about whether it could be more than €100 million in the last revision. The point is, if we put it up to €200 million that might be SMEs in some countries but all they have in some other countries, so they would not have a main market; they would have only a small market. In desperation, I suggested that they use a purchasing power parity multiplication factor, which seems to be the sort of thing that we are now agreeing for benefits that go to other countries. Maybe someone could do something useful around purchasing power parities if the size of markets in some of the smaller member states or less-developed markets becomes an issue.
We definitely need to mend insurance regulation that has militated against long-term investment, and I cannot say that without pointing out that it was the UK that drove Solvency II and its mistakes, and is still overzealous in its application. Now is the time to stop the warring over French, German and UK preferences and get it fixed.
Longer term, there will be other measures and here are some thoughts. Can we build a better insolvency regime? If we cannot do it for insolvency, can we do it through pre-insolvency and presumptive paths for what happens in a failure, which is akin to what has been done in the recovery and resolution work? Can we get to grips with the unfair tax advantage given to debt? As an aside, I worry that while everyone says that it is a good idea to encourage equity, international banking regulation requires an increase in debt instruments to meet bail-in targets. There are no calls for major new legislation, but it is a fact that changes to legislation have to be legislated for. If you have some good industry standards that you want to use cross-border, the only way you can get that in force without arbitrage or barriers is, alas, to have legislation.
It is very easy to say in prose that there must be a balance of simplifying or enabling and consumer protection. It is rather harder to legislate for it when everyone wants their own protections kept. Finally, it should be appreciated that disclosure requirements, which are disliked by industry, are often what keeps heavier-handedness at bay. That is often the deal. You can put in a disclosure requirement instead of trying to ban something.
CMU is actually a mix of passion, policy and pragmatism. The passion is to provide jobs, created through more opportunities for business to find funding and a passion to buffer the national balance sheet and the services that we cherish from future banking collapse. The policy is the universal awareness that jobs will come from stimulating capital markets; it is not about doing down banks because they will be involved, but not all things belong in banks. The pragmatism is the basic theme that this is far more about “Let us make this work” than “Let us get regulating”. Of itself, the EU is moving in our direction. That is a backdrop that I dreamed about.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, express my appreciation for the work of my noble friend Lord Harrison in presenting the last of his significant reports on behalf of the committee. He is used to delayed government responses, which sometimes means that if the report is not entirely overtaken by developments, a substantial part of it has certainly led to action being taken that obliges the committee to consider further matters. We certainly had that experience today.
I am still trying to absorb the last contribution, from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. Although the noble Lord, Lord Hill, made such a favourable impression on the committee—and we would expect him to extend his duties so seriously and constructively—she must have destroyed any illusion that he can see an easy road ahead of him. That was ably demonstrated by the contributions to this debate about the formidable challenges that lie ahead. He, the community and all of us are just in the foothills of dealing with these problems; the greater heights are some distance away. The noble Lord indicated that he regarded this as a five-year project, but aspects of that verge on the optimistic. What is clear is that the committee is agreed on advances that can be made, and it believes that the noble Lord is eager to take advantage of any opportunity to progress the capital markets union.
We on these Benches totally endorse that objective. I sympathise with the Minister regarding the number of definitive and difficult questions that emerged from all sides in this debate. I can make his task easier in one respect: I will not present any significant area of disagreement. But reference was made to the issue of the culture of different institutions in different countries. By heavens, we all recognise what a challenge that is. The country expects us to change the culture of our own financial institutions but we are all in the foothills of that issue, too, in terms of the challenges it presents.
I assure the Minister that I will not disagree with him on any progressive steps that he indicates the Government support in promoting the capital markets union, but I have one obvious anxiety. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, appeared before the committee and his subsequent document presented a position of constructive endeavour, built on the fact that an awful lot of persuasion is needed and there are challenges from very different perspectives across Europe. He is not helped by the Government’s present position of threatening the Community, rather than co-operating with it. Of course, we will all support the Prime Minister in his attempt to get a yes response to the referendum—if that referendum duly takes place. But this report, consideration of it and all the contributions this afternoon have identified the difficulties in making progress while there are such obvious problems as far as the British attitude is concerned. I hope that when the committee reports again under its new chairman—the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner—it will do so in a climate of greater co-operation, in which the United Kingdom can put forward proposals that fit rather better with the grain of European thinking than its present stance.
Let us be clear: there is quite a challenge before us. What we seek to do—the European Community is well aware of this—is to foresee the way in which the European Union as an economic unity, as a trading bloc and as a single market will develop. But we tend to compare it with other units that are, largely, nation states. The United States, to which we compare ourselves, has a totally different framework of political institutions with which to deal with this issue. We must therefore recognise just how much more of a challenge it is for us than it is for the US.
We know what the targets are. We know that the success of the American economy is partly based on the fact that 80% of its finance is raised in capital markets and only 20% from its banks. The situation in the UK is almost the reverse of that. The challenge is one that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, has both the capability to recognise and—in due course, I hope—the competence to tackle.
The Minister has been offered no doubts today that this is a major challenge, and that action needs to be constructive and forthright. Thus far, time has passed with good intentions being expressed but relatively little achieved. The Minister has today been given some clear indications, largely from members of the committee, as he would expect, because they have developed their expertise as they have looked at these issues. They have asked questions which I hope he will set out to answer, because they are pertinent to the challenge before us. The Minister is not a member of the committee, any more than I am, but I hope he will recognise that the debate has identified clear issues relevant to the challenge of the capital markets union. Some progress has been made, and we are fortunate in the qualities of the Commissioner responsible for taking this forward in Brussels. He is very well known to us, and we know about his competence, his ability and his commitment. The Minister now needs to answer some of the forthright questions that have been asked this afternoon.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank all those who have contributed to the debate, particularly the erstwhile chairman of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. I am grateful for the report that he and his committee members and secretariat have produced.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, requested me to answer the questions posed in the numerous speeches in the debate. I shall make every effort to do so in my speech, but if perchance I cannot give the full detail, I will write to noble Lords.
The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and other noble Lords talked about the timeliness of the debate, and I am sure the business managers who scheduled it will have taken note of the noble Baroness’s comments.
As has been outlined in the debate, on 20 March last year this House published its report entitled Capital Markets Union: A Welcome Start. It was based on the European Commission’s Green Paper Building A Capital Markets Union, which was published in February 2015. Since those documents were published, the capital markets union project has seen significant developments.
At the end of September last year, the European Commission published its action plan for a capital markets union, based on its review of the many consultation responses to its Green Paper. I am pleased to note that the reforms proposed in the action plan are strongly aligned with the recommendations of the committee report from March. The list includes measures that the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, highlighted in his speech, such as reforms to modernise prospectuses and to revive securitisation in the EU, and other actions covered in the committee’s report, such as improvements to credit information on SMEs.
More broadly, the committee report called for a pragmatic approach to reforms across the CMU that would benefit all 28 member states—an approach which I believe has been reflected in the Commission’s action plan. My noble friend Lord Hill has made it clear that creating CMU will be a step-by-step consultative process, and that decisions on the design of reforms will be evidence based and subject to rigorous economic impact analysis.
I shall use my time today to set out briefly the Government’s views on the action plan, highlight the action the Government have been taking and respond to some of the issues that have been raised in the debate today. The CMU action plan has the full support of the Government: we think it represents the sort of work the European Commission should be undertaking.
Building on the substantial financial reforms following the financial crisis, the Commission has shifted its focus to strengthening Europe’s economic recovery by generating jobs and growth in the European Union—an agenda I am sure we all support. As part of this, it has identified further integrating and deepening Europe’s capital markets as a key priority. Developing Europe’s capital markets will help bring greater balance, improve the range of options for firms seeking finance, and enhance risk diversification by ensuring that market-based finance is strengthened as a complement to bank finance.
The CMU action plan sets out the initiatives the Commission will pursue. My noble friend Lord Hill has succinctly described the project’s aim as linking savings more efficiently with growth. Importantly, the Commission is not just tackling a problem, as the United Kingdom Government have been advocating for some time, but is doing so in a way firmly rooted in the better regulation agenda that the Prime Minister and others have been calling for.
Delivery of CMU forms part of the Government’s agenda for a more competitive European Union. If we are to make Europe more competitive, we need to create a true single market in capital, by breaking down the barriers that stop flows between member states and prevent businesses accessing the finance they need to grow and succeed.
As noble Lords will have seen, the action plan is thematic, identifying six key areas for reform. These include: financing for innovation, start-ups and non-listed companies; making it easier for firms to access and use public markets; measures on long-term infrastructure and sustainable investment; fostering retail and institutional investment; leveraging bank capacity; and facilitating cross-border investing.
As the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, noted in his speech, the Commission has made swift progress on a set of priority measures. These include proposals and live negotiations on securitisation, and the rules around prospectuses. Consultations have also been launched on venture capital rules, and a call for evidence on the cumulative impact of current EU financial services legislation. The Government support these priorities, and have been actively engaging in negotiations and responding to consultations.
The action plan features a range of reforms that will help SMEs, particularly high-growth innovative businesses, get access to the finance that they need. CMU will help by giving them access to more investors across the single market—by pooling investment resources, by helping venture capitalists and angel investors, and by making it easier to list on public markets.
From a UK perspective, it is not just our smaller firms that will benefit. Breaking down barriers across the single market will help British firms diversify their investments at lower cost, and offer our competitive products to savers across the single market. The Government have been heavily engaged in the CMU work to date, and will continue to strive to influence these reforms as they develop.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, in his excellent speech, said how important it was to ensure that the capital markets union delivers for small businesses. Helping small businesses grow and prosper is a key priority for the Government, both as part of the capital markets union and more widely. We want to ensure that growing and innovative companies are key beneficiaries of the CMU.
We call on the Commission to make a number of reforms to help small businesses in particular, and this has been reflected in the Commission’s approach. Examples include improving small businesses’ credit information, supporting crowdfunding and business growth funds, and lowering the cost to small businesses of listing on public markets, as well as reviving securitisation. The Commission has committed to delivering these reforms and we will continue to engage with its work to make sure that capital markets union delivers for small businesses.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, also asked what discussions had taken place with the Dutch presidency. As the noble Lord is aware, discussions have taken place with the Dutch presidency, as with all member states and the Commission. Any more information on the actual discussions I will pass on by writing to the noble Lord on those issues.
The noble Lord also talked about the benefits for the United Kingdom of the single market. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister set out in his Statement to the Commons yesterday, and my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal reaffirmed today, the draft text published by Council President Tusk earlier in the week set out clear mechanisms to deal with the rule-making and bureaucracy of the EU, complete the single market and sign international trade deals.
There is also a stand-alone competitiveness declaration that spells out that more can be done to exploit fully the potential of all strands of the single market. We need to breathe new life into the internal market, and Europe must boost its competitiveness in key areas, such as energy and the digital market.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
I did not want to interrupt the noble Earl’s flow, but I asked a very specific question about concerns that have arisen in the light of the Prime Minister’s Statement. I wonder whether the Minister will give us a reassurance that he will take those concerns back to the Treasury.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, of course I will. The noble Baroness makes a good point. All concerns of noble Lords who have asked for reassurances, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, did, will go back to the department for further thought.
As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has said, these changes will make sure that Europe works for all the British people who want to work, have security, get on and make the most of their lives.
My noble friend Lord Caithness talked about the financial sector operating in silos. The capital markets union is intended to further integrate capital markets and to strengthen the linkages between the various agents and consumers—the intermediaries and recipients of investments.
My noble friend also talked, as did other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, about the cultural obstacles in the CMU. It is right to identify the cultural obstacles. Evidence shows that 94% of EU citizens have never bought a financial product outside their home member state. Encouragingly, the CMU seeks to tackle these issues. My noble friend Lord Hill has recognised these challenges. Examples of the steps taken include a special working group established to look at specific national barriers of this nature, with plans being drawn for those member states with more experience in tackling these cultural issues to share experience and best practice with others.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, raised the subject of insolvency. The Government welcome the Commission’s proposals around improving the effectiveness of insolvency frameworks, and the intention of promoting business recovery and returning capital to creditors. Reform should be targeted at those member states currently without suitable laws for the rescue of viable businesses in distress. The Commission should also seek to address the underlying gaps in capability and infrastructure in some member states, and any proposals should be evidence based and take into account any regimes that already successfully support business rescue.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I am grateful to the Minister for that response to my questions. I was not so much concerned with the important issue he has just mentioned of trying to reduce losses to creditors from insolvency and the cost of the insolvency process, which we all know can be prohibitively high sometimes, including in this country. I was concerned much more with establishing a capital markets union and the importance of insolvency in that context, which I set out in my speech, so I will not repeat it now. Does the Minister have any thoughts on whether that can be advanced further?
The Earl of Courtown
I do not have the details in front of me but I will write to the noble Lord on that issue. I hope he will accept that.
I thank my noble friend Lord Flight for raising the issue of the enterprise investment scheme, which I will bring, along with the whole debate, to the attention of my noble friend Lord Hill. That will be a very useful exercise; I know how important he considers the work of the committees of this House. If there is anything more I can add for my noble friend, I will do so.
The CMU is an important part of the Commission’s financial services agenda over the coming years, and if it is successful it will have long-term benefits to businesses and investors here in the United Kingdom and across the European Union. We will of course keep noble Lords updated as appropriate, and I welcome their continued interest in this important issue.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, I am grateful to all Members who have contributed so positively to this debate. We can see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, is going to be a considerable addition to the House. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, reminds us as ever that the euro’s position as a reserve currency is breathing hot breath behind the greenback. It is a joy, as ever, to box and cox with the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in a debate on financial affairs, as we have done so well in the past. To the noble Lord, Lord Flight, I have to say, I would go 500 miles to hear him among 350 eager citizens dilate upon the AIFMD. I dwell, though, on my noble friend Lord Davies of Stamford’s characterisation of the chairs of the committee and I thank him for those compliments to both me and the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine.
I will tell a little story in conclusion. Many years ago—some 20 years ago—the editor of the Wirral Globe, improbably called Robin Bird, followed me to Strasbourg when I was an MEP and then wrote a piece about me, highlighting the fact that I was born and brought up in Oxford, and characterising me by putting “Morse” at the top of the story that followed in the Wirral Globe. I am very happy to be a prequel to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner—the prequel, of course, is “Endeavour”. I look to the Minister: show some endeavour on this. Use the capital markets union to go on to the front foot and say that the United Kingdom is pre-eminent in financial affairs, with the City of London, with small businesses for which we have always had a strong concern. Ensure that the opportunities arrive, either, as I say, under the Dutch presidency or through some long-term planning for the British presidency, which will arrive at the back-end of 2017. We can do something; we can go on the front foot.
I am very grateful to all those who have contributed not only to the capital markets union but on that theme, which now becomes so vital for this country.