House of Commons
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Prayers
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This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Speaker
On the front page of today’s Order Paper, it is noted:
On 15 September 1916, Lieutenant-Colonel The Honourable Guy Victor Baring, 1st Battalion The Coldstream Guards, Member for Winchester, was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme, France.
On 15 September 1916, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles William Reginald Duncombe, Viscount Helmsley, 21st Battalion King’s Royal Rifle Corps (Yeoman Rifles), Member for Thirsk and Malton from 1906 to 1915, was killed in action at Courcelette during the Battle of the Somme, France.
On 25 September 1916, Lieutenant Gerald Archibald Arbuthnot, 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards, Member for Burnley in 1910, was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme, France.
We remember them today.
Business before Questions
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Oral Answers to Questions
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Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)
An assessment of the impact on the economy is a routine part of transport investment decisions. The Department uses an internationally respected analytical framework for assessing schemes, which includes the impact on jobs, growth and regeneration.
Victoria Atkins
May I welcome the Minister to his place and say how pleased I am that the Department will have the benefit of the experience and wisdom of my Lincolnshire colleague? I say that not just because I would like his help with the roads! Every day this summer, my constituents, tourists and I had to wait up to 45 minutes to pass through the traffic lights at the Bull Ring in Horncastle, where the very busy A153 crosses the even busier A158. The single carriageway road cannot cope with the volume of traffic between the city of Lincoln, the market town of Louth and the east coast. Will my right hon. Friend meet me and local councillors to discuss what can be done to get rid of these bottlenecks to help local residents and businesses and to encourage even more tourism at the wonderful Lincolnshire coast?
Mr Hayes
My hon. Friend is a doughty and articulate campaigner for her constituents’ interests. She will know that all counties of our great country are dear to my heart, but none more so than my own county of Lincolnshire. I am familiar with this part of the county and I understand the pressures on the roads there. I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend and local councillors to discuss the situation. Indeed, I want to go further, because that alone is just not good enough. I want to hold a round-table meeting with all concerned parties in my Department and to ask my officials to look specifically at what my hon. Friend has said. If I may say so, her complimentary words were most welcome. She could have added, for future reference, dexterity, determination and, in the light of recent events, durability!
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister give a firm commitment to ensure that High Speed 2 goes ahead with a clear timetable, and will he accelerate work on trans-Pennine links from Liverpool to Hull so that the United Kingdom’s economy can be supported and its rebalancing can be assisted throughout the UK?
Mr Hayes
At a meeting earlier this week, the hon. Lady and I discussed a range of issues in the light of a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research, including the significance of the trans-Pennine connection. It is important for us to see all our transport needs in terms of not just north-south but east-west links. I know that that will be recognised by many Members who represent constituencies in the east of England, as I do, and in the west of England, as the hon. Lady does.
I am more than happy to look at all the options to which the hon. Lady has referred. As she will know, we are considering a range of ways of making those links real. In her role as Select Committee Chairman, she will want to test me further when she, no doubt, calls me to appear before her.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend have particular regard to the reports from the Great Eastern and West Anglian taskforces, chaired by two of his colleagues, about the contribution that they can make to the future prosperity of the Anglian region, so that there can be a reliable rail structure on which the splendid new trains that are to come can run more efficiently?
Mr Hayes
As you know, Mr Speaker, I have a deep regard for the past, and my relatively recent past reminds me that the right hon. Gentleman tested me on these matters at the time of my last incarnation in the Department for Transport, when he advanced similar arguments about the importance of the links to which he has referred today. I look forward to receiving and studying that report, and when I do so, I shall be more than happy to have further discussions with him on its contents, but no one could argue that he has not made his case powerfully and repeatedly.
Mr Speaker
I hope that the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) realises how lucky he is to have the prospect of further conversations with the Minister of State. Not all of us are in that category.
Ruth Smeeth
(Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab): Infrastructure is vital to economic growth, which is why it is so unfortunate that the Highways Agency has, without consultation, announced the closure of the A34 at Talke junction. That stretch of road is the main access route to Freeport shopping centre. The works are much needed, but they are due to start next week and continue until 23 December, which will affect Christmas shopping at the centre. Will the Minister endeavour to work with me and with the Highways Agency, so that it can see the error of its ways?
Mr Hayes
With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I shall make a general point and then a specific one. The general point is this. On my first day in this job, I met representatives of Highways England, as it is now called, and made it very clear that one of the things they had to do better was give proper notice of their plans, communicate with all interested parties—including Members of Parliament—and be very precise about the time that decisions and their implications would take. Obviously, the case in point is apposite.
As for the specific point, I was not aware of the situation that the hon. Lady has described, but this is what I am going to do. I will meet representatives of Highways England today, I will raise that particular issue, and by tomorrow I will speak to the hon. Lady about it.
Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is dexterous, determined and durable, as well as being extremely distinguished. The A34 is one of the most important roads for our economy, taking freight from the south coast to the midlands, but it is becoming increasingly dangerous: two recent crashes caused fatalities. Now that I have recorded that he is dexterous, determined and durable, will my right hon. Friend hold a round table with me and other Oxfordshire Members to discuss how to improve safety and the free running of the A34?
Mr Hayes
My table grows ever more round. I am none the worse for it, by the way.
I am familiar with that road. As my right hon. Friend will know, a number of suggestions have been made for the improvement of the scheme. There are always demands relating to different roads, and different ideas about how those demands should be met. We study these matters carefully, and part of that process involves the kind of consultation that my right hon. Friend has recommended. I am always delighted to speak to him about any matter that he raises in the House, including the one that he has raised today.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
The Government talk about rebalancing the economy, and it is interesting that the Minister just talked about improving east-west links in the north, but may I make one suggestion that I hope he will take forward? Can we extend the M65 all the way to Scotch Corner? That needs to be done. Millions of people in the north-east need to be connected directly to millions of people in the north-west and the Manchester region. That vital east-west infrastructure link would rebalance that economy.
Mr Hayes
The hon. Gentleman is known for making the case for links that would further boost his local economy. There have been scurrilous suggestions that the northern powerhouse has in some way faltered. Let me tell the House that the northern powerhouse is not only alive and well, but will thrive under this Government. That will include the kind of infrastructure investment necessary not only to provide transport links, but to boost economic growth, build skills and spread opportunity. That is the kind of Government we are: a Government with big ideas who put them into action for the benefit of our people.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
Following the un-pausing of electrification, Network Rail has re-mobilised its team and is working towards a final design for the enhancement programme, as set out in the Hendy review last year. Work to increase capacity on the route has already started.
Lilian Greenwood
The east midlands has had the lowest level of rail spending per head in every one of the past six years. We have discovered that the pausing and un-pausing of the electrification of the midland main line wasted almost £40 million and cost countless jobs in the supply chain, and now there are rumours that it could be cancelled or deferred again. Will the Minister take this opportunity to confirm that the line will be electrified all the way to Nottingham and Sheffield by 2023, and will he commit to real action to ensure that there are no further delays or broken promises?
Paul Maynard
I congratulate the hon. Lady on assiduously carrying out her former brief—who knows when she might return to the Front Bench to continue in that role? She makes an important point about the importance of the line to the east midlands. In my view, the supply chain in the east midlands does not just depend on this one project; the investment in Bombardier’s 660 trains for East Anglia is just one way of safeguarding that particular supply chain. On her wider point about the work on that line, it is worth bearing it in mind that we have already completed 10 km of new line in that stretch; nearly 9 km of existing line has been improved; over 3,000 new piles have been put into place; and there is 10 km of new earthworks, strengthening of key bridges, and new viaducts, particularly at Harpers Brook. Work on this line is ongoing and we are looking to improve capacity through the franchising arrangements.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I am delighted to hear that the northern powerhouse is alive and well. Does the Minister agree that if it is to have real effect, it is important that investment is made in connectivity not just between the cities of the north, but between the towns? I thank Ministers for the initial investment in the Middlewich bypass, but will they also look at the business case for the reopening of the Middlewich railway station?
Paul Maynard
As someone born and bred in a town very close to Middlewich, I am well aware in my 40 years of the importance of the town’s connectivity at the heart of Cheshire. I know that there are good plans for Middlewich’s new station and look forward to working with my hon. Friend on progressing the business case.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Before the pause, electrification was due to be completed by 2020, which is also the date when all trains have to comply with new disability legislation. What will the Government do between 2020 and 2023, when the old HST trains on the line, with their slam doors, will not comply with disability legislation? Will they abandon the legislation or put in temporary rolling stock?
Paul Maynard
We take accessibility issues on our railways extremely seriously. The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the commitments we have made. We are currently examining how best to increase capacity on this line, particularly at peak hours, when there is a risk of standing on some stretches. We are looking carefully at how we can deliver on that.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Will the Minister ensure that the branch line that runs through Langley Mill and Alfreton stations in my constituency is added to the plans to re-energise electrification, having been unaccountably missed out of the original plans?
Paul Maynard
I am not familiar with that branch line at this stage but I shall certainly look into the matter, discuss it with my officials and write to my hon. Friend.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
With the faster line speeds that electrification will bring, will the Minister look to reinstate the half-hourly service northwards from Kettering, which was cut to an hourly service under the last Labour Government?
Paul Maynard
A number of timetabling and scheduling opportunities always come about through any reprofiling of a line and indeed any change in the rolling stock on the line. We will of course feed that into all the consultations on how best to make use of the reprofiling of that line.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)
The safety of the public is our top priority. We are working closely with the Civil Aviation Authority and industry to understand and address the safe use of drones. We are continuing to adapt and strengthen the regulations as the use of drones evolves. The current regulatory framework balances clear rules on safety and strong penalties for misuse, with a commercial permissions system that ensures responsible use of this emerging technology.
Kevin Brennan
But I asked the Minister what assessment he had made of the effect on aviation safety. How real is the risk? I know that he knows that it was discussed this week at the Trades Union Congress conference and that there is great concern about the matter. We need to know what the risk is and what steps the Government are taking, before we end up with the inevitable ministerial statement about lessons learned.
Mr Hayes
The hon. Gentleman is right about the TUC discussing the issue yesterday. We had a word about that earlier. The TUC is right to raise it because it is an emerging technology and the risk is dynamic. We constantly need to have analysis in place about the risk that poses. It is not just irresponsible use; it could be malevolent use that poses risk. Drones could be used by all kinds of agents to do all kinds of things. The assurance I give him is that I will ensure that my Department is continuing that analysis and makes sure that the regulatory framework is fit for purpose having done that analysis. The best thing to do is for me to come back to the House to give regular reports on how that is going. He always takes a diligent interest in the affairs of the House. He has raised an important issue, which I think is entirely bi-partisan and which we need to take seriously.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
My constituent Lesley Smith administers Tutbury castle and she tells me that drones are not only a danger to aircraft; they also affect privacy. They affect copyright law. They are also a danger to people who may be visiting the castle: the drone may run out of power and fall on to their heads. When will we see tighter instructions and education about how to use drones? Incidentally, Mr Speaker, intellectual property rights was the phrase I was searching for.
Mr Hayes
To be absolutely clear, we take drones very seriously, as I said in answer to the previous question. Anyone who “recklessly or negligently” causes or permits their drone to endanger any person or property can face a fine of up to £5,000 or two years’ imprisonment, so we are not taking the matter lightly. The point that my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) make is that, because the technology is evolving, it is important that we do proper work to look at the scale and type of danger we face, and then the regulatory framework can be fit for purpose.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
I wonder whether there has been co-operation between the Department and the Ministry of Defence in relation to security and the threat that drones pose to the security of the nation.
Mr Hayes
Indeed. I have recently arrived back at the Department for Transport from the Home Office, where I was Minister for Security, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office take this matter very seriously. He can be absolutely sure that, across the Government, we are looking at this issue. As I said earlier, it is not just about irresponsible use; it might also be about malevolent use of the kind that he has described.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
The Government are committed to delivering the important infrastructure projects that the country needs, including delivering runway capacity in the south-east on the timetable set out by the Airports Commission. We are currently undertaking further work, including assurance of the Airports Commission’s evidence and on air quality, and the decision will be made shortly.
Margaret Ferrier
The new Transport Secretary, a fierce advocate of the UK exiting the EU, has already done more than enough to wreak economic havoc. Perhaps he would care to use his new position to mitigate some of that damage by putting an end to this third runway debacle. If not, will he apologise to businesses and commuters in Scotland for putting their economic interests on the line?
Chris Grayling
First, I would simply remind the hon. Lady that some of the things that were said about our economy have not proved to be the case, and that under this Government our economy continues to do well. I would also say to her that this Government retain, and will always retain, a commitment to the economy and the people of Scotland, as part of one United Kingdom. The decision that we seek to take on runway capacity in the south-east, whatever it may be, will be designed to benefit the whole of the United Kingdom by improving our connectivity to the world.
Dr Huq
When the previous Prime Minister was reminded of his words “no ifs, no buts” that there would be no third runway at Heathrow, he said that a decision would be made this summer. The current Government position is that the decision will be announced in October, and the current Prime Minister seems to be erasing all evidence of her previous opposition to the proposal. After the Davies debacle and the expenditure of £20 million, it looks as though there is going to be a free vote. Can the Secretary of State confirm or deny that? To my constituents, this looks like a protracted fudge.
Chris Grayling
I am afraid that the hon. Lady is going to have to wait for us to set out our plans. I have said today that we are committed to making our decision shortly. I regard this as an important decision for our nation, and it is one that we need to get on with. We have of course seen a significant change in the Administration across the summer, and it is right and proper that the Prime Minister and I should be sufficiently prepared to make the decision. We will make sure that that is the case.
Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if we want to keep London as the hub airport for western Europe, it is crucial that we deal with the capacity problems that currently affect Heathrow in particular? This saga has been going on for so long, and I want him to ensure that we have no further delays in reaching a conclusion on the Davies recommendations. May I also tell him that there is only one obvious answer, and that it is Heathrow?
Chris Grayling
As you know, Mr Speaker, there are differing opinions on this across the House, and it is right and proper that the Government should look in a dispassionate way at all three options recommended to us by the Davies commission, assess the strengths and weaknesses of what is being offered and take the right decision in the interests of our nation. I assure the House that that is what we will do.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
As Britain leaves the European Union, we are going to have to develop more markets in Asia and the far east. That will mean more passenger traffic and, in particular, more freight traffic. Is it not therefore essential for the national interest that RiverOak’s plans for a freight hub at Manston should be allowed to proceed and to be successful, and that we should preserve Manston as an airport?
Chris Grayling
I absolutely understand how strongly people in Thanet feel about the future of Manston. I know how controversial it is, and has been. I can simply say to my hon. Friend that this Government would be perfectly supportive of proposals to develop a freight hub at Manston, but I am afraid that that has to be a matter for the local community, the owners and the local authority, and I hope that they reach the right decision in the interest of the nation.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The expansion will use 370,000 tonnes of steel and Heathrow has committed to using UK steel. Whatever the decision on airport infrastructure, what will the Secretary of State do to ensure that UK steel is used in any expansion?
Chris Grayling
I am an unashamed champion of this country’s businesses and of what we do as a nation to give them the best possible opportunities. While we are an outward-facing nation and will always do business with companies from around the world, it is right and proper that we champion organisations that deliver in this country, such as our steelmakers. I am proud that our railways use almost entirely British steel and want British steel to be used in all our major infrastructure projects.
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
Although residents would agree that there is a need for airport expansion, does the Secretary of State share the concerns of the three quarters of a million people who live under Heathrow’s flight path about the new plan, about the change to the tunnelling of the M25 and about the lifting of a cap on the limit of aircraft movement? Does he agree with residents that Heathrow cannot be trusted not to go for a fourth runway and not to have night flights?
Chris Grayling
I am well aware of how strongly people in west London feel. I am also aware of how strongly people around Gatwick feel, albeit they are smaller in number than those around Heathrow. My hon. Friend is passionate about such issues and I can only assure her that the Government will have in mind the impact on noise and air quality and how that is dealt with as we reach a view on the Davies commission’s recommendations.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
As a veteran of almost 12 weeks in post, I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his appointment. He is the second Secretary of State I have had the pleasure of shadowing. I welcome him and his new Ministers to their places and look forward to many discussions about transport in the months ahead.
A decision on airport expansion in the south-east is long overdue and has been made only more urgent by the vote to leave the European Union and the consequent need to demonstrate that the UK is open for business. Already twice delayed to avoid party political bickering inside the Tory party, there are now rumours that Ministers will be given a free vote. This is neither a constitutional issue nor a matter of conscience; it is a nationally critical infrastructure project. Will the Secretary of State tell the House the exact date on which he will confirm that the decision, whatever it is, will have the backing of the full Cabinet?
Chris Grayling
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s words of welcome. He is underemployed in comparison with my previous shadow, who held two shadow Cabinet roles, so perhaps there will also be an opportunity for him to have additional responsibilities. I look forward to sparring across the Dispatch Box with somebody so much more experienced than I am in this role.
The decision is important for our nation’s strategic interests. I am new to this job, as the hon. Gentleman points out, and the Prime Minister is new to hers, so we want to ensure that we have done the necessary work and are properly informed before we take a decision. I did a lot over the summer to ensure that that was the case, including visiting the sites of all three proposals. I have carefully considered the issues and the Prime Minister is doing the same. We will reach a view shortly and will bring it to the House. It is right and proper that everyone in the House will be able to have a say in this important matter.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
The Prime Minister will begin the negotiation for Britain’s future relationship with the EU and will also take the decision about when to trigger article 50 and start the formal process of leaving the EU. As I said a moment ago, as we move into the new world beyond our membership of the European Union, it is important that we are an outward-facing nation with strong business ties around the world. The decision on runway capacity is an important part of that, and it is important that we get it right. We will take that decision and move ahead with our plans, ensuring that we have the right links for the future.
Mrs Gillan
I am sure that the Secretary of State shares my enthusiasm about the referendum result giving us vast opportunities to forge new links around the world. The Airports Commission estimated that the economic benefit of expanding Heathrow would be up to £23.6 billion for the south-east, as opposed to £12.4 billion if Gatwick is expanded. Expansion at Heathrow would greatly benefit Buckinghamshire. Will my right hon. Friend think about putting a date on this and letting us know when he will make a decision? Will he commit to an integrated transport strategy that benefits the people of Bucks—unlike HS2?
Chris Grayling
I will not give an exact date today, but I assure the House that we intend to take the decision soon. It is important that we move ahead with these plans. I hear what my right hon. Friend says about Heathrow. I have seen three effective, well-crafted proposals for the Government and this House to consider. We will reach a view shortly about what recommendation we will seek to make.
Stephen Kinnock
The Prime Minister has claimed that she wishes to govern in the interests of the whole country. The expansion of Heathrow would deliver more than 8,000 jobs for Wales and contribute more than £6 billion to the growth of our economy. Does the Secretary of State agree that the expansion of Heathrow is the only right answer for the economy of Wales?
Chris Grayling
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and he clearly has a strong view on this matter. As he will have seen, strong views are held on both sides of the House and on all three sides of this argument. I note what he says about the importance of proper air links for Wales. This Government will always focus on the best way we have at our disposal to help Wales, but we have to take a decision about the interests of our collective United Kingdom and which option is better, and that is the decision we will take.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, now that the British people have decided to leave the EU and free our country from the interference and over-regulation it brought, the Government have new opportunities to support regional connectivity? Will he look closely at the opportunities that a decision on Heathrow would bring?
Chris Grayling
It is worth saying that whatever decision we take about airport expansion, it is important that we have in mind the need to make sure that we have good connectivity around the UK, and I assure my hon. Friend that that will be a priority in our considerations.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State reassure me that he will not be diverted by claims about the difference Brexit makes to airport expansion and will address the costs to the taxpayer of road and rail infrastructure that would be required for a third runway? Will he also look at the comparative costs for other alternatives, such as Gatwick?
Chris Grayling
It is clearly important that we take our decision in the interests of the nation and that we foster ties around the world and within Europe. We are not leaving Europe; we are leaving the European Union. We want to retain good, strong economic ties with our neighbours in Europe. It is important that we take the right decision for the whole of our nation, and that is what we will do.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)
Successive Governments have taken the view that tolling is justified on certain infrastructure, such as significant river crossings.
Maria Eagle
I thank the Minister for the reply. Before the general election, the former Chancellor promised motorists in Cheshire West, Warrington and Chester discounts on the tolls that are to be introduced in 2017 on the new Mersey Gateway bridge and the old Silver Jubilee bridge. I have no objection to the Government’s paying for discounts for motorists, but my constituents in Liverpool and in Knowsley live closer to those bridges and rely on them just as much as people who live in Chester and Warrington. So will the Minister have a word with the new Chancellor and ask him to provide some money to pay for those discounts to be extended to my constituents?
Mr Hayes
I imagined that the hon. Lady would ask that question, because she has tabled a number of written questions in a similar vein. She rightly says that a local discount scheme will operate on the Mersey Gateway bridge. The Government have said that they were looking to extend those discounts, as she also said. Let me be clear: officials are currently working through the character and effect of that extension, and no decision has been made upon it. Of course, I will give full consideration to the arguments she has made on behalf of her constituents and others.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Is a toll being considered for the proposed cross-Pennine road link?
Mr Hayes
I did say at the outset that successive Governments have taken the view that tolling is justified on major infrastructure schemes. My hon. Friend will know that those matters are, as I said earlier, also being considered in the round. No decisions have been made to the effect that he describes.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
The M4 is the main supply route into the Welsh economy and hence there is cross-party support in the National Assembly for devolving ownership of the Severn bridges once they return to public ownership. Will the right hon. Gentleman update the House on what discussions he has had with the Welsh Government on this issue?
Mr Hayes
I am always happy to have discussions with the Welsh Government, and I have done so in a variety of ministerial roles. My view is very clear, and I think that we have been plain about the toll on that important crossing. It is this Government who, when the current regime comes to its conclusion in 2018, will halve the toll. The hon. Gentleman must welcome that, as he knows how good it will be for his constituents, so I hope that after today’s questions he will put out a press release, congratulating the Government on their decision.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
On behalf of the Scottish National party, may I welcome the Secretary of State and his new Ministers to their places?
Was the Minister aware that the very first act of the SNP Scottish Government was to introduce the Abolition of Bridge Tolls (Scotland) Act 2008, which means that, in Scotland, there is no need for discounts? Tolls are gone, saving commuters around Scotland hundreds of pounds a year and boosting tourism and the economy. Has he studied that model for his own use?
Drew Hendry
Of course, there will be no tolls either on the new £3 billion dual carriageway of the A9. On the subject of the A9, will the Minister congratulate the Scottish Government on the safety cameras on the non-dualled section between Perth and Inverness, which was unbelievably opposed by one of the Minister’s former colleagues, Sir Daniel Alexander? Those cameras have seen speeding drop from 43% to 10% since 2012, thereby reducing death and injuries. Will the Minister consider that matter?
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
Local councils have the powers to provide effective licensing arrangements in their area, but legislation is in the House to strengthen the current framework. We will consult on new statutory guidance for local licensing authorities once the parliamentary process is complete.
Jo Stevens
I thank the Minister for his reply. Internet and smartphone use has revolutionised private hire vehicle services. Does he believe that current legislation, which is now several decades old, is adequately regulating this technology?
Andrew Jones
The legislation that governs this sector goes back many, many more decades, to the age of the horse and carriage. That is why the Government asked the Law Commission to take a comprehensive review of taxi and private hire regulation in England and Wales. Obviously, it is a devolved matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We will be responding to the Law Commission’s report in due course.
Louise Haigh
Sheffield City Council believes that its tough policy on child sexual exploitation is basically useless because other taxi operators can license themselves outside Sheffield and then operate in Sheffield. Will the Minister meet me and other colleagues from Sheffield city region to discuss taxi licensing in relation to CSE?
Andrew Jones
I will be happy to meet the hon. Lady. I just point out that whatever licensing area a company is operating in, it has to ensure that a fit and proper person test is carried out, but I will be very happy to meet her.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
May I also welcome the Secretary of State. He knows my city of Cambridge very well. We look forward to him coming to open the new railway station, which is long overdue. He also knows that Cambridge is full of people who think that prisoners should read books and that Britain should be in the European Union. I suggest that he brings a very hard hat with him when he comes.
We heard in an Adjournment debate raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) about the problems in the taxi trade and the procrastination and inaction over two years since the Law Commission report. Some months ago, the Minister told us that he was about to act, and yet in a written question to me a few days ago, he said that the Government have no plans to bring forward legislation in the current Session. How much longer will we have to wait?
Andrew Jones
That is a complex matter and we are working on it and through it, but we are already taking action on the key issue of child sexual exploitation in the taxi and private car sector by putting the guidance on to a statutory basis. We hope to be consulting on that as soon as the Policing and Crime Bill has reached Royal Assent.
Daniel Zeichner
What a striking contrast with the new Mayor of London, who has done more in a few weeks than his predecessor did in eight years, and more than that lot have done in six years. Does the Minister recognise the problem with cross-border licensing? As we have heard, there are councils in this country handing out licences like confetti. These vehicles are clogging up the streets of London and adding to congestion. How much longer will we have to wait until he takes the problem seriously?
Andrew Jones
The Government are clearly taking the issue seriously. I am aware of the actions taken by the new Mayor of London, but it is worth making sure that one gets those actions right; I understand that one of the operators has already won the right to a judicial review.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. We started late because of the preliminary announcements, so we can run on slightly, but we must have much shorter questions from now on. To be honest, questions today have been simply far too long.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
There are no current plans to extend the Crossrail route. Any proposed extension would require a strong business case, and would need to be in the best interests of rail passengers.
Bob Blackman
Crossrail is on budget and on time, and will dramatically reduce journey times across London. The one area of the capital that does not benefit from it is north-west London, and Harrow and Wealdstone in particular. Will my hon. Friend look at the business case for expanding the network so that all Londoners can benefit from Crossrail?
Paul Maynard
My hon. Friend is right to point out the connectivity benefits of Crossrail. I know that it has looked at the possibility of an extension through Harrow and Wealdstone, which he has been campaigning for, and into Hertfordshire, to join the west coast main line there. That was found by Crossrail, Transport for London and Network Rail to offer poor value for money, so we are not taking it forward at this time, but of course we always keep the issue under review.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
As much as I would like my constituents to benefit from an expanded Crossrail network, geography makes that unlikely, so can the Minister with responsibility for rail tell me his assessment of Southeastern’s submission for additional rolling stock?
Paul Maynard
We always want to make sure that commuters in London, which is one of the most burdened parts of the network, have the best possible chance of having a reliable, predictable, punctual service, with a good chance of getting a seat. That is why we, contrary to what happened in the 13 years of Labour Government, are investing so many billions of pounds in new carriages across London and the south-east.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
To be absolutely clear, the Government are firmly committed to HS2, which will become the backbone of our national rail network and help us to build an economy that works for everyone. I have spent a lot of time this summer looking at the full extent of the route, so I fully understand all the issues around it.
Luciana Berger
In Liverpool, there are many concerns that we will not be properly connected to HS2, which will be challenging not only for passengers, but for transporting the freight that comes into the new super-port; that will throw into question the notion of a genuine northern powerhouse. Will the Secretary of State please confirm that the provision of a junction allowing a future line to Liverpool from the Golborne link of HS2 will be announced in the autumn statement?
Chris Grayling
I cannot pre-announce the autumn statement, but I can say this: the hon. Lady knows that I am a regular visitor to Liverpool—I was there during the summer—and I am well aware of the transport challenges around the city. I am also proud that we are spending something like £350 million today on rail improvements. We need to make sure that Liverpool is well served in future.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the biggest disadvantage of the HS2 route is that it does not go to Cleethorpes? As he knows, we are urgently in need of a direct service to King’s Cross. Will he continue to work with me to try to deliver a direct service to Cleethorpes?
Chris Grayling
I am always delighted to work with my hon. Friend on improving the rail service and transport system in Cleethorpes. I fear that I probably will not be able to deliver on getting HS2 to go there.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
HS2 is intended to be a jewel in the crown of British infrastructure, but as was revealed in the Public Accounts Committee’s report, it is losing some of its lustre. To be at this stage and still not know how much HS2 will cost, what the route will be and when it will open is unacceptable. The Government are quite clearly losing their grip on the project. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to say why his Department has failed to set a workable, realistic timetable for HS2 Ltd, and will he give a guarantee to deliver an entire high-speed railway?
Chris Grayling
I do not want to start my relationship with the hon. Gentleman on a bad note, but I have to say that that is a lot of nonsense. We have a proposal for an innovative railway line that is completing its journey as a hybrid Bill through the Lords, and we will start work next year. We aim to deliver the first stage, as planned, in the middle of the next decade, and later this autumn, we will set out the remaining route in detail. I am proud to do that for this important project for our nation.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency deals with around 600,000 medical cases each year. The vast majority of cases, 90%, are dealt with quickly and efficiently, but the other 10% are complex, often requiring consultation with several medical professionals. As each case is taken on its merits, that can take time, but we are aware of the importance of the issue. The DVLA has taken on more than 100 extra staff and additional medical advisers to handle cases.
Sir Desmond Swayne
If someone is cleared of their medical condition, it is very frustrating to have to wait a long time for the processing to be completed, so I am grateful for whatever the Minister can do.
Andrew Jones
I am acutely aware of how important this is for people. If some people lose their licence, they may also be losing their means to continue their careers. The DVLA is working on the matter by bringing in extra personnel and so far it has been successful: the average processing time last year was 53 days, and so far this year it is 38 days and we are working to reduce that even further.
Mr Speaker
The Minister felt a compelling need to read out part B of the brief, but we are grateful and we are better informed.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
This Government are making the biggest investment in our railways since the Victorian era, enabling more trains and longer trains to operate on many of our busiest routes. More than 563 new carriages are planned to enter service by the end of 2020.
[Official Report, 10 October 2016, Vol. 615, c. 1MC.]
Diana Johnson
The Minister is right that investment is the key to tackling overcrowding, so why has his Department waited two years before even making a decision on the private finance available to electrify the line to Hull?
Paul Maynard
In the interests of brevity, I will not have a theological debate with the hon. Lady about whether that is privately or publicly financed, but it is publicly financed. I recognise that she has been a doughty campaigner for improved services to Hull. Connectivity to Hull is very important and I look forward to giving her good news as soon as we can.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Electrification of the Chase line will help to address overcrowding. However, I am aware that there may be delays in getting electric trains on the line. Will my hon. Friend review the position and do everything in his power to ensure that we get electric trains as soon as possible?
Paul Maynard
We had a very productive meeting with my hon. Friend last week. She is a doughty campaigner on behalf of that line and I will continue to press for further advances on the issue, as she asks.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
The service on Southern is officially the worst in the country, and passengers have endured appalling overcrowding for far too long. Removing hundreds of services a day has served only to exacerbate overcrowding on the services that survive. When will the Secretary of State bring to an end the misery of long-suffering passengers and intervene, or does he agree with the former Rail Minister, who effectively said that there are no circumstances that would warrant Govia Thameslink Railway being stripped of this franchise?
Paul Maynard
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will welcome the fact that more than two thirds of the services that were taken out of the timetable have now been put back in again. Our focus is on restoring normality to the service and putting the interests of passengers first. The service is improving on a regular basis, with more services returning to the full timetable, and I will focus on that to make sure that we get back to the full timetable.[Official Report, 10 October 2016, Vol. 615, c. 2MC.]
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
First, I thank the Scottish National party and others for their kind words of welcome to me and the new team. It is great to be back in the transport brief after a decade. I am very proud that my first actions as Secretary of State were to give the go-ahead for the expansion of London City airport and to visit the Bombardier factory in Derby to announce a £1 billion new train order for a service that is essential to this country. I am grateful to all the people throughout our transport network who are making it a success across most of the country.
Mr Hollobone
As they do not know, will the Government count the mileage of residential roads that remain unadopted by local highways authorities, including a large and growing number in Kettering, and ensure that no residential road remains unadopted after 10 years?
Chris Grayling
That is an issue that I have experienced in my own constituency. It is not acceptable. I will happily meet my hon. Friend to talk about the situation in Kettering and how we address it.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware of the calls in national newspapers today, including the Daily Mirror, for action on the increasing number of drivers who put other people’s lives at risk by using mobile phones while driving. In the past couple of years the RAC has found that more people think that is okay. That has happened on this Government’s watch. Will he work with us, the Mirror and others to clamp down on this dangerous practice?
Chris Grayling
Let us be clear. Labour was in power for 13 years and did not tackle the issue. I am very clear that this is an unacceptable practice, and we intend to unveil tough action on it shortly.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
Chris Grayling
I am very interested in this as a proposal, and it is being looked at very carefully. What I would say to my hon. Friend, to every Member on the Southern route and to all the passengers on the Southern route is that I recognise that the issues over the last few months have been unacceptable. I am working hard with all those involved, and I have unveiled a number of changes in recent weeks, which I believe will help to get this situation resolved as quickly as possible. It has not been acceptable; it has to be dealt with, and we are working as hard as we can to ensure that it is.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
It is simply because the Government are giving more powers to local authorities to franchise services, and we were anxious that the powers to commission and provide were separated.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
Like me, my hon. Friend is a passionate advocate of improved accessibility on our rail network. As he will know, some of the Access for All funding was re-prioritised under the Hendy recommendations. I am hoping to announce very shortly which stations will be prioritised again. I stop in Lichfield Trent Valley often myself—largely in the dark, I must confess—and I am sure there is a great need for improved accessibility there. I look forward to meeting my hon. Friend to further discuss that.
Mr Speaker
I call Stephen Kinnock. What has happened? The hon. Gentleman has bunked off.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Rail passengers in the north, including on the Calder Valley line, which serves my constituency, are frequently packed on to ageing trains, including Pacers. It is encouraging to see that Arriva Rail North has signed a deal to deliver hundreds of new carriages from October 2018, but what assurances can the Minister give my constituents that Eversholt’s financing of new rolling stock will not lead to delays, sharp fare increases or de-staffing?
Paul Maynard
As a fellow north-west MP, I am sure the hon. Lady shares my interest in seeing the back of our inefficient and unpleasant Pacers, and she will welcome the fact they will be disappearing by December 2019. I hope she will also welcome the improvement on the Calder Valley line, which will occur in two phases: Calder Valley East in December 2018 and Calder Valley West completing this year—a full upgrade to signalling and speed on the line.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Chris Grayling
I have recently been made aware of this situation. I do not want to see the timetable held back, and I will be engaging with all those involved to see how we address the issue.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
Paul Maynard
I always recognise customers’ concerns about the amount they pay on fares. I have been very clear with the rail industry so far in my dealings with it that it has to put the passengers first in all the decisions that it takes, and the convenience of the industry must be a subsidiary concern.
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
Chris Grayling
I will be delighted to meet my hon. Friend. I am obviously aware of the noise issues. I am pleased to see that the latest generation of aircraft are bringing down noise levels, but I recognise there is still a big challenge for residents close not just to Heathrow but other airports around the United Kingdom. I will be very happy to talk to her.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Chris Grayling
As the hon. Lady knows, there is a substantial compensation scheme in place for those affected by HS2. HS2 will bring greater prosperity across the United Kingdom. I hope that she and her party would recognise that and support it, notwithstanding local challenges.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
It is likely that in a few weeks’ time this House will be asked to decide if it wants a new runway at Heathrow or Gatwick. One of the core considerations will be deliverability of those schemes. All the evidence suggests that even if the Government give a green light to Heathrow, it cannot happen. To that end, will my right hon. Friend commit to providing this House, before any vote, with a clear risk assessment looking at environmental risk, planning risk, legal risk and financial risk so that it can take a properly informed decision on the deliverability of those schemes?
Chris Grayling
I can assure my hon. Friend that when the time comes to bring these matters to the House, we will place before it the detailed information on which the Government have formed their view. That is right is proper. He will know that there are differing opinions and strong views across this House. There are three strong proposals for us to consider. We will take the best possible decision in the interests of the nation, and I am sure that subsequently this House will do the same.
Michelle Thomson (Edinburgh West) (Ind)
A constituent of mine has raised concerns about the number of road accidents involving young people. The most recent research from Swansea University supports his case that young drivers aged between 17 and 21 are five times more likely to crash than drivers over 70. With this in mind, will the Minister agree to look at policies such as a graduated driver licensing scheme?
Andrew Jones
We want to strike the right balance between safety and freedom for young drivers, many of whom rely on their cars to get to work or to college. We are focusing on efforts to encourage learner drivers to be better prepared for the wonderful freedom that a licence provides, through the reform package on changes to the driving test. The consultation on that closed only a few days ago. I hope that the hon. Lady participated in it.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the new proposals for the HS2 route to Leeds will still be published this autumn?
Chris Grayling
It is definitely my intention to publish details of the proposed northern part of the route—the right-hand side of the Y on the last leg to Manchester—later this autumn.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
What is the Minister’s current assessment of when the Severn bridge’s concession will end, given the extra traffic when the Severn tunnel is closed for electrification work? Are the Government on top of this, given that we have not yet had a date for the public consultation?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)
It is right that we should have that confidence. I am more than happy to commit to doing the work necessary to reassure the hon. Lady about that. It needs to be safe, it needs to be secure, and it needs to be right which is why I am more than happy to make that commitment.
Mr Speaker
I call Parliament’s grassroots sports champion of the year, Mr Tom Pursglove.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. People in Corby would like to see a greater number of rail services, both northbound and southbound. Will Ministers commit to factoring that into any future discussions that they have on this?
Paul Maynard
I am always happy to take suggestions from all parts of the House as to how we can improve rail services across the country. I look forward to hearing more from my hon. Friend about what he perceives in Corby.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Given his earlier line on regional connectivity, will the Secretary of State ensure that the aviation Minister and officials give positive and prompt consideration to the submission by City of Derry airport for at least PSO—public service obligation—support for a twice daily service to London?
Chris Grayling
Yes. This is on my desk right now and I recognise its importance. I am very pleased that over the summer the link to north America was kept in place. Good connectivity in Northern Ireland is, remains, and always will be very important.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
On 16 July I wrote to the rail Minister requesting a meeting to discuss the daily failings that my constituents have at the hands of Southeastern Trains and Network Rail. Will he say yes to that meeting today?
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
As we are seeing a bonfire of the vanity projects associated with the former Chancellor and Prime Minister, would it not be sensible not to be seduced by “grands projets” and to add to that list, heeding the sage advice of Rod Eddington in his 2006 study, binning HS2 and focusing on local capacity to benefit, much sooner, passengers and regions?
Chris Grayling
The trick is to do both. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that he, as a Birmingham Member of Parliament, is absolutely not speaking the same language as his city council and many of those involved in the business community in Birmingham, who are looking forward to the improvements that HS2 will bring to that city.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend commit that if there are any further delays in phase 2b of HS2, which affects my constituency, compensation will be given to my residents whose properties are blighted?
Chris Grayling
I will happily talk to my hon. Friend about that, but it is not my desire that we delay announcing routes any further. As I have said, I intend to set out our plans later this autumn.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
What discussions is the Minister having with Vauxhall concerning its Zafira models that have been catching fire—over 300 of them in the UK alone—and will he agree to meet me and affected drivers later in the year?
Andrew Jones
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency is leading on this issue, on which it has met, corresponded with and continues to liaise with Vauxhall. There have been two safety recalls. I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, but significant progress is being made on the issue.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
Missing for 25 years, the Chickenhall Lane link road is a vital piece of infrastructure for my constituency. It is backed by the Solent local enterprise partnership and the local council, and it was in July’s Budget book. Will the Minister meet me at a rectangular, round or square table to discussing bringing it forward?
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Will the Minister agree to invite all Members whose constituencies are served by Southeastern trains to the meeting with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill)? Our constituents are suffering daily disruption to their lives, as a result of the poor performance of Network Rail and Southeastern, and we would welcome a meeting with him to bring that to his attention.
Paul Maynard
I very much recognise that there are issues involving Southeastern. I am happy to meet Members from all parts of the House.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
As the Government have committed to the development of Crossrail 2, will my hon. Friend give equal support to the construction of four-tracking on the West Anglia line, which is an integral part of it?
Paul Maynard
If that is a key part of my right hon. Friend’s forthcoming report, I look forward to reading all about it and discussing it with him.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
My constituents who work at Liverpool airport face paying an extra £1,000 a year in tolls when the new Mersey crossing is opened. Will Ministers try to find some mechanism for existing employees so that they are not hit with what is essentially a retrospective charge for going to work?
Mr John Hayes
Yes. The answer is that that sounds like a very good idea to me. I will obviously need to look at the detail, but I am very happy to do so. My open mind is well known.
Mr Speaker
I always thought, having known him for 30 years, that it was the defining characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Insurance for young drivers has become very expensive. One method that some insurance companies have put forward is the black box system, whereby they monitor people’s driving and reduce their costs. What steps have been taken with insurance companies to ensure that young drivers can take advantage of that system?
Andrew Jones
Such a system is already built into some companies’ pricing, because people get cheaper premiums if they accept some of the benefits that technology can provide. I have met the insurance industry, and will meet it again shortly, when I will raise the hon. Gentleman’s concerns.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Further to the Secretary of State’s inadequate reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on the deadly menace of mobile phone use, may I ask him whether he heard an expert say on the radio this morning that the use of mobile phones impairs drivers’ ability more seriously than drinking? Does he accept that a £50 increase in the already paltry fine is a totally inadequate response to this deadly menace on our roads?
Chris Grayling
I am sorry if the right hon. Gentleman thought that. I will be announcing tough plans on this matter shortly, in response to sensible pressure from a wide variety of outside groups. The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned one national newspaper group. In fact, the campaign is coming from both sides of the spectrum, because the Daily Mail is running the same campaign. Those newspapers are right to do so, and the truth is that, in my view, this requires strong action. It is happening far too often.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
The Secretary of State may be aware that I secured a debate earlier in the year on the establishment of an independent aviation noise authority. Given his warm words today and the concerns of my constituents about noise pollution from aircraft, will he commit to supporting the establishment of an independent aviation noise authority?
Chris Grayling
Given the impending decision on runways, I am not going to set out any plans today. All I will say is that I have taken note of what the hon. Lady has said. Noise is of course a major issue for us.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that he supports his predecessor’s welcome announcement earlier in the year allowing Transport for London to take over Southeastern services when its franchise lapses in 2018?
Chris Grayling
My policy and the Government’s policy is that devolution should happen where it will make a difference, not simply for its own sake. I need to see the Mayor’s proposals about how he thinks he can enhance services in London—I am looking forward to seeing them—before I consider any changes.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Given that the Secretary of State has today confirmed his commitments to Scotland and to investment in infrastructure, will he have a word with the Chancellor about reversing the 25% cut that Scotland has suffered in its capital budget to allow further investment in roads and rail in Scotland?
Chris Grayling
Scotland benefits enormously from the funding support that is provided to it as part of the United Kingdom. That will continue, unless people seek to change the situation and put Scotland in a position where it would be far worse off and far less able to invest for its future.
ROYAL ASSENT
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
Finance Act 2016
Haberdashers’ Aske’s Charity Act 2016.
Business of the House
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for the week following this unnecessarily protracted recess?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Lidington)
The business for the week commencing 10 October is as follows:
Monday 10 October—Motion to approve the Second Report 2016-17 from the Committee of Privileges, followed by Second Reading of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill.
Tuesday 11 October—Second Reading of the Small Charitable Donations and Childcare Payments Bill.
Wednesday 12 October—Opposition day (8th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 13 October—General debate on baby loss, followed by debate on a motion on the inquiry into hormone pregnancy tests. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 14 October—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 17 October will include:
Monday 17 October—Second Reading of the Savings (Government Contributions) Bill.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for Thursday 20 October will be:
Thursday 20 October—Debate on the Education Committee reports on mental health and wellbeing of looked after children and on social work reform, followed by general debate on national arthritis week 2016 as recommended by the Liaison Committee and Backbench Business Committee.
Colleagues will wish to know that, subject to the progress of business, the House will rise for the February recess at the end of business on Thursday 9 February and return on Monday 20 February.
Paul Flynn
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business.
May we deal with the new Select Committees and the date for the election of Chairs? Will the Leader of the House confirm that the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee will be renamed and continue with a Labour Chairman; that the new International Trade Committee will be chaired by a Member of the Scottish National party; and that the new Brexit Committee will be chaired by a Labour MP?
We join you, Mr Speaker, in sending our best wishes to the retiring Speaker’s counsel, Michael Carpenter, and in welcoming Saira Salimi, who has been appointed to the role.
Today is the International Day of Democracy. Democracy was invented in Greece two and a half thousand years ago and has come to these islands in instalments. We are the only country in the world, other than Lesotho, that still has hereditary chieftains in its legislature. David Cameron’s final awards have been described in the Daily Mail and The Guardian—at both ends of the political spectrum—as “devalued”, “debased”, “discredited”, “egregious”, “grubby”, “tawdry”, “tainted” and “tarnished”, but otherwise okay. At the heart of our democracy is this rotten system with, as the Lord Speaker said, 200 unnecessary people prancing around in ermine down the other end of the corridor. The changes introduced by the former Prime Minister over the years involve £34 million of spending. This is a wanton waste of public money at a time when his justification for the massive disruption to elected Members by the boundary changes was that it would save peanuts. Will the Leader of the House add some new lustre to his parliamentary halo and not be just a leader who is here today and nowhere tomorrow, but take on real reforms?
I also strongly recommend that the Leader of the House takes up this report I have with me, published this week by distinguished Members of all parties. For 25 years, parties of all colours have failed to respond to the appeals from the seriously ill who have suffered agonies of pain when they ask for relief that is provided by the only medicine that works for them, which is cannabis. Because of the prejudice-rich, cowardly, knowledge-free policies of both Governments, we have continued with a system that has criminalised seriously ill people. Now there is a clear call from distinguished and knowledgeable Members here and in the other place to end this barbarous practice whereby we criminalise people for using cannabis but allow heroin to be prescribed. Other countries throughout the world are doing this; there is no excuse for continuing with this practice.
Paul Flynn
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s warm support on this matter, which I have enjoyed over the years.
How does today’s decision on Hinkley fit into the parliamentary timetable? It has never been properly debated here, and any new proposals have certainly not been debated here. This could be the greatest financial and technological catastrophe for 50 years. The price is a rip-off and the technology does not work. Finland was promised that nuclear power from the EPR would be working by 2009, but it is still not working and no date has been offered for when it will, while Flamanville is in a mess because of a technical problem. Yet the Government are going to blunder ahead because they do not have the courage to examine the scheme again. They are going ahead because of political inertia. My party’s policy will be spelled out later by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), but in the meantime we have to tell the Leader of the House that he must gain parliamentary approval, because this is going ahead without any parliamentary imprimatur at all. As the years and decades go by, and as the futility of this operation continues, this will be seen not as a parliamentary disaster or a parliamentary error, but as a Tory error.
Mr Lidington
Let me first agree with and join the hon. Gentleman in wishing a successful retirement to Speaker’s counsel, who has served this House and you in particular, Mr Speaker, with distinction over many years. I can confirm the arrangements that the hon. Gentleman mentioned with respect to the Chairs of the Select Committees.
On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the use of cannabis in medical treatment, it is of course perfectly possible for medicines derived from cannabis—medicines that include cannabinoids—to go through the normal process of medical licensing and approval. I am not attracted to the idea that, without that sort of analysis, checking and approval by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, we should simply agree to particular drugs being made available to patients who might be suffering from all kinds of different and sensitive conditions.
On the hon. Gentleman’s points about Hinkley, I have to say that I gained the impression that this was, for him, a therapeutic experience rather than a quest for truth. He will have the opportunity in a relatively short space of time to put questions on this subject directly to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, so I urge him to contain his impatience that little bit longer.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the International Day of Democracy, which I think members of all parties would wish to celebrate today.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, my own voting record on House of Lords reform is recorded in Hansard. The fact is, however, that the House of Commons had an opportunity very recently to vote for reform, and this House—this elected House—voted down every option that was available. Whatever views one holds about the second Chamber, I do not think it right to denigrate the very hard work of scrutiny and review that is put in by members of all political parties, and Cross-Benchers, in that Chamber in order to play their part in the legislative process.
I find it a bit rum that the hon. Gentleman should denounce the House of Lords in such florid terms when so many of his former right hon. and hon. Friends have been in a rush to go and serve there. Only earlier this week, a new life peer, sent there by the Leader of the Opposition, took her seat. I think that the hon. Gentleman needs to have some words with his own leader about his views.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. As colleagues know, ordinarily it is my practice to call everyone in this set of exchanges, and I should like to do so again today, but I am very conscious that there are two statements to follow, and then two debates under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee, of which the first is notably well subscribed. There is, therefore, a premium on brevity, which I know will be exemplified by Sir Edward Leigh.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The Leader of the House has on his desk a report on the full decant of Parliament. Will he take his time over bringing the decision back to the House, and ensure that a full consultation takes place? Given that 1 million people visit this place every year, including 100,000 children, the issue is extraordinarily serious, and many of us are deeply concerned about the vacation of an historic Palace for five or more years. Many of us think that we should get on with the work now, abolish the September sittings, and start repairing the building in good time.
Mr Lidington
This is, of course, a report from a Joint Committee to the House as a whole. It is not just on my desk; it is on the desk of every Member of this House, because it is this House and the other place that will have to make a decision about the future of the Palace of Westminster. I hope that every Member will read the report and consider it carefully, and I hope to arrange a time for a proper debate on the subject later in the autumn.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I, too, pay tribute to Speaker’s counsel, who has been such an assiduous servant of the House for all these years. I also thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business following our return.
It is 12 weeks since the European Union referendum, and in that time there has not been a single debate in Government time on the consequences of that vote. Our constituents demand to know the Government’s intention in regard to Brexit. They want to know whether we will be members of the single market, they want to know what sort of immigration systems will be in place—for goodness’ sake, they just want to know whether visas will be required for European travel in the future. This was supposed to be about taking control, but we seem to have handed control to a bunch of clueless Brexit Tories who are determined to keep all this in a shroud of secrecy. The House should demand better than that, so when will we hear from the Leader of the House when we can have a detailed debate about our European Union Brexit plans?
As you said, Mr Speaker, two important statements will follow business questions—[Interruption.] I will take as much time as is required. I remind the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) that ours is the third party in the House.
I woke this morning to hear all the details of the Hinkley Point C announcement. What happened to the convention that Secretaries of State should make important announcements to this House first, rather than having them discussed in the media? I support the shadow Leader of the House’s call for a full debate on the plans, because it is appalling that we have not debated them thus far.
The House is only just back from recess, but in about five hours’ time we will once again go into what is charmingly called the conference recess. It does indeed cover the conferences of some of the big parties in this House, but curiously not that of the Scottish National party, although we are breaking today to accommodate the Liberal Democrats, who I believe are meeting in a pub near Portsmouth, if they can find the necessary number of members. Our constituents are simply baffled as to why the House is rising while important matters remain to be discussed, such as the details of Brexit, and just because voluntary organisations—that is what parties are—are meeting. I think that we should consider abandoning the conference recess, and I hope that the Leader of the House will support that.
One thing that the recess will resolve is the most vicious party civil war in history—its bitterness is matched only by its destructiveness. Perhaps the Leader of the House and I should offer to work as peacekeepers as Labour Members try to bring back their broken party once again.
Mr Lidington
On the hon. Gentleman’s last point, I fear that matters may now be pretty much beyond repair. On Hinkley Point C, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will be at the Dispatch Box within an hour and all Members will have the opportunity to put questions to him.
On the consequences of the EU referendum, the fact remains—my views were well known at the time—that the people of the United Kingdom voted by a relatively small but none the less decisive majority to leave the European Union. As the Prime Minister said the other day, we cannot have a running commentary on the preparation or articulation of our negotiating position. One does not, in diplomacy, business or any other walk of life, set out one’s negotiating position in detail so that those with whom one is negotiating know all the details. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will have the opportunity to put oral questions to the Foreign Secretary on 18 October and to the Exiting the EU Secretary on 20 October, so there will be further opportunities for debate then, just as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU has been appearing before Select Committees of this House and the other place to answer questions on the Government’s policy.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Very briefly, the Leader of the House did mention the Select Committee chairmanships, but he forgot to say whether those motions have been laid before the House. I understand that at the moment they have not been, so perhaps he could comment on that. My main question is about the boundary changes. When the House debated the changes, we did not know that we would be leaving the EU. With 75% of our laws made in the EU, and with the abolition of all those hard-working MEPs, why are we now reducing the number of MPs? Perhaps the Prime Minister should look at this again. May we have a statement next week?
Mr Lidington
The House took that decision when it passed the primary legislation setting out the proposed reduction in the number of MPs and the framework within which the parliamentary Boundary Commission would operate. On my hon. Friend’s other point, we intend to lay the relevant motions and changes to the Standing Orders as rapidly as possible. There are still a few technical discussions, and if we can we will hammer those out today, but it is certainly our intention that there should be no unavoidable delay before the motions are tabled.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Greenwich clinical commissioning group has granted a £73 million contract to Circle Group plc to provide musculoskeletal services. Circle employs no clinicians who can deliver those services and so will rely on contracting existing service providers to provide NHS services. That is complete madness and it is leading to chaos in our local NHS. It is a totally unnecessary tier of bureaucracy in Circle, which will suck out its profits at the expense of patients. May we have a debate on the performance of private companies in the NHS so that we can expose the poor performance of Circle and others?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman may wish to seek an Adjournment debate on the matter. These are rightly decisions for the local NHS, and the decisions may vary from area to area, but this Government, like the previous Labour Government, recognise that the NHS can sometimes usefully make use of the private and charitable sectors to deliver NHS services free to their users.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Residents in Rugeley and, depending on the wind direction, other parts of Cannock Chase are suffering from the smoke from a fire at a farm in Slitting Mill that has been burning for over a week and a half. Can we have a debate in Government time about the illegal dumping of waste and the enforcement action and the penalties applied in such situations?
Mr Lidington
I was concerned to hear about the plight of my hon. Friend’s constituents. I urge her to liaise with the Environment Agency, which has an important role in trying to sort this out. I will draw her comments to the attention of the relevant Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, so that there can be a Government response to her concerns.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for the announcement of the business for the week beginning 10 October and for the two important debates on Thursday 13 October. One is on baby loss, infant mortality and stillbirth. The other is on the current inquiry into hormone pregnancy tests and the use of the drug Primodos, which has led to much damage among many in the population. During this morning’s exchanges, he will undoubtedly suggest to right hon. and hon. Members that they go to the Backbench Business Committee to air their issues, but we already have a significant queue of outstanding and unheard debates, so may I ask that he be particularly generous after the conference recess in allocating time to the Committee?
Mr Lidington
We shall try always to be as generous as possible to the hon. Gentleman and his Committee, within the limits that are laid down on the allocation of days. Just as I and my fellow business managers sometimes have to say no to Ministers who want to bring in legislation, so there is a question of priorities for the Committee.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
The New Inn in Norton Lindsey in my constituency has recently closed. Local residents, under the banner of the New Inn Salvation Squad, are campaigning hard to try to save the pub for the village. Can we have a debate on how we can support that community and other villages throughout the country to save their local pubs?
Mr Lidington
This sounds to me a perfect subject for an Adjournment debate. I can point to cases in my own constituency where the local community has rallied and saved the local pub as a community asset. Changes to the law by this Government have made that possible.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the NHS? I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford). NHS Walsall clinical commissioning group, my local CCG, has had to find savings of £22 million. That is going to have a direct effect on Walsall Manor hospital and on social services. They need extra money, rather than to have to make cuts, so may we have that debate?
Mr Lidington
The Government have delivered in full and up front the additional money that the chief executive of the NHS said that he needed to deliver the NHS’s plan. The NHS plan involves looking at how health services in different parts of the country need to change and evolve to become the kind of services that we will need in future. Those are rightly decisions for the local NHS because the needs of urban and rural areas, and of one part of the country and another, may differ significantly.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Two Government consultations have recommended increasing the rates of interest paid on late payments of compensation to people who are subject to compulsory orders. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has indicated that those measures are unlikely to be introduced until after the construction of HS2 is due to start. Following years of mismanagement and failure, I have little faith HS2 Ltd will pay compensation on time and fairly to my constituents, but I understand that the measures can be introduced via a statutory instrument. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statutory instrument to be brought before the House as soon as possible and certainly well in advance of the construction of HS2?
Mr Lidington
Mr Speaker, as my right hon. Friend knows, you and I will both have been following her question very closely. I will talk to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to understand better the current position, and I am sure that he will want to write to my right hon. Friend to set out his views.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
May we have a statement from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs detailing what sanctions or incentives it has to ensure that developers comply with the national policy statement on ports in respect of shore-side electricity connection, particularly in areas identified as having poor air quality, such as London?
Mr Lidington
I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman was unable to put that question to Transport Ministers in the oral Question Time that we have just had. I would advise him either to write to Transport Ministers or to seek an Adjournment debate at which he can seek a more detailed response from the relevant Minister.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
Given that the number of MPs might be reduced by 50, the problem that we would then face is that this House would have to do all the stuff it does anyway with an inadequate budget. Will the Leader of the House either make a statement or allow time for a debate in the House on the staffing budget for the smaller number of MPs, who will still have to do the same amount of work across the House?
Mr Lidington
As my hon. Friend knows, that is a matter for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and I hope that he and other colleagues who are concerned will make representations to IPSA. When I meet the chairman and chief executive of IPSA in a few weeks’ time, I will make sure that I have his concerns on my agenda.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Two weeks ago, Paawan Purba, a 20-year-old student from Heston, died of meningitis within 48 hours of contracting what appeared to be normal flu. She had no other obvious symptoms. Her parents, her sister Isha and the rest of her family have described to me how they knew little about how the disease could strike, or that any strand of it was potentially fatal. That level of knowledge has been reflected by almost everyone they have met, as well as by people I know. The family are calling for much more to be done to prevent more people from falling victim to the disease. Cases of meningitis W are on the rise, and Public Health England has called for more young people to be vaccinated. May we have a debate on the take-up rate for meningitis vaccination, on how to increase awareness and better join up the messages and understanding across our communities and on how we can undertake more research, to see an end to this horrific disease?
Mr Lidington
May I first express my sincere sympathy to the family and friends of the hon. Lady’s constituent? That must be an unbearable experience for any family to endure. I think many of us will have had comparable examples in the areas that we represent. I agree with her about the importance of highlighting this matter, and I am sure that Members in all parts of the House will support her endeavours. It strikes me that this is the sort of thing that a debate in Westminster Hall, which would allow a number of Members to participate, might be the best way in which to highlight the matter.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Since the second world war, the BBC monitoring service at Caversham Park has performed a vital service in providing open source intelligence, and the Secretary of State for Defence confirmed at Defence questions on Monday that it is of vital interest to his Department. Today, an important letter on the same subject from Lord Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, comes to the same conclusion. May we therefore have a statement or a debate as soon as Parliament returns on the swingeing cuts that the BBC is proposing to make to the service? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be disgraceful if any irrevocable steps were taken before the House returns, given that the BBC has been informed that at least one and probably two Select Committees want to hold inquiries into this matter urgently?
Mr Lidington
I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s concern. He has taken a close interest in these issues for many years. I note that there will be a statement from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport about the BBC later today, and my right hon. Friend might be able to contrive to ask her a question that is in order at that point.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) would certainly be able to do that, but whether that would meet the needs of his case is a matter for him to judge.
Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)
The Leader of the House is a keen listener, and probably a wannabe contributor, to my Wednesday afternoon radio phone-in show on LBC, in which I declare an interest. We had a vigorous debate yesterday on Hinkley Point before the announcement today because of Downing Street briefings. Why does he allow that to happen? Why does he not allow a vote, so that those who vote for this monstrous, mind-boggling financial folly can be named and shamed to their constituents for generations to come?
Mr Lidington
This is not a new policy. I do not want to pre-empt the statement, but a decision was made by the previous Government and it was put on hold by the Prime Minister, so that, quite reasonably, she could re-examine the evidence in detail before deciding whether to commit the United Kingdom to such a major project. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will set out in detail the Government’s decision and the reasoning behind it, and the right hon. Gentleman will have ample opportunity to put his case to the Secretary of State then.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
One of my constituents, Naba Pandey, has been battling for many months for the return of money he invested in StratX Markets. StratX Markets—I want to stress the firm’s name—has refused to engage with my constituent or me, and the money has not been returned. Binary options trading remains an unregulated, almost cowboy market, and the Treasury remains impotent. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a debate about regulation of the market?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot comment in detail on that constituency case, but binary option operators that hold remote gambling equipment in Great Britain are regulated by the Gambling Commission. Such operators must hold a licence to sell binary options lawfully to consumers. To do so without a licence is an offence. The Gambling Commission can and does take action against unlicensed operators. I advise my hon. Friend to take the case to the Gambling Commission. If his constituent believes that fraudulent activity has happened, he should take the case to Action Fraud.
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Children across the country returned to school last week. Research from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers trade union suggests that a quarter of them were potentially malnourished because free schools meals were not available during the school holidays. That is heart-breaking, but we still do not know the scale of the problem because no proper research has been carried out. May we have a debate in Government time to establish what can be done about child food poverty?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Lady is right to draw the House’s attention to the matter, and I will ensure that her concerns are passed on to the relevant Minister at the Department for Education. It may be that this is a matter for the Backbench Business Committee or for a debate in Westminster Hall, to thoroughly explore the issues and to get an answer from a Minister.
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be aware of the situation in east Asia, with North Korean nuclear tests and rising tensions in the South China sea. Does he agree that in this time of Brexit our allies across the region, Japan in particular, will be looking to this House and this Government to see whether we remain engaged in the region? Will he find time for the House to debate the matter?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the grave significance of the recent North Korean nuclear test. This Government will certainly remain active in world affairs. When the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary go to the UN Assembly, they will have the opportunity to talk to leaders from around the world about, among other subjects, the risks of nuclear proliferation. The Government remain utterly opposed to the North Korean nuclear programme and sanctions are in place. A lot hinges upon the Chinese Government’s approach, as they are the power with the most direct influence over Pyongyang. My hon. Friend will have a further opportunity to ask about the matter at FCO questions on Tuesday 18 October.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
I found out this week that the suicide rate is rising faster in Cumbria than in any other part of the country. A mental health nurse has told me her worries about the stresses on services, but she is particularly concerned about the extra pressure that followed the devastating floods of last year. May we have a debate to look not only at what needs to be done to improve support for our mental health services, but at what extra support needs to be put in place when constituencies suffer a crisis?
Mr Lidington
As I hope the hon. Lady knows, the Health Secretary has made it clear that his policy is to ensure that mental health is treated not as a Cinderella service but on a par with physical health in planning the future of the NHS. I take note of her point about the problems that have affected Cumbria. It seems to me that in the first place this is matter for the local NHS, working with the many charitable and benevolent organisations that can often provide preventive support and help for people who are badly affected by floods or another disaster, and for them then to seek help from the NHS nationally if they feel that they need something extra for a period of time.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
My constituent Michelle Evans, who is severely disabled, and her full-time carer and partner, John Turner, received a letter headed, “Your disability living allowance is ending”. It then gave less than a month’s notice to apply for the personal independence payment, followed by a curt text. May we have a debate on the way in which severely disabled people who have been on DLA for many years are communicated with and treated in the transfer to PIP?
Mr Lidington
I am concerned to hear about that case. If my hon. Friend would like to write to me with the details, I will ensure that they are passed on to the relevant Minister.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
My constituent, Maria Hill, who has cleaned Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs offices in Liverpool for 20 years was expecting a modest pay rise when the national living wage came in. Instead, Government contractors ISS cut her hours unilaterally and, as a consequence, she lost her tax credits and was £50 a week worse off. May we have a debate in Government time to discuss how the Government are making sure that their contractors comply with not only the law, but the spirit of the law?
Mr Lidington
On the HMRC case that the hon. Lady mentioned, I should point out that there are Treasury questions on 25 October, but I will have a look into the question that she raises more generally.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Last Friday, I was honoured to speak at the 80th anniversary celebrations of Vent-Axia in my constituency. I appreciate that we have yet to have a decision of both Houses on the refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster, but can we ensure that companies such as Vent-Axia and others in constituencies across the UK will be the preferred suppliers for that work? Perhaps this will even be enhanced in a post-EU procurement world, too.
Mr Lidington
If Parliament approves the restoration and renewal programme, there will be a need for skills and expertise in construction and renovation of all kinds. Indeed, the Joint Committee report says in terms that we need to make sure that there would be opportunities for specialist firms and for small businesses in this country to get a share of that work.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
In the past week, two reports have been published on the tragic problem of drug-related deaths, as well as a report on the medical use of cannabis, which my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House has referred to so eloquently. Given the absence of the Government’s long-awaited drugs strategy, may we have a full debate on developing a relevant and realistic drugs policy?
Mr Lidington
Obviously, we have a new team of Ministers and it is reasonable for them to consider what drugs strategy they want to publish. The opportunities here lie with the Backbench Business Committee or perhaps with a 90-minute Westminster Hall debate to give that subject a proper airing.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
We are fast approaching the anniversary of the Iran nuclear deal. At the same time, the opponents of the Iranian regime are executed, religious minorities are persecuted, the Iranian regime has enhanced its ballistic missile capability and there is serious doubt that Iran is keeping to the nuclear deal. May we have a statement in Government time on what steps the UK Government are going to take to ensure that this regime is halted?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend is right to point to the frankly appalling human rights record of the Iranian Government. I also take the view that, generally, it is sensible, even where we have the most profound disagreements with the Government of another country, to have diplomatic channels so that there is a means by which to communicate with that Government. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is determined to ensure that human rights remain a key element in the United Kingdom’s foreign policy. There will be an opportunity to ask about Iran on 18 October.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Today, postal workers across the UK are taking industrial action to protect their jobs, their pensions and our post offices. The Post Office has received £2 billion of public money over the past seven years. May we have a debate about why that money has not been spent on new services, securing the future of our post offices and protecting decent jobs?
Mr Lidington
I regret the fact that there is industrial action, because all that will do is inconvenience customers and make it more likely that those customers will look elsewhere for the delivery of parcels and for communicating messages, rather than using Post Office services. The Post Office has indeed been given taxpayers’ money to enable it to make the difficult transformation to a world that relies increasingly on electronic and digital communications and in which there are other competitors for things such as parcel delivery. In general, this has to be a matter of commercial judgment for the Post Office management.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
What a summer of sport we have had: Andy Murray winning at Wimbledon, scores of Olympic golds, Paralympic success at the moment, and, perhaps most significantly, Northamptonshire winning the T20 Blast. When the House returns in the autumn, may we have a debate about the stunning summer of sporting success?
Mr Lidington
I cannot promise a debate, but I know that everyone in the House will want to congratulate not only the Olympians and Paralympians, but Northamptonshire on their T20 triumph. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be doing his best to arrange the Corby ticker-tape parade as soon as possible.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
May we have a debate on whether London councils such as Greenwich, which want to resettle vulnerable Syrian refugees, are receiving adequate support from the Government, particularly to cover the higher costs of accommodation in the capital?
Mr Lidington
There are ongoing discussions between the Government and local authorities about the pressure on a number of local authorities that would, in principle, be willing to take refugees, but that judge that, at the moment, there is too much pressure from a growing population on the housing market in their own areas. Ministers want to see those discussions brought to a successful conclusion as well, so I hope that we can take the matter forward to a satisfactory agreement.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
Following the announcement by Celtic Energy to mothball the opencast mine at Nant Helen, Coelbren, with the loss of more than 100 jobs in my constituency, may we have a debate on the coal industry in Wales in order to support an industry that has done so much for the British economy over the centuries?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend is a very strong champion of his constituents, and I completely understand his concern. As he knows, this is a commercial decision taken by the company. I will draw his concern to the attention of Ministers at both the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Wales Office, so that they can consider whether it is possible for the Government to help constituents who will need to look for other employment following the decision.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
The House will be aware that, earlier this summer, we saw the collapse of Bathgate-based Dunne Group, which had some 600 direct employees and around 1,200 sub- contractors. Almost two months on, the adverse knock-on effect from that closure on other firms within the supply chain is now fully apparent, and is typified by Beattie Contracts Ltd from Grangemouth, which has lost £280,000. Many other businesses have been affected by this and other closures. May we have a ministerial statement, or a debate in Government time, on what steps the Government are taking to ensure better payment standards for contractors?
Mr Lidington
The Government have a strong record of insisting on tight schedules of repayment by contractors, and we have introduced new rules that try to make sure that small and medium-sized enterprises in particular are paid on time. If the hon. Gentleman would like to send me details of his constituency case, I will draw them to the attention of the Minister directly responsible.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
May we have a statement on what the Government are doing to stop convicted killers absconding from prison? This week, yet another murderer has disappeared, this time from Sudbury. Ministry of Justice figures show that prisoners convicted of murder have been absconding at the rate of one a month for years, putting the public at risk, so it is time that we really got a grip.
Mr Lidington
As my hon. Friend knows, my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary is preparing legislation on prisons reform, and I am sure that she will want to take account of my hon. Friend’s concerns as she develops her policy further.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
In the light of the Brexit vote, may we please have a debate in Government time on whether the previous Parliament’s decision to reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies by 50 still commands the support of the House of Commons, and on whether the Government will reduce the number of Ministers if there is a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament?
Mr Lidington
I have to say that quite a number of Members of this House have, for some years, been representing a significantly larger number of constituents than the quota proposed by the boundary commissions. The central principle behind the new law and the boundary commissions’ recent proposals is that the electorates in each constituency should be the same, so that everybody’s vote counts equally. That seems a democratically just principle.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
The Wales Bill, which concluded its proceedings in this House on Monday evening, includes provisions to devolve an element of income tax powers to Wales. For those powers to work properly, they must be supported by a fair fiscal framework. May we therefore have an oral statement from the Treasury on this issue before the Bill reaches the National Assembly for Wales for the legislative consent motion process?
Mr Lidington
I cannot promise the hon. Gentleman a statement, but there will be Treasury questions on 25 October when he can make that point directly to Ministers.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
This week, the Victorian Society released its list of top 10 endangered buildings in the country. Tellingly, none was in London or the south-east. The grade-II-listed Victoria mill in Great Grimsby was on that list, and it was pictured covered in scaffolding, paid for by the local council following years of neglect by the private owners. May we have a debate, in Government time, on the responsibilities of private companies to preserve heritage assets around the country for the benefit of local communities?
Mr Lidington
As the hon. Lady hinted, there are already legal obligations on owners to keep buildings in a proper state of repair, particularly if the buildings are listed in any way, and there are sanctions available against those who choose not to do that, so there should be a remedy for her local authority. Often, the community rallying around can help to restore a historical building and convert it to new use successfully.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
May we have a debate about delays to the approval of a report by the Committees on Arms Export Controls on the supply of weapons to Saudi, as there is compelling evidence that UK arms are being used to kill women and children in Yemen? Can the Leader of the House advise us on whether the Government Whips had any role whatever in Committee members breaking the quorum during two Committee meetings, thus leaving the report as yet unapproved?
Mr Lidington
I am afraid that what goes on in Committees is certainly not a matter for me. On the broader point, there was a statement on this and related matters quite recently by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). The best thing I can do is point the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) towards Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions, which will be in the week after we get back.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
If the Leader of the House will not listen to the will of the current House, which is against the reduction from 650 Members to 600, may I suggest a debate on reducing the numbers in the Lords? Could we take a lesson from sport and introduce a squad system, whereby each party could nominate active peers, including Cross Benchers, thereby reducing the numbers voting in the Lords and ending the ridiculous situation where there are far more peers than elected MPs?
Mr Lidington
My regret is that when this House had the opportunity to vote for thoroughgoing House of Lords reform, this House chose not to do so.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Can the Leader of the House confirm that the Government will shortly issue a statement on the impact of employment tribunal fees? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that given that claims of sex discrimination are down by 91%, employment tribunal fees discriminate against women workers?
Mr Lidington
I shall draw the hon. Gentleman’s concerns to the attention of the relevant Minister. I do not know exactly when the report is likely to be published, but I shall find out and make sure that he is informed, as far as we are able to do so in advance.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the all-party parliamentary group on social work’s excellent report on adult mental health in England, especially section 2 on meeting the needs of diverse and marginalised groups, including ex-military personnel with dual diagnosis of mental health problems, substance misuse and complex needs? Veterans are a unique group whose lives have been shattered by service to their country and too many of them are ending up in prison because of mental health problems.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Lady makes a powerful point. Many of us in our constituency surgeries have experience of individual cases of the kind that she describes. It sounds to me like the right kind of subject for a Westminster Hall debate. In my experience, it is often the military and service charities working with the NHS services that are best able to reach out to and communicate with the ex-service people concerned.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Charlie Taylor report into the youth justice system will be wide ranging and important. It is critical that we improve the life chances of young people in danger of a life of crime, so may we please have a statement and publication of the report as soon as we return here after the party conference season?
Mr Lidington
I will draw that request to the attention of the Ministers concerned.
Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)
Last month I wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer seeking clarification about future funding for projects in the Stirling area that are currently funded by EU funding streams. The response that I received from the Treasury indicated that information on that would be published before the autumn statement. Does this imply that the Government have the beginnings of a plan about how to exit the EU? When will we be able to debate it?
Mr Lidington
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that he will guarantee the funding currently supplied by the EU up till 2020 on projected levels, and that he has also agreed to guarantee to fund various regional agricultural and fisheries projects which will have been signed and sealed by the time of the autumn statement, even if the lifetime of those deals goes beyond the likely date of exit. I hope that that will have given the hon. Gentleman the reassurance he seeks. If it does not and if he would like to write to me about his particular concerns, I will take that to Treasury Ministers.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
May we please have a statement on the progress of the Government’s help to buy ISA? A number of constituents have been in touch over the summer. They are saving for their first home and are concerned about reports that they cannot use that for the all-important exchange deposit. May we have clarification as these people need information urgently?
Mr Lidington
I refer back to the business statement. We will be dealing with the Savings (Government Contributions) Bill on 17 October, and the hon. Lady will be able to explore those matters in detail then.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The plight of displaced Syrians has moved us all. One of them came to my surgery last week. She is rebuilding her life as a third-year UCL PhD student and is now, unexpectedly, stuck with a bill of more than £30,000 for fees, as a result of the bar on funds coming in or out of Syria. May we have a Government statement to clarify the status of Syrian students? Her counterparts at Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh and Newcastle universities had their fees waived, and she faces an uncertain future here through no fault of her own.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Lady has just pointed to a disparity between the apparent practice in different cases. If she would like to write to me with details of her constituency case, I will take this up with the relevant Department.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Following the welcome news that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will not be renewing its contract with Concentrix, whose performance the Leader of the House last week described as completely unacceptable, may we have a debate in Government time on the payment-by-results model in our welfare system?
Mr Lidington
There was a good opportunity to question the Financial Secretary when she made the statement about Concentrix earlier this week. I know that my right hon. Friends at the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions will be doing all they possibly can to ensure that appropriate lessons are learned and that we get the decent standard from contractors that constituents are entitled to expect.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
On 16 December 2015, Vietnamese human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai and his colleague Le Thu Ha were arrested by police in Hanoi for providing training to religious communities throughout Vietnam and charged with conducting propaganda against the state, and they could face a sentence of 20 years. Would Ministers agree to make a statement on the release of these two prisoners, and indeed all prisoners of conscience, and to encourage Vietnam to repeal laws and decrees that infringe on fundamental human rights?
Mr Lidington
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it should be regarded as a fundamental right for people to express and to proselytise on behalf of the religion to which they themselves adhere, so I was dismayed to hear about that particular case. Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions on 18 October may provide him with the opportunity he is seeking.
Personal Statement
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
Mr Speaker, with your permission, I would like to make a personal statement. In response to the report published by the Privileges Committee today and the report published by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, I wanted to take this opportunity to make a full and unreserved apology to you and to the House.
In 2013, I breached the rules of conduct by sharing a draft report by the Committee of Public Accounts regarding the regulation of consumer credit. An investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards was initiated in 2015, following a complaint made by Wonga. I completely accept the findings of the report published today by the Privileges Committee and the report submitted by the Commissioner for Standards. I accept that my actions in sharing the report constitute an interference in the work of the Committee of Public Accounts, and for this I am truly sorry. This was never my intention.
These actions came as a result of my own naiveté, driven by a desire to strengthen regulations on payday lenders and protect vulnerable consumers. The Commissioner for Standards confirmed this as my motivation, based on evidence that I have worked on cross-party campaigns to protect consumers and that I had long argued for tighter regulation of the payday lending industry. I welcome the report’s conclusion that my actions were not motivated by financial gain, and the report states that I did not act in the way I did for financial gain, nor with the intention of reflecting the views of the company concerned. I also appreciate the acknowledgment that the national newspaper story following the start of the investigation was unsubstantiated.
I have accepted full responsibility since the very beginning of this process and, as acknowledged in the report, I have provided an unreserved acceptance of the findings of the commissioner and have co-operated fully throughout three different inquiries. I would like to add my thanks to the Privileges Committee, the Clerk of that Committee and the Commissioner for Standards for their diligent work throughout this process.
I reiterate my apology today, Mr Speaker, and I am very grateful that the House has allowed me to make this apology at the earliest opportunity.
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he has said and, indeed, for the way in which he has said it.
BBC
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Karen Bradley)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement. Today I am laying before Parliament a draft of the royal charter for the continuance of the BBC, together with the accompanying draft framework agreement between the Government and the BBC. The latter sets out the detail behind the charter, including out how the BBC will operate in the new charter period.
These drafts set out the policies contained in the White Paper, “A BBC for the future: a broadcaster of distinction”, which was published in May. This White Paper was the culmination of one of the largest public consultations ever. More than 190,000 members of the public, as well as industry stakeholders and experts, gave their views on how the Government could enable the BBC to continue to deliver world-class content and services over the next 11 years. The consultation served as a reminder that the BBC matters deeply to this country, as it does to people right across the world. Far from diminishing the BBC, our changes strengthen it.
I am very grateful to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), for all his brilliant work on the BBC. My Department has worked very closely with both the BBC and Ofcom, which has taken on the job of being the BBC’s first independent regulator, to develop and agree these draft documents. I am a huge fan of the BBC. At its best, it is peerless. Our aim is to ensure that a strong, distinctive, independent BBC will continue to thrive for years to come—and also to improve the BBC where we can. I extend my personal thanks to Tony Hall and Rona Fairhead, and their teams, for their commitment to making this work.
The new charter and agreement will enable a number of improvements. They enhance the distinctiveness of BBC content, and the BBC’s mission and public purposes have been reformed to reflect this requirement. The governance and regulation of the BBC will also be reformed. The new BBC Board will be responsible for governing the BBC, and Ofcom will take on the regulation of the BBC. The charter and agreement sets out functions and obligations that the BBC and Ofcom must follow in order to deliver this. The charter explicitly recognises the need for the BBC to be independent, particularly in editorial matters, and the BBC will appoint a majority of the members of the new board, with strict rules to ensure all appointments are made fairly and openly. The charter also provides financial stability for the BBC by making it clear that the licence fee will remain the key source of funding for the BBC for the next charter period.
Obligations for the BBC to consider both the negative and positive market impacts of its activities are set out in the charter. Ofcom must always keep these in mind when reviewing new and changed services. The BBC is obliged to work closely with others and to share its knowledge, research and expertise for wider public benefit. The Government want a BBC that is as open and transparent as possible. The charter sets out new obligations in this regard, including publishing the salaries of those employees and talent who earn more than £150,000.
The BBC serves all nations and regions. It needs to be more reflective of the whole of the United Kingdom, and the new charter requires this through the mission and public purposes. This will be supported by specific board representation, including the appointment of nation members, which, for the first time, will be agreed with the Administrations of Northern Ireland and Wales, as well as Scotland, as is currently the case. Provision for the nations will be regulated by Ofcom through a new operating licence regime, which will include continuing the approach of production targets for making programmes outside London. One of the BBC’s many responsibilities is to bring people together, supporting and encouraging greater cohesion, not least among the nations of the United Kingdom.
We have made considerable progress since the publication of the White Paper and resolved a number of important areas with the BBC, allowing us to go further in the key areas of transparency, fairness, and securing independence for the BBC. In addition to the principle of a mix of public and BBC-made appointments, all made in line with best practice, I can confirm that the charter sets out that the BBC will appoint nine board members, including five non-executive directors, and that an additional five will be public appointments. This means that the BBC will appoint the majority of members to its new board, which will ensure that the BBC Board is independent and that each nation of the UK will have a voice. This will strengthen the BBC’s independence, compared with when all the BBC trustees were appointed by the Government.
The National Audit Office will become the BBC’s financial auditor. In addition, the charter will enhance the NAO’s role and access, and allow it to conduct value-for-money studies of the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries. Such money subsidises the licence fee, so the public has every right to expect value for money.
There will also be greater transparency, with be a full, fair and open competition for the post of chair of the new BBC Board. This is in line with the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s recommendation. It is a significant new post, and transparency and fairness in making the appointment is vital, not least so that the industry and the public have confidence in it. I am grateful to Rona Fairhead, who has decided not to be a candidate for this new post, for the work she has done as chair of the BBC Trust, and in particular for her help in reforming the governance of the BBC.
The fundamental reforms set out in the draft charter will take time to implement, given the complexity of the changes, the need for a smooth transition and the importance of consulting on some elements of the new regulatory structure. There will be a short period of transition before the BBC Board and Ofcom take on their new governance and regulatory roles on 3 April next year. The BBC will continue to operate under current arrangements during the transitional period. Further details about the transition will be confirmed in the coming months, as we work closely with the BBC and Ofcom to ensure that all the elements of transition are managed as smoothly as possible, including the process by which the new BBC Board will be established.
Members of both Houses will now have a chance to consider the proposals in detail. To aid them in that endeavour, I have today deposited a series of information sheets in the Libraries of both Houses. I have also sent the draft documents to the devolved Administrations so that the devolved legislatures can debate them over the coming weeks. My Culture, Media and Sport ministerial colleagues and I look forward to parliamentary debates on the draft charter and agreement in due course. Following those debates, the Government will present the charter to the Privy Council in order that the new charter is in place by the end of the year.
The BBC is one of this country’s greatest achievements and greatest treasures. These reforms ensure that it will continue to be cherished at home and abroad for many years to come. I commend this statement to the House.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for prior sight of her statement this morning. As she rightly says, the BBC is one of Britain’s greatest achievements and greatest treasures. It is indeed the broadcaster against which other broadcasters across the world are judged, and the quality of its programmes is second to none. The BBC must be protected and sustained both in its independence and its funding. Does the Secretary of State accept that both of these are under some degree of threat?
Will not the charter sustain a degree of Government pressure given that the BBC will have Government appointees on its new board? More significantly, does the Secretary of State accept that the introduction of mid-term reviews of the charter in the 10-year renewal cycle will put pressure on the BBC to look over its shoulder and seek to avoid upsetting the Government of the day, when it should be genuinely independent and free to comment without fear or favour on what Governments do and when Governments get things wrong? How will viewers and listeners be assured that the five-year health check will not put undue pressure on the BBC, or be interpreted as a de facto charter review? The fact that the new board has a number of Government appointees—including the chair and deputy chair with responsibility for editorial decision making—could weaken the BBC’s editorial independence. What guarantees will she give that undue Government pressure will not affect BBC independence?
On funding, what answers does the Secretary of State have for Lord Patten—the former chairman of the BBC and Conservative Cabinet Minister—about whether the BBC’s financial security will be affected, now that the cost of TV licences for the over-75s has been foisted on it in what he described as a “heist”? The Opposition take the view that welfare benefits, such as free TV licences, should be decided on and paid for by Government, not squeezed out of the BBC’s staff and programming budgets, other licence fee payers and, as will probably happen, some of the pensioners too. What answer does she have to that fair and logical case?
The Government have suggested that the BBC should have “distinctiveness”, in a departure from the Reithian view that the BBC should “inform, educate and entertain”. Channel 4 was created to bring distinctiveness to our viewing, but as a direct effect of the squeeze on BBC funding, great BBC entertainment programmes are being transferred to Channel 4. Is there not a risk that more of the BBC’s brilliant programmes will follow?
Even more worryingly, the BBC’s funding might be further top-sliced in the future. Will the Secretary of State guarantee that that will not happen? Will she look again at Government policy, and its relationship with the BBC, and guarantee that the charter will not diminish the scope and effectiveness of the BBC? Does she accept that the changes being brought forward by the Government will damage the BBC, in respect of its crucial independence and, most significantly, its ability to put on the finest of programmes, because of the impact on its funding? The BBC should be able to continue to put on the finest programmes across the whole range of its broadcasting. What assurances will the Government give that when the regulation of the BBC is transferred to Ofcom, it will retain its editorial independence? Above all, what assurances can the Secretary of State give that the BBC will be able to continue making the programmes we all enjoy? Finally, will the draft charter be subject to the most rigorous parliamentary scrutiny by both Houses and the devolved Administrations?
Karen Bradley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I agree that the BBC must be protected and sustained. The work we have done on this charter will ensure that the BBC can not just survive, but flourish in a new era. This is not the world where everybody sat down and watched the same programme at the same time; people are accessing TV programmes in entirely different ways, and we want to make sure that the charter gives the BBC the sustainable footing it needs.
For the first time, we have made it an 11-year charter in order that it does not coincide with the electoral cycle and there cannot be seen to be political influence on the charter renewal. In addition, we want to make sure that this is the longest charter ever. Therefore, a mid-term review to ensure that the BBC is still delivering what licence fee payers, which we all are, want to see is a very important part of our proposals.[Official Report, 11 October 2016, Vol. 615, c. 3MC.]
I must pick the hon. Gentleman up on his point about the deputy chair. There is no longer a deputy chair within the board’s structure. There are a chair and four nation members who will be Government appointments—public appointments. It is important that we have a member for each of the nations on the board and that they are full public appointments, and that the chair is an open and transparent public appointment. We are not appointing a deputy chair; it will be for the board to determine who the senior independent director should be.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about ensuring that there is distinctiveness. The words on distinctiveness are taken from the White Paper, which was the result of the consultation to which we had 190,000 responses—the largest consultation of its kind. I accept his point about making sure that there is a difference between Channel 4 and the BBC, but the distinctiveness of the BBC is what makes it so great for licence fee payers and for us as a nation. It is the thing that makes the BBC something that we can sell across the world. I doubt that any of us who went abroad over the summer did not come into contact with some form of BBC content, programming or original idea that was being shown or talked about locally.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about editorial independence. The charter sets out that there is editorial independence and ensures that the BBC is entirely independent. Although the public appointments will go through the full public appointments process, once they are board members, they will be BBC Board members who work towards ensuring that the BBC is the greatest it can be.
Finally, on funding and the over-75s’ TV licences, the director-general, Tony Hall, said in July 2015:
“The government’s decision here to put the cost of the over-75s on us has been more than matched by the deal coming back for the BBC.”
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. As I mentioned to the House earlier, there is another statement to follow and then two debates to take place under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee, to which the first is notably well subscribed, so there is a premium upon brevity. May I appeal to colleagues, even distinguished and cerebral Back-Bench Members, to avoid discursive commentary or lengthy preamble and instead just to get to a pithy inquiry, to which I know there will be a pithy reply from the Secretary of State?
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirm that the draft charter is not, as some have said, either a damp squib or the brainchild of Rupert Murdoch? Does she agree that the charter makes significant changes—including the new governance structure, the new requirements for diversity, distinctiveness and impartiality, the opening up of the schedule to 100% competition, and full access to the National Audit Office—and that those changes will ensure that the BBC continues to be the best broadcaster in the world?
Karen Bradley
I have a suitably pithy response, Mr Speaker: yes, I agree with my right hon. Friend, to whom we owe a great debt for where we are with the charter today.
John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
May I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement?
Scottish National party Members are great champions of public service broadcasting and we welcome a number of the Secretary of State’s announcements, including the commitments to equality and diversity and to transparency and openness. That is something that we have not always seen at the BBC, not least with the appointment of Rona Fairhead. As we discovered during the Culture, Media and Sport Committee hearings, Ms Fairhead was reappointed after, apparently, a cosy private chat with the then Prime Minister. That is not how such significant appointments should be made, so the Secretary of State is entirely right to throw open the appointment to public competition.
We also welcome the adoption of another of the Committee’s recommendations on talent pay. Does the Secretary of State agree that the BBC argument that this will be a charter to poach talent is, quite simply, nonsense? If an agent is worth his or her salt, they will know exactly how much their client and all their competition are paid. I know that from bitter experience. Perhaps the Secretary of State will agree that the danger for the BBC is that it will be forced to reveal the salaries of many of its more mediocre but overpaid employees, and that there may be some national teeth-gnashing as a result, when people discover exactly what goes on behind closed doors.
We welcome the recognition of Gaelic, but will the Secretary of State go a little further and say whether she thinks it should have parity with Welsh? May I also address the Secretary of State’s rather strange statement that one of the BBC’s many responsibilities is to bring—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is out of his time, but I am sure he is finishing his sentence. It needs to be a very short sentence.
John Nicolson
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Secretary of State agree that the matter of a separate “Scottish Six” is entirely the responsibility of the BBC and its right to continue its pilots?
Karen Bradley
I detected significant personal feeling in the hon. Gentleman’s comments on pay—I will not comment further.
The position of chair of the new BBC Board is an entirely new role; it is not a continuation of the role of the chair of the BBC Trust. I pay tribute to Rona Fairhead for the work she has done as chair of the BBC Trust, but this is a brand-new role and, as such, we took the decision that it needed to be open to a full recruitment process, to ensure that we get the right person for the job. I am grateful to Rona for the work she has done, including on the charter, and I accept that she has decided not to put herself forward for the role.
On regional broadcasting, the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that BBC Alba is part of the BBC, whereas S4C is a separate, independent business. There may appear to be a difference in treatment, but that is to reflect the fact that BBC Alba is a wholly owned part of the BBC. I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that we have considerably beefed up the role of BBC Alba in the charter.
Finally, on the point about the “Scottish Six”, let me be clear that the BBC is the nation’s broadcaster, so I expect the BBC to reflect the national mood and the national news that is important across the whole nation. The hon. Gentleman is right that it is for the BBC, which has operational independence in this matter, to determine how exactly it makes that happen.
Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)
I echo the Secretary of State’s praise for my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). I hope he will not take it amiss if I say that the “Maldon charter” has been considerably enhanced by the “Moorlands amendments”, particularly on transparency of pay and open competition for the BBC chairman. Will the Secretary of State confirm that diversity remains an important part of the charter and that she will work with the BBC to ensure that we see greater diversity—not just on the screen, but particularly behind it?
Karen Bradley
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments and pay tribute to him for the role he carried out as, I think, the longest-serving Culture Minister we have ever seen. I agree with him on diversity and I can confirm that what he said is the case.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Given where we could have ended up, may I warmly welcome today’s statement, and particularly the fact that the Government have backed down on the composition of the board? Given that Rona Fairhead was appointed specifically, in effect, to abolish her own organisation—she has done so—and to oversee a smooth transfer to the new unitary board, has her treatment not been a little rough?
Karen Bradley
I do not accept that there has been a backdown about the board; it is about considering what is an appropriate, balanced board which is the most effective way of helping the BBC to deliver on its charter requirements. I do not agree about Ms Fairhead. The proposal is no reflection on her or her ability to perform the role; it is merely a brand-new role.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s decision to accept the Select Committee’s recommendation that there should be an open and fair process for the appointment of the chairman of the new BBC unitary board. When does she expect or hope that that appointment will be made and the new unitary board will assume its responsibilities?
Karen Bradley
As acting Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend has done sterling work. The Select Committee’s report very much influenced the work we did on the charter over the summer. As I said in my statement, I expect the new board to be in place and all the regulators working by 3 April next year. I expect the new chair of the board to be appointed before that date.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Does the Secretary of State accept and acknowledge that many of us do not share the doe-eyed sentimentality often expressed about the BBC, especially when they have borne the brunt of its bias over several years? On the issue of transparency, why has the publication of expenses or salaries been limited of amounts over £150,000? Why can it not be brought into line with MPs’ expenses of £75,000 and include all other expenses, including travel and accommodation?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman has, I know, had long-term issues—that might be the best way of putting it—with the BBC and a view of bias, but I am sure he would agree that he enjoys many BBC programmes on radio and television. We should cherish and really want to protect that. When it is at its best, it is Britain at its best. The Rio Olympics was a prime example of when the whole of Britain came together. The proposals are in line with civil service obligations on pay transparency, but the first disclosures will across bigger bands than we have in the civil service.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
If the BBC is so universally wonderful and popular as we have heard, why does it need the criminal law in place to coerce people to pay for it? Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that if the BBC wants to take public money, it should be transparent and that if it does not want to be transparent, it should not take public money?
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend knows that we carried out the Perry review on decriminalisation, which found that there was a need for a criminal sanction under the system. This is one of the issues that will continue to be looked at. The BBC, of course, needs to be transparent to show that it is producing value for money for the licence payer.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for what she said about the importance of the BBC; any organisation that can turn Ed Balls into Fred Astaire is truly remarkable. Will she emphasise that this charter renewal does not undermine the flexibility of BBC Scotland’s news programming, and underline how important it is for audiences, not politicians, to choose programming?
Karen Bradley
I agree with the hon. Gentleman: it is for the BBC and the viewing public to make that determination. They will watch the programmes they want to watch, and the BBC can take editorial decisions around that. I am not sure that the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) is that keen now to be married to Fred Astaire.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
Just for absolute clarity, may I ask the Secretary of State why there is no provision in the statement for Scotland’s very own six o’clock news?
Karen Bradley
That is a matter of editorial independence at the BBC, and it is for it to make that decision.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
When appearing before the Education and Culture Committee of the Scottish Parliament, lead officials from the BBC eventually admitted after hard questioning from the Convener that ultimately decisions over commissioning would rest with London executives. Does the Secretary of State feel that the new charter will genuinely satisfy the desire of many in Scotland for greater autonomy on editorial and commissioning decisions lying where it should, with commissioners in Scotland?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady will have seen a letter from the director-general setting out his view of how the BBC ensures that that happens, and as an independent BBC, it is for the BBC to make sure that happens.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, in particular in relation to the involvement of the National Audit Office and the value-for-money assessments it will make. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that should deliver confidence, transparency, accountability and financial rigour?
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
The BBC is increasingly unable to afford sports events and programmes such as “The Great British Bake-Off”, which has now gone to Channel 4, and we are now seeing pressures on BBC services and a merger of news channels. Is it not the case that this Government keep top-slicing and undermining? We see the BBC asked to fund the World Service, local TV, and now the £600 million for over-75s’ TV licences. This Government do not care about the BBC.
Karen Bradley
I totally disagree, and I will quote again the director-general:
“Far from being a cut, the way this financial settlement is shaped gives us, effectively, flat licence fee income across the first five years of the next charter.”
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State ensure that no decisions are taken about the monitoring service at Caversham Park before important Select Committee inquiries are held next month? And can I just say that I do not share this unhealthy obsession with what other people earn? I was always told that it was rude to ask.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State talked a lot in her statement about the nations, but will she say how the charter will impact on regional news programmes and local radio such as BBC Humberside?
Karen Bradley
The decisions about news programming are editorial matters for the BBC and it has editorial independence as set out in the charter, but I strongly agree that we need strong regional programming across the whole of the UK, and that is what is clear in this charter.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Following the previous question, the Secretary of State will be aware that the English regions feel that their voice is not heard loudly enough. She refers specifically to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; what board representation will there be from the English regions?
Karen Bradley
I can assure my hon. Friend that there will be an English board member—a public appointment —and I will do everything I can to make sure that that board member represents the regions of England.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
In its latest annual report on BBC Wales output, Audience Council Wales said that the corporation needs to be more accountable to Welsh audiences. How will this be achieved following implementation of the charter and can the Secretary of State commit to a Wales member sitting permanently on the board of Ofcom now that it has assumed the role of external regulator?
Karen Bradley
I think the hon. Gentleman is confusing the new unitary board with Ofcom; they are separate bodies. Ofcom is the regulator; the new unitary board will have governance over the BBC.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
The Secretary of State will be aware of the epic battle that took place during the last Parliament between the Public Accounts Committee—of which I was a member—and the BBC over the issue of redundancy payments for senior managers and their reappointment. Part of that involved the discrepancy between the legal resources of the Committee and those of the BBC. While I welcome the involvement of the National Audit Office, will the Secretary of State undertake to ensure that the Committee has the appropriate resources and powers to hold the BBC to account?
Karen Bradley
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I can also tell him that we are imposing a cap of £95,000 on redundancy payments.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State tell us what limit has been placed on the commissioning of programmes? A 100% commissioning rate could constitute privatisation by the back door.
Karen Bradley
Obviously the BBC needs to produce original content, but the fact that it does so by commissioning through independent production companies means that we have a thriving independent production sector which can then sell to the rest of the world. I encourage the BBC to do that, to ensure that we have those creative clusters. An amazing amount of activity and a number of new businesses have resulted from the BBC’s presence in Manchester, and its commissioning of programmes there.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State share my hope, and that expressed by Clare Balding, that the revealing of “talent” salaries will not reveal a gender pay gap?
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I am glad to see that some progress is being made on this issue, as about 850 BBC staff are based at Pacific Quay in my constituency. BBC Alba is currently struggling with a 73% repeat rate of programmes—including, over Christmas, my beloved children’s programme “Dotaman”, which was first broadcast in 1985. Will the Secretary of State grant MG Alba’s request for the BBC to increase its in-house programme contribution to BBC Alba to 10 hours a week, to match its contribution to S4C?
Karen Bradley
As I pointed out to the hon. Lady’s colleague the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), BBC Alba is a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC, whereas S4C is not. However, I agree with her that there is some fantastic broadcasting from Glasgow, and we do want to ensure that BBC Alba and others have the resources that they need.[Official Report, 11 October 2016, Vol. 615, c. 3MC.]
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
Both “The Village” and “The League of Gentlemen” were made in my constituency; I suppose I must be the MP for Royston Vasey. Such programmes bring great economic benefit to the areas that people visit to see where they are made. Does any part of the draft charter encourage the production of programmes outside London, so that all our constituencies can benefit from the BBC?
Karen Bradley
I must declare an interest: I have cousins who live in the village of Hadfield, otherwise known as Royston Vasey, and I am extremely keen to ensure that more people visit it, because they will go to my cousins’ village shop.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Can the Secretary of State confirm that her colleagues will publish, by local authority area, the cost of free television licences for the over-75s? I was told in a written parliamentary answer that the Scottish figure was £49 million, which is a lot of money. Will the Secretary of State respond to the criticism, made by many of us, that transferring that cost from the Government to the BBC will have a detrimental effect on high-quality programming?
Karen Bradley
I simply do not agree that there will be an impact on programming when the BBC’s guaranteed licence fee is rising in line with inflation over a five-year period.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
I welcome the statement, but will the Secretary of State assure me that the excellent training and development and apprenticeship programmes run by the BBC will not be affected by the charter review?
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State explain how these measures will deal with the widely accepted view—which may be shared by the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins)—that the BBC is institutionally biased in favour of the European Union?
Karen Bradley
I am sure my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that Ofcom is the regulator under the new proposals, and that the National Audit Office will be assessing value for money for the taxpayer. All that will help to ensure that the issue of BBC bias is addressed.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that under the charter the BBC will continue to invest properly in excellent local radio stations such as the one that is shared by her constituents and mine?
Karen Bradley
I do not know how my hon. Friend restrained himself from mentioning BBC Radio Stoke by name. I know that BBC Radio Stoke will not give me an easy time if I do not give that assurance.
Mr Speaker
Order. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is seeking to intervene on this statement, although it is very likely that he will wish to intervene on the next.
Hinkley Point C
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a statement on the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.
As the House knows, on 28 July, following a decision by the board of EDF to approve the final investment decision on the £18 billion project to build a new nuclear power plant in Somerset, I announced that the Government would consider all elements of the project carefully before entering into a contract with EDF, and that we would make a decision by the early autumn. I can announce today that the Government have decided to proceed with the first new nuclear power station for a generation. However, that decision includes two important changes.
On the Hinkley project itself, the Government will now be able to prevent the sale of EDF’s controlling stake before the completion of construction. That agreement will be confirmed in an exchange of letters between the Government and EDF. Existing legal powers, and the new legal framework, will mean that the Government can intervene in the sale of EDF’s stake once Hinkley is operational.
Furthermore, and even more important, we will reform the wider legal framework for future foreign investment in British critical infrastructure. Those reforms will have three elements. First, after Hinkley, the British Government will take a special share in all future nuclear new build projects. That will ensure that significant stakes cannot be sold without the Government’s knowledge or consent. Secondly, the Office for Nuclear Regulation will be directed to require notice from developers or operators of nuclear sites of any change of ownership or part-ownership. That will allow the Government to advise or direct the ONR to take action to protect national security as a result of a change in ownership. Thirdly, the Government will significantly reform their approach to the ownership and control of critical infrastructure to ensure that the full implications of foreign ownership are scrutinised for the purposes of national security. That will include a review of the public interest regime in the Enterprise Act 2002, and the introduction of a cross-cutting national security requirement for continuing Government approval of the ownership and control of critical infrastructure.
Those changes will bring Britain’s policy framework for the ownership and control of critical infrastructure into line with those of other major economies, which will allow the Government to take a fair and consistent approach to the national security implications of critical infrastructure, including nuclear energy, in the future. The changes mean that, while the UK will remain one of the most open economies in the world, the public can be confident that foreign direct investment always works in the country’s best interests.
This £18 billion investment in Britain provides an upgrade in our supply of clean energy. When it begins producing electricity in the middle of the next decade, it will provide 7% of the UK’s electricity needs, giving secure energy to 6 million homes for 60 years. Furthermore, it must be stressed that the contract negotiated places all the construction risk on investors alone. Consumers will not pay a penny unless and until the plant generates electricity.
The proposed strike price of £92.50, which will be reduced to £89.50 if Sizewell C is built, contains important elements of insurance against any cost overrun in construction and future high gas prices, which have historically been volatile. It compares broadly with the costs of other clean energy such as offshore wind with the additional costs of intermittency, or gas with carbon capture and storage.
Hinkley unleashes a long overdue new wave of investment in nuclear engineering in the UK, creating 26,000 jobs and apprenticeships and providing a huge boost to the economy, not only in the south-west but in every part of the country, through the supply chain of firms, big and small, that will benefit from the investment.
EDF has also confirmed that UK businesses are set to secure 64% of the value of the £18 billion investment being made—the biggest single capital project in the UK today. However, as it is the first of a wave of new nuclear plants, we expect the experience of rebooting the nuclear industry to mean that costs should reduce for future new nuclear power stations, another five of which are proposed.
In any consideration of nuclear power, safety will always be the No. 1 consideration. The construction of Hinkley Point C will be under the close scrutiny of the Office of Nuclear Regulation, which is independent of the industry and Ministers. It has the power necessary to halt construction or require amendments to any part of the plant if at any point it is not completely satisfied with the safety of any part of the reactor and its associated construction. Unlike in the past, the long-term decommissioning costs for the plant will be provided for explicitly as part of the funded decommissioning programme, and at a level that has been assessed independently as prudent and conservative.
Any investment that provides significant electricity supplies for the next two generations of British people and businesses requires and deserves serious consideration. It was right that the new Government should have taken the time to consider all components of the project. Having reviewed the project, the Government are now satisfied that the improved deal and the other changes announced today will, for the first time, remedy the weaknesses of the previous regime for foreign ownership of critical infrastructure. It is important that the right balance is struck between welcoming foreign investment and ensuring that it serves the national interest. That is exactly what these changes will achieve.
The investment will secure 7% of the UK’s electricity needs for 60 years, helping to replace existing nuclear capacity that is due to be decommissioned in the decade ahead. The electricity generated will be reliable and low carbon, and therefore completely compatible with our climate change obligations. Hinkley Point C will inaugurate a new era of UK nuclear power, with UK-based businesses benefiting from almost two thirds of the £18 billion value of the project, and 26,000 jobs and apprenticeships will be created. All these developments are good for Britain. It is now right that we support this major upgrade —the first of many—to the infrastructure on which our future depends. I commend this statement to the House.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the 13 minutes’ advance notice of his statement. Let me be clear that this is an important project that must now go forward without any further interruption or delay. The Secretary of State is aware that by intervening on 28 July, after EDF’s final investment decision, the Government put at risk 25,000 well-paid and well-qualified jobs. He knows that delaying not only risked the £18 billion of investment in UK jobs and infrastructure, but rocked confidence in investors who now believe that the Prime Minister does not understand the significance that companies attach to taking a final investment decision. He is aware of the Ernst and Young index that shows that Britain has fallen from fourth to 13th in attractiveness for low-carbon investment. The delay has only unsettled investors further.
I have a number of specific questions for the Secretary of State. First, in her meeting with President Xi, did the Prime Minister attempt in any way to isolate the building of the Hualong One reactor at Bradwell from the deal at Hinkley Point C? Secondly, if she did, what was the Chinese response?
Thirdly, of course every Member of the House agrees that the Government’s primary responsibility is to safeguard our national security, but neither the Secretary of State nor the Prime Minister has ever been clear about what they consider to be the security risks associated with the current deal. Will he now set those out so that the House and the public can decide whether the modifications that he is proposing adequately reflect the risks he believes exist?
Fourthly, can the Secretary of State specifically set out whether the Government were concerned about the security of the intellectual property associated with the EPR reactor? If so, was he aware that two such reactors are already under construction in China, in the form of the Taishan 1 and 2?
Fifthly, were the Government concerned with the potential for a cyber-attack? If so, did the Secretary of State not consider that, given the importance to the Chinese of having Bradwell as a kitemark for marketing their Hualong One reactor technology around the world, such an attack would undermine the very reason the Chinese wanted to be involved in the project in the first place?
Sixthly, if the Secretary of State wishes to dodge these questions by pleading that he does not wish to discuss security matters, I would ask how he can assure the House and the public that the efficacy of the amendments he is proposing are sufficient to meet the risks and challenges that justified a near-fatal delay in the project?
We must address the sole argument that the Government have actually presented as well as those that they have not. They claim that they have introduced significant new safeguards into the package, in particular that they will be able to require notification from owners or operators of nuclear sites of any change of ownership or part-ownership, but the Secretary of State already has such powers. Will he acknowledge that he can currently prevent the sale of any element of the UK’s critical infrastructure? That being the case, can he explain why he believes the proposed new powers add significantly to the public interest regulations in the Enterprise Act 2002, or are they merely window dressing to make it appear that the Government’s intervention has achieved something, no matter how much appearances may indicate to the contrary?
Is the Secretary of State aware of the House of Commons briefing paper entitled “Mergers & takeovers: the public interest test”? It highlights that energy security is already covered by national security, and that the Government already have the powers to prevent such a sale. Is he also aware that in the House of Lords, during the passage of the Energy Act, my noble Friend Lord Puttnam introduced an amendment specifically to introduce energy security as a new public interest term? Government lawyers then advised that:
“In cases where a merger posed a genuine and serious threat to what is described as societal needs, such as energy supply, this would be covered by the existing provision in the 2002 Act regarding national security—so ministers would be empowered to directly intervene.”
The Government created a commercial crisis. They sent shock waves through the industry and unions alike. They risked a diplomatic dispute with one of our key future trading partners, and in the end all they have done is pretend to give themselves powers that they already possessed. This statement is window dressing. It is face-saving by a Government who talked big and eventually backed down with a whimper.
The Secretary of State should explain whether he has reviewed changes to technology that have occurred in the past 10 years, particularly smart grids, battery storage technology and energy efficiency measures to manage our electricity supply in such a way as to reduce our need for the baseload power that Hinkley supplies.
Mr Speaker
Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman has concluded his remarks, because his time is up.
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman raised a large number of points, and I will address them. I hope that we share the view that a confident, long-term energy policy is vital to ensuring that people have access to secure energy that is affordable and clean, and that we should be a world leader in these important energy industries. I hope that he will not think it churlish of me to point out the complete absence of a long-term energy policy during Labour’s 13 years in government, when our nuclear fleet was known to be coming to the end of its life, yet no decision was taken to replace it. It has fallen to this Government to make the long-term decisions for the security of this country. Instead of making like the ostrich and hoping that the problem would go away, this Government are looking to the future, providing the upgrade to our long-term energy security that we need.
With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s position today, I am afraid that I am as confused as ever. His position is no more credible. He seems to be criticising the Prime Minister and the Government for taking the serious decision to review the components of a very important deal—that seems to be the import of his remarks. He said that this had damaged confidence, but when the announcement was made on 29 July, he told the BBC:
“I’m hoping what they will do is take two to three months to seriously review it”.
So much for the suggestion that we should not have had the review in the first place—although I am not sure what the purpose of that two or three months would be, because the very same day he said that he had already made his mind up. He said that he would not scrap the proposal
“because I welcome the jobs and I welcome the 7% of electricity that this will produce for the nation.”
That is from the hon. Gentleman who was urging the Government to take longer to review something, the conclusions of which he had already agreed in the first place. The contrast between that and the seriousness and forensic approach of the Government is marked.
I will address the points that the hon. Gentleman has raised. The powers under the Enterprise Act are subject to takeover thresholds. We are ensuring that any change in ownership or control, of whatever size, will be covered by a national security test. That seems to be sensible.
On Hinkley, until we proposed these changes to the contract, EDF was at liberty to sell its majority stake in that important investment without even needing the permission of the UK Government. Therefore, it seems sensible and prudent to have agreed straightforwardly with EDF that the UK Government’s consent should be required.
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman, who I would have thought would take a prudent view of matters of national security, should suggest—again, it is not clear—that we should not make these changes. When we debate these matters, he will be able to set out whether he opposes the measures we are taking to safeguard and entrench the same regime for national security in this country that other advanced economies enjoy.
I was clear in my statement that this is the first of what we hope will be a series of new nuclear investments. Just about 20% of power is generated by nuclear. It is important that there is another contribution to a diverse energy mix from nuclear. In so doing, we create new jobs, new opportunities and major advances for the UK economy.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome proposals to make it more difficult for foreign interests, especially nationalised industries and Governments, to buy our crucial infrastructure. Does the Secretary of State agree that future power stations would be much better financed by private sector British investors or even on occasion by Treasury investment, rather than foreign investors, who will be able to take enormous sums of money out of our country for 25 years or more while the project is up and running, which is a cost on the balance of payments that we do not want?
Greg Clark
I welcome overseas investment of £18 billion in the UK economy. I hope that, as we develop our nuclear programme and skills and as the supply chain prospers, British companies will invest in the various parts of the new nuclear supply chain. In fact, we expect that to happen, with 64% of the value going to UK companies. However, it is an important part of the deal that the consumer and taxpayer will not pay a penny for construction costs unless and until the plant generates electricity. Knowing the record of cost overruns and delays to new nuclear power stations, I think it is prudent that that risk be held by the investors, rather than the taxpayer.
Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the statement, and I thank his Energy Minister for the courtesy call this morning to explain the Government’s decision. I welcome the fact that we have had the statement before the recess to allow the opportunity for questions. It is unfortunate, however, that the Government have decided to take the gamble with Hinkley. The Secretary of State has outlined improvements, but the deal remains a rotten one; it will cost the bill payer £30 billion. He may say that the risk is with EDF and the construction companies, but, as Barclays outlined, if Hinkley Point C is 25% over-budget and four years late, EDF will still make a profit, at the expense of the bill payer.
If we do not pay a penny until Hinkley is built, or if it is built late, what will fill the gap? We know that coal is due to come off the system by 2025, when this project is meant to come on. If the gap is five years, what will fill it and at what cost? The cost of the project—Hinkley Point C will possibly be the most expensive object in history—is too much.
The opportunity cost is also a concern: we cannot spend the money twice; we cannot have the engineers working on things twice; and we cannot have the grid producing the electricity to be consumed twice. We could spend the money better. We could use our expertise better to develop an industrial strategy. The Government have said that that is part of their new policy, but that industrial strategy will mean foreign ownership, investment and profit. Instead we could develop the home-grown industries, which would see our country flourish, by investing in clean carbon capture, offshore wind, storage and solar. It would be better to invest in those things. I ask the Secretary of State to invest in the energy of the future, not the energy of the past.
Greg Clark
I am grateful for the courteous words with which the hon. Gentleman started his remarks. He talks about investing in energy sources of the future, rather than those of the past. I gently point out to him that, given the SNP’s record on energy forecasts in recent months, SNP Members might keep their crystal balls to themselves, if I can put it that way.
On the hon. Gentleman’s injunction to invest in renewables, that is very important. He will know that Scotland has a high proportion of renewable investment. However, I am confused by his party’s position. As I understand it, the SNP has stood on a platform of a nuclear-free Scotland but, it seems to me, with its fingers crossed behind its back, because it is happy to rely on the two nuclear power stations functioning in Scotland—Hunterston B and Torness—that are producing low-carbon electricity. Indeed, a former leader of the SNP wrote to EDF to say that he was happy to extend the life of the two power plants well into the 2020s. Therefore, he wants to condemn his cake and eat it, and then have another slice.
We do want to attract overseas investment into this country. It is a vote of confidence in this country that investors are working with us to have this major uprating of our infrastructure. We welcome that across different sectors. The hon. Gentleman is wrong that that is at the expense of other opportunities in this country. One of the features of the deal is that it does not burden the public balance sheet. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury have wisely ensured that the UK balance sheet remains able to support other investments, because this will be provided through private investment.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
Mr Speaker, with your indulgence, may I thank the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister for making exactly the right decision? I emphasise how important this is for the Bridgwater and West Somerset constituency. I invite the Secretary of State to come down as soon as he practically can to visit the Hinkley Pont C nuclear power station. Will he look with some urgency at the nuclear college that we urgently need to build at Cannington? Further to the letter that I sent him from the local enterprise partnership, we need the last bit of the funding to ensure that the infrastructure to deal with the project in the local area is up to scratch and we can deliver the power plant on time and on budget, for the benefit of the UK.
Greg Clark
I return the compliment and thank my hon. Friend for his level-headedness and patience, while the review has been conducted. It is an extremely important investment for his area. I am looking forward greatly to going with him to visit Hinkley. He is right. Investment such as that in the college will provide the skills that will charge ahead the whole of the south-west and, indeed, the rest of the country. The supply chain extends to all parts of the UK. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) will also be a beneficiary of the project. It requires an upgrade to the local infrastructure, and I will respond to the LEP on that. Earlier this week, I had a positive conversation with the Somerset chamber of commerce. It was clear that the benefits of what was then a proposal would be considerable —in fact, game changing—for Somerset.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will be aware that Britain’s two most respected economy and finance publications, the Financial Times and The Economist, have both come out strongly against Hinkley C on value for money and on energy policy grounds, with The Economist describing it just last month as a white elephant before it is even built. Can he confirm that nothing that he has announced today is an improvement on the dreadful deal negotiated by the former Chancellor on the guaranteed price? Absolutely dreadful.
Greg Clark
I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is a good deal that will secure 7% of our energy into the future. Given that 20% of our nuclear capacity will be decommissioned over the next 10 years, it is incumbent on him and his hon. Friends to tell us how they would replace it if they are not going to be forward looking and make positive decisions such as those that we have made.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, which is good news for the energy sector and for my constituents in Bradwell-on-Sea. I can assure him that they welcome the prospect of Chinese investment in the Maldon district, where there is a long history of nuclear power generation. Does he agree that any future power station should be regulated by the UK inspectorate and staffed by British employees and that the cyber-security evaluation centre, which assesses technology supplied by Huawei for the telecoms sector, sets a good precedent for addressing any security concerns?
Greg Clark
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is important that we should welcome overseas investment, but we should also have the kind of regime and powers that other advanced economies benefit from. That is something that mature countries would expect to have, and that is what we are going to have as a result of these changes.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Having pressed the pause button, why is the Secretary of State now pressing the fast-forward button? Does he not recognise that, as the Financial Times has pointed out, this project does not represent value for money? Does he accept that the cost to consumers has gone from £6 billion to £30 billion and that his Government are now willing to put in public subsidy, which, under the coalition, they said they would not do? Also, this is happening at a time when the cost of renewables is plummeting.
Greg Clark
No, I have said that the construction costs will be entirely financed by the private investors in the site. It is important that we take a consistent long-term approach to energy policy, and in so far as this can be cross-party, that will be beneficial. It is especially ironic that two Liberal Democrat Energy Secretaries were closely involved in the negotiation of this deal. The right hon. Gentleman obviously takes a different view.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, by the end of its life, this new power plant will have generated the most expensive energy in the history of energy generation? Does he agree with the National Audit Office that, by that point, consumers will have ended up subsidising EDF to the tune of £30 billion? Finally, can he tell us what is going to happen to the mountains of nuclear waste that this plant will generate?
Greg Clark
Securing a reliable source of energy for 60 years is a good investment in the future stability of our energy supplies, and that is worth having. Of course it is impossible to know what the alternatives will be during that time. We have seen very volatile energy prices. Sir Winston Churchill’s principle on energy security was that diversity, and diversity alone, was the key. I think that that is the right approach. I said earlier that decommissioning was provided for explicitly in the contract.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
EDF says that this will mean 1,500 jobs in offices in Bristol, as well as those associated with the plant, and I am meeting representatives of the company on Monday at Hinkley to discuss that, but these will be incredibly expensive jobs, given what we have already heard about the deal. Does the Minister really think that this is value for money? Would it not be better spent by investing in the renewables sector, which would also provide jobs in the south-west?
Greg Clark
I am slightly confused by the Opposition’s demeanour. In his rather confusing reply, the shadow Minister seemed to welcome the fact that the project was going ahead. Certainly, the trade unions in the south-west and across the country, which I imagine the hon. Lady speaks to, are very positive about it. The national secretary for energy for the GMB has said:
“Giving the thumbs up to Hinkley is vital to fill the growing hole in the UK’s energy supply needs.”
Frances O’Grady of the TUC has also welcomed the announcement. When the hon. Lady goes back to her constituency this weekend, perhaps she might like to talk to some of the unions, which are delighted on behalf of their members.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I welcome this announcement, which will bring £465 million-worth of contracts to businesses in the south-west and a £4 billion boost to the economy of the south-west. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to look at these decisions in the context of the fact that we have a fleet of nuclear power stations dating back to the 1960s and 1970s that will close over the next 10 years? These are not either/or decisions: we need both kinds of energy provision.
Greg Clark
That is exactly why long-term planning is essential. As I have said, about 19% of our electricity is generated by nuclear power, and if we do not renew it, that figure will fall to 2% by 2030. It seems to be prudent to get on with replacing it.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
Iwelcome this decision. It has been a long time coming, and it is a shame that it is been delayed over and again. I hope that Moorside power station will be built in the not-too-distant future. It will be incredibly important for economic development in my constituency. Can the Secretary of State assure me that the nuclear renewal programme will not be beset by delays?
Greg Clark
One of the reasons that we are so keen to inaugurate this new programme of nuclear engineering in this country is our need to replace the nuclear power stations that are being decommissioned and to build up in constituencies such as that of the hon. Lady the skills that can make a valuable contribution to local life and to the national economy.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
I welcome this start to the building of the new fleet of nuclear power stations and the opportunity that this will provide for British manufacturing. Will my right hon. Friend do all that he can to ensure that, in these deals, we buy the best of British?
Greg Clark
I will indeed. In the past 24 hours, EDF has made a commitment to me that 64% by value of the content will be spent with UK companies. That shows the tangible benefits to the whole economy of this programme.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
The Minister has said that the Hinkley decision will not burden the national balance sheet. Can he clarify the status of the offer made by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer to give EDF a Treasury guarantee of £2 billion to supplement the company’s liquidity? The National Audit Office has said that that offer puts the taxpayer at risk.
Greg Clark
I am delighted to answer that question. In fact, EDF has confirmed to me that it will not be taking up that £2 billion guarantee, so the taxpayer is fully insulated from the costs of construction.
Mr Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement today. Can he confirm that he will continue to work with business groups such as the China-Britain Business Council and the French Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain to ensure that we build on this nuclear partnership and attract future investment into the UK?
Greg Clark
I will indeed. We want to have good investment opportunities for countries around the world, and China has been an important and valued source of investment right across the United Kingdom. It is important that we build on that.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
In the light of the announcement today, is the Secretary of State now admitting that when the Government entered into the original contract, they failed to protect national security and critical infrastructure?
Greg Clark
Despite the injunction of the hon. Lady’s colleague on the Front Bench, the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), I can tell her that taking the opportunity seriously to review these matters before signatures were given has allowed us to improve the security of the arrangements. That seems to be a wholly good thing that I hope she will welcome.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
The Secretary of State is quite right to point out that nuclear energy provides a valuable part of UK energy security, but it is dependent on having the fuel to put into the system. The fuel for reactors in the UK is made in my constituency. Will he assure me that all efforts will be made to ensure that nuclear fuel for new reactors in the UK will be made in the UK whenever possible?
Greg Clark
Indeed, and I would be happy to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency see the production facilities for myself.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I very much welcome the review, but I am astonished that a review of the strike price was not part of it. The strike price will rise to close to £120 per MWh by the mid-2020s, and it will rise with inflation thereafter. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether a serious examination of the cost and value for money for bill payers was part of the review?
Greg Clark
Of course we looked at every component part. To construct a new nuclear power station, the first for generation in this country, at no risk to the taxpayer or the bill payer is a considerable achievement and represents good value.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
This is good news for my constituency, as we are now going to have a third nuclear power station built. Good news travels fast, and I have already had the local radio station desperate to get an interview with me. I should like to congratulate the Secretary of State on all his hard work and thank him for what he has done for my constituents. Will he agree to meet me shortly to discuss how we can speed up the decisions on the five proposed reactors, and will he also help me by discussing Heysham as soon as possible?
Greg Clark
I am happy, as always, to meet my hon. Friend, so he can consider the invitation accepted.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
We have an excellent Secretary of State who came to this House and made a full statement. He quite rightly gave the details of the statement to the Opposition and SNP spokesmen, but he also gave them in advance to the BBC. I read all the details on the BBC website. That is not how this House works. It may be that the pressure of spin doctors is still prevalent in Departments. That must stop. The House must be informed first. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is the convention of this House?
Greg Clark
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. I hope that he will concede that I have come to the House at the earliest opportunity. Such decisions have consequences for financial markets, and it is the norm to disclose such decisions at the opening of the markets. He can rest assured—I am sure that he will accept this—that my sense of responsibility to the House is clear in my mind, but the conduct of business must be orderly when it comes to the implications for financial markets.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I welcome the announcement about the golden share and support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said about future British investment, perhaps through a UK investment bank or UK pension funds, being important. Will the Secretary of State confirm where the currency risk will arise, in particular, for future subsidy payments out of the contracts for difference?
Greg Clark
The contract is expressed in pounds. The construction risk is entirely with the investors.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I welcome the long-term investment in low-carbon energy and the creation of 25,000 jobs. Will the Secretary of State confirm EDF’s commitment to local jobs and to small and medium-sized businesses in the supply chain, such as James Fisher Nuclear in my constituency?
Greg Clark
I am sure that that firm will attest to that. The Somerset chamber of commerce was clear that the orders that had already been placed during the preparation of the site have been beneficial to the county.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
This is obviously a massive infrastructure project, and I welcome what the Secretary of State has had to say about the opportunities for UK supply chains. I hope that those opportunities will be extended to the steel industry. I strongly urge the Secretary of State to get out there and make the case that all the steel used in the project should be British. May I put in a plug for Corby tubes?
Greg Clark
They are of excellent quality. The commitment given to me by EDF that 64% by value of the work will be with UK firms will be of particular benefit to such firms and to the supply chain right across the country.
Points of Order
Thursday 15th September 2016
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Act 2017 View all Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. A consultation document has been published in the last 10 minutes—I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for going to the Vote Office to get it for me—on the closure of the major court in my constituency along with Camberwell magistrates court, also in London. There has been no written ministerial statement and no other notice. Such things are often published late in the day on the day that the House rises. The court serves 600,000 people in London and was told only in June that extra capacity was needed. There should be an opportunity to raise such important local issues. By the time the House sits again, more than half of the consultation period will be over. Should not Ministers deal with Members on a more courteous basis?
Mr Speaker
The short answer to the hon. Gentleman’s inquiry is yes. It would be courteous if such announcements were made at an earlier point, not shortly before the House ceases to sit with minimal opportunity in parliamentary terms for the hon. Gentleman to explore the matter. I suggest that he uses his remaining time today to look at the options for asking parliamentary questions or for seeking a debate on this important matter. He would have every prospect of securing such a debate, and although it would be at a later point than he would wish, I guess it would be better than nothing.
I hope that Ministers will take account of what the hon. Gentleman said, because this concern can be felt by Members on both sides of the House. It is not clever when Ministers behave in this way. If it is done without malice or forethought, it is simply thoughtless. If it is done on the basis of knowing that it will disadvantage or inconvenience a Member, it is rank, inconsiderate and disrespectful not merely to the Member but, at least as importantly, to his or her constituents.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will be aware that this House has repeatedly discussed the impact of the Government’s planned cuts to supported housing—most recently during an Opposition day debate called for by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) and me on 20 July. The Government pledged to look again at plans to cap local housing allowance and at the 1% housing benefit cut, which would also affect supported housing.
Today, the Government have announced by written statement that they intend to defer the decision on the LHA cap until 2019, but will be going ahead with the cut to supported housing providers from next April. Is it not an affront to this House and to all Members who have expressed concern about the Government’s plans for a Minister not to come to this place with an oral statement? Instead, they yet again sneak out an announcement the day before the start of recess. Is it not also an insult to tens of thousands of vulnerable people? Women who have suffered domestic violence, older people, disabled people, the homeless, former offenders, veterans and young people leaving care are yet again being plunged into uncertainty and insecurity.
I seek your guidance, Mr Speaker, on how Members on both sides of the House can hold the Government and their Executive to account and question Ministers on proposals in person and in detail.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s point of order. I entirely understand her disappointment and irritation. I hope that it will be possible when we return from the conference recess for the matter to be explored on the Floor of the House—there are a number of possibilities in that regard.
It is of course a matter of judgment for the Government as to whether a ministerial statement should be made orally or in writing. Although I understand her view that the matter merited an oral statement, I will mention en passant that there were two oral statements today as well as business questions. I have no way of knowing what exchanges took place within the Government, but it is by no means unknown for a Minister to want or, at any rate, to be prepared to make an oral statement but to be prevented from doing so because of competing priorities. I have no idea whether that was the case in this instance.
I simply say in response to the hon. Lady’s request for guidance that she can pursue the matter at the next Work and Pensions oral questions on Monday 17 October. I absolutely appreciate that that is a considerable time away, but it is one possibility. There are other forms of questioning that can take place in the course of the day, as she knows, and it is open to the Opposition to choose this matter for a debate on a future Opposition day. I am sure that she will find a way to pursue the matter and, insofar as it is proper, the Chair will be her friend in that process. Meanwhile, she has at least put her concern and extreme dissatisfaction on the record.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I am grateful for the remarks you just made to the House. Were you given any indication that Ministers were considering an oral statement on the consequences of their cuts to the housing benefit of many thousands of vulnerable people in supported housing? The written statement raises more questions than it answers. The policy is delayed, but the cuts will go ahead. There is no figure on the new funding pledged, yet the Budget scored the so-called savings at £990 million. The new fund that has been promised is similar to the Supporting People programme, which has been cut almost in half since 2010.
The first announcement was smuggled out in the small print of the autumn statement. Today’s announcement is buried in the small print of a long written ministerial statement. What help can you give the House to ensure that Ministers are properly held to account for their decisions?
Mr Speaker
If there has been no opportunity to explore the matter in the Chamber before the recess, we return in October and there would be an early opportunity at that point. I have already referenced one of those opportunities, which is already provided for in the known timetable of oral questions. But if it is felt strongly by a Member, or possibly by a number of Members, that the matter warrants more thorough scrutiny than a couple of questions at monthly questions would allow, I would certainly be open to that possibility. The right hon. Gentleman asks me whether I had had any indication that Ministers had been planning to make an oral statement on this matter, and I must answer by saying no, I have received no such indication. In fairness, it is not unreasonable for me to observe that absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence.
Jim Fitzpatrick
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last Wednesday, in a Westminster Hall debate on the proposed cruise terminal at Enderby Wharf on the Thames, I stated that Barratt Homes was the developer and could help—this was in column 197. Mr Tim Collins of Barratt has clarified that although Barratt is the residential developer, Morgan Stanley is responsible for the decision not to provide shoreside fixed electrical power for visiting cruise ships. I apologise to Barratt, I have written to Morgan Stanley and I am grateful for the opportunity to set the record straight, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman. He has set the record straight, doing so pithily and the with the courtesy for which he is renowned in all parts of the House.
Tom Brake
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You may be aware that in July the person who is now the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said that on 9 September—last Friday—the Prime Minister would
“trigger a large round of global trade deals with all our most favoured trade partners.”
Bearing in mind that there was no statement on 9 September, do you think that such a statement should be facilitated, so that he could come to the House to set out what progress has been made on those trade deals—perhaps he could list the countries with which they have been initiated—and say whether he could deliver on the timescale that he had promised? He said that they would be completed within the next 12 to 24 months.
Mr Speaker
I am not sure that there is any mechanism for securing satisfaction for the right hon. Gentleman today. It may be that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), whom he has in mind—the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union—would be enthusiastic beyond words about the possibility of appearing before the House, and engaging with, hearing from and responding to the right hon. Gentleman. However, I think the Backbench Business Committee, under whose auspices two debates are about to take place, may take a different view. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is an eager and assiduous Member of Parliament, but I think it unlikely that he will spend all of the conference recess reflecting on this matter—it would be a bit sad if he were to do so. If he comes back in October and remains similarly vexed and anxious for clarity, I hope he will use the mechanisms available to him. I think we had better leave it there for now, as we have had a considerable feast of points of order today.
Bill Presented
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Jeremy Hunt, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Greg Clark, Mr Philip Dunne and Nicola Blackwood, presented a Bill to make provision in connection with controlling the cost of health service medicines and other medical supplies; to make provision in connection with the provision of pricing and other information by those manufacturing, distributing or supplying those medicines and supplies, and other related products, and the disclosure of that information; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 10 October, and to be printed (Bill 72) with explanatory notes (Bill 72-EN).
Backbench Business
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Domestic Abuse Victims in Family Law Courts
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes the Women’s Aid report entitled Nineteen Child Homicides, published in January 2016; and calls on the Government to review the treatment and experiences of victims of domestic abuse in family law courts.
Let me make it clear at the beginning that I will take only two interventions at most, because this debate is heavily subscribed and I want people to have time to speak. The debate today is not really about courts, laws and statutory agencies; it is about children—or, rather, it is about children whose mothers have been subject to domestic abuse and who themselves have become victims of violent and coercive fathers. This debate, in particular, is about the 19 children who have died at the hands of their fathers over the past 10 years, all of whom had access to their children through formal or informal child contact arrangements. So with the good will of the House, I want to dedicate the first part of my speech to telling the story of Claire Throssell, my constituent:
“It took just 15 minutes on the 22nd October, 2014, for my life and heart to be broken completely beyond repair. I had warned those involved with my case that my happy, funny boys would be killed by their own father; I was right.
My boys were both with their father on that October day, and at around 6.30pm he enticed Paul, nine, and Jack, 12, up to the attic, with the promise of trains and track to build a model railway. When the boys were in the attic, he lit 16 separate fires around the house, which he had barricaded, so my sons could not get out and the firemen could not get in.
Only 15 minutes later…the doorbell rang at my mum’s. (We were staying there temporarily after the separation.)
‘It’s the boys, they must be early,’ my mum said—but I knew that wasn’t right. The boys would have run into the house and straight into my arms; they always did after a visit to their dad. They were frightened of him—he was a perpetrator of domestic abuse. The statutory agencies involved in our case knew this.
I opened the door. Blue lights were flashing.
‘There's been an incident at your former home; the boys have been involved in a fire…
Running into the hospital, the first thing I saw was Paul receiving CPR. A doctor, drenched in sweat and exhausted, told me they were withdrawing treatment.
I held Paul in my arms. I begged him to try, to stay, to not leave me.
He looked at me, smiled, and the life left his beautiful blue eyes. His hair was wet with my tears as I kissed his nose. Then Paul, my boy, was taken out of my arms and into another room. There was no further chance of touching him; his little body was now part of a serious crime enquiry.
Detectives arrived and informed me that my former husband was responsible for the fire, and that he’d also died. All this time I wasn’t allowed to see Jack, as they were still fighting to save him. Thankfully, he never knew that Paul had died. He’d tried to save his little brother.
The police later disclosed that Jack was still conscious when carried out of the fire and told them: ‘My dad did this and he did it on purpose.’ This was taken as his dying testimony.
Jack clung to life for five days but his battle was too big for him to fight. His body had suffered 56% burns. On the 27th October, he too died in my arms after suffering a cardiac arrest due to his horrific injuries.”
That is Claire’s story—it is tragic and heartbreaking, utterly heartbreaking. But I wanted that story on the parliamentary record—and now, thank God, it is—because it is the testimony of these stories, heard here in this Chamber, that will in the end engineer the changes we need to see to make sure that Claire’s story does not become another mother’s story. Before I move on to highlight what changes are required, I want to pay tribute to Claire. In my 12 years as an MP, I have never been asked to intervene in a case like this. No other case I have been presented with has touched me like this. No other constituent has impressed me so much with her bravery and her determination to secure something positive out of something so dreadful.
I want to pay tribute, too, to the people of Penistone, who responded magnificently to Claire’s tragedy. Claire’s husband cancelled the insurance on the property before he set it on fire. He also did other things, which I will not go into, that effectively left her penniless and without a home. The people of Penistone, led by our wonderful vicar at St John’s church, rallied round, raising money to buy somewhere for Claire to live and pulling together, in DIY SOS style, to make her new house into a home. In black, dreadful times such things matter, and I am incredibly proud of the people I represent in this close-knit, warm-hearted community.
Let me move on to the changes that are critical if we are to ensure that this never happens again, and to what we need to do to secure Claire’s legacy and the legacy of her children, Paul and Jack. The Women’s Aid report “Nineteen Child Homicides” was published earlier this year in response to the failure of the family courts to embed in their practice a culture of putting children first.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
On that point, there should be an urgent review of family courts, because, very often, people who are giving evidence are not protected; they are actually facing their abuser. More importantly in relation to family courts, my constituent, a victim of domestic abuse, was in hospital. The abuser got custody of her children, as she was not represented in the courts. That is one reason why I say that we need an urgent review of family court practices.
Angela Smith
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. All of that is despite the fact that, in 2004, a legal framework and the accompanying guidance was produced to ensure that there was protection. That legal framework itself was a response to an earlier report by Women’s Aid “Twenty-nine child homicides”. At its heart was a recognition that the courts needed to develop a new culture of putting children first. The accompanying practice direction 12 requires courts to ensure that, where domestic abuse has occurred, any child arrangements ordered protect the safety and well-being of the child and the parent with care, and are in the best interests of the child.
In addition, in 2015, a new criminal offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship was introduced and practice 12 was amended to reflect this wider definition of domestic abuse—two developments that are potentially big steps forward.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. I have been struck by a number of constituents and by other people whom I have met through my work in the House who have said that, as victims, when they have gone into the courts, including family courts, they have felt that they have not been believed and that those involved in the judiciary do not fully understand the patterns of domestic abuse and what to believe and who to believe in the courts. Does she agree that an important part of this is the training of the judiciary and the updating of the training to reflect changes in the law?
Angela Smith
I completely agree with my hon. Friend.
I wish now to ask a few questions. What exactly are the failures of the family courts, given the legislative tools at their disposal? Why is it proving so difficult for the family courts to tackle this issue? Why is it so hard to put children first? I suggest that there are two major reasons. First, there is the ongoing assumption that men who are abusive towards women can nevertheless still be good fathers. That belief—that myth—is unbelievably enduring and flies in the face of the available evidence. Research indicates that there are many serious, negative impacts on children arising from domestic abuse, including children becoming aggressive or, conversely, over compliant. They can become withdrawn, anxious and fearful. One study also found that more than 34% of under-18s who had lived with domestic violence had also been abused or neglected by a parent or guardian. I do not see why that should surprise anybody. Surely, this outdated, discredited way of thinking has no place in our family courts. Surely, given the ongoing incidence of violence against children and the frequent link with domestic abuse, we need effectively to eradicate this cultural legacy from our family courts.
Secondly, there is an ongoing failure on the part of the statutory agencies and the family court judiciary to understand that domestic abuse frequently involves coercive control; abuse is about power and control. That is why it is not surprising that fathers who beat up women can also abuse children.
Physical injury is not the only manifestation of abuse and it is in that context that the courts themselves can become a tool in the armoury of a controlling abuser. In other words, when separation occurs and a woman removes herself and her children from an intolerable situation, the abusive parent frequently uses family court proceedings as a means of continuing his attempt to control and coerce.
This brings me back to Claire’s story. Her abuser exercised the ultimate control over her. Not only did he drag her to the family court for unsupervised access to his children, he went on to murder her children. In doing that, he has, with one awful, heartbreaking criminal act, exercised control over Claire for the rest of her life. That should give us pause for thought. Never again will Claire’s life be the same, as her two boys have gone. We all feel her pain, and we have a duty to act.
That is why I have worked with Women’s Aid and other MPs to secure this debate today. I pay tribute to Women’s Aid and the all-party group on domestic violence, which have produced reports that reflect on what needs to be done. I do not have time to go through their recommendations in detail. Suffice it to say that they relate to measures designed to put children first, to implement properly the legal framework and Practice 12, including the professional training of court staff and the judiciary as my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) mentioned, and to put in place independent national oversight of the implementation of Practice 12. They also include practical measures, such as dedicated, safe waiting rooms for vulnerable witnesses and separate entrance and exit times.
Of course we all want to see reform of the Government’s legal aid changes to ensure that representation in the family courts is adequate and sufficient to avoid the current situation, which sees abused women cross-examined by their abusers. I know that the Minister, who has written to me separately, has indicated that the president of the family division has asked Mr Justice Cobb to review practice direction 12 to see whether amendments are needed, but we need more than that. The public needs more than that, as is indicated by the 38 Degrees petition, which has now been signed by more than 33,000 people. We need to see: the Ministry of Justice take action to ensure that the legal framework is properly implemented; practical changes to the ways the courts work; resources dedicated to ensuring the professional training of court staff and the judiciary; and the Government indicating that they will do all that is necessary to improve the relationships and the information sharing between statutory agencies and between those agencies and the family courts. There was a huge delay in the cases of Claire, Jack and Paul.
Above all else, for Claire’s sake and for the sake of all vulnerable women, we need the Government to send out a very clear message. By agreeing to act on today’s motion, the Government would be sending out a clear message that domestic abuse will be tackled, that it will be dealt with in all its forms, and that we will not allow our children to be harmed by it.
Jack and Paul must never be forgotten. Claire wanted their names to be used in the serious case review, but the authorities refused, preferring to refer to them as P2. Jack and Paul were not P2; they were two dearly loved boys whose lives were snatched away from them by a violent father. Let us make sure today that Jack and Paul will never be forgotten. Let us support the motion on the Order Paper.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I just say that I do not want to put a time limit on this debate, but we do want to bring in the next debate at about 3.30? If everybody, including those on the Front Bench, have 10 minutes including interventions, we will easily get everyone in.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I would very much like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), whose powerful testimony really set the context of this debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and Women’s Aid for its tireless work in championing the rights of domestic abuse victims.
The basis for this debate is the findings of the Women’s Aid report, which are very disturbing indeed. The Government and the judiciary have to listen and act. Every single recommendation in the report needs to be considered. Further child deaths, such as those in the tragic case that we have just heard about, have to be prevented. The courts need to challenge themselves on their attitudes, their culture, and their practices in all domestic violence cases. We have to be clear that priority should be given to tackling domestic abuse. I think that the Government feel that it is a priority—and they have not only spoken, but acted. Coercive control is now an offence under the Serious Crime Act 2015. It is important that, as is recommended in the report, all members of the family court, the judiciary and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service have specialist training so that they understand the reality of what that new law means.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Lady agree that sometimes family courts mistake fathers’ persistence over access, and their going through the courts time and again, for their taking an interest in their children, when it is intimidation and bullying of their former partner? Frighteningly, in my constituency, I have had a CAFCASS worker tell children who were afraid of their father and did not want to visit him that if they did not go, their mother would be in deep trouble, so they had to go and see him. That is shocking behaviour from any professional.
Mrs Miller
The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, and she is right to pick up on the complexities of coercive control. None of us should underestimate how difficult it will be for professionals truly to understand the complexities of this behaviour, but understand it they must if we are to make sure that the law is put into practice.
The House has thought long and hard about the other ways in which the Government have shown their commitment to tackling domestic violence. In particular, the Government have supported the Istanbul convention, which sets out a clear commitment to tackling domestic violence through legislation, training, and awareness-raising campaigns such as “This is abuse”. I applaud them for signing up to the convention, but when he responds, will the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), clarify when the Istanbul convention will be ratified—not just by the UK, but by other countries, such as Germany, Norway and Ireland, which, although signatories, are not ratifying the treaty? That would be an important statement of the fact that combating violence against women and domestic violence needs to be on all Governments’ agendas. We need that ratification as a way of making sure that that message is sent out, both to members of the Council of Europe and to non-members.
To tackle domestic abuse, we need victims to feel confident in our legal system, and confident that reports made will be successfully taken forward to prosecution. Those who have been abused should feel safe in making those reports. That is why I want to make two points. The first is that the Government need to be clear, and perhaps reiterate in this debate, that they support legal aid remaining in place for victims of domestic abuse and child abuse. Perhaps the Minister can update us on the Government’s work in that area, and particularly around the domestic violence gateway, which requires victims to provide objective evidence of abuse to qualify for legal aid. Ministers have made their intentions clear, in terms of the support that should be there, but in practice, some women have found it difficult to get the prescribed forms of evidence that are required in order to access the gateway. The Ministry of Justice has a review of the domestic violence gateway under way. Perhaps the Minister can say a little bit more about where we are with that review, which was urgently needed.
The all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, of which I am vice-chair and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) is chair, has looked at the impact of court proceedings on women and children. I draw the House’s attention to our recent report, which followed a number of parliamentary hearings in which we heard from expert witnesses and individuals with personal experience of the family court system. We heard in evidence that more victims—not just women but children—are now being cross-examined by perpetrators of abuse in family court proceedings. Women’s Aid estimates that one in four women are directly questioned by a perpetrator, and the same can happen to children.
Victims should be protected when giving evidence in court. Few Members in this place can be content to see alleged abusers cross-examine those affected by domestic violence. This has to be re-examined urgently. We need to put an end to survivors of domestic abuse being cross-examined by their alleged abusers in court.
My second point is on special measures, which have already been mentioned in an intervention. In our all-party parliamentary group hearings, we heard evidence about the traumatic impact on survivors of domestic abuse of coming face to face with the perpetrator in court, yet half of all women who experience domestic violence and use the family court system have no specific protection measures available to them when they attend court. As a result, more than one in three have been verbally or physically abused by their former partner in court buildings. I find those figures shocking, given the nature of the crimes and the situations that we are talking about.
I welcome today’s announcement by my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor of additional support for vulnerable witnesses. My understanding is that victims of domestic abuse are treated as vulnerable witnesses. I hope that the Under-Secretary will confirm that those very welcome announcements will cover those who have suffered domestic abuse and violence. Specifically, an increase has been announced in the number of locations where victims and witnesses can give evidence remotely. Even more welcome are the measures allowing the pre-recording of evidence from 2017. Those measures are a real step forward, but we need to make sure that they are available not just to some victims, but to all. I am sure that Members of the House would want those reassurances today, because we need all the family courts to give witnesses and victims the support that they need. Two other important special measures in family courts are the ability to give victims and witnesses separate waiting rooms, and their ability to leave the court by separate exits. That is particularly vital for women living in refuges.
It is clear that family courts are regularly not protecting women and children in the way that we all want them to, and the way that the Government want them to. We need an end to the cross-examination of survivors of domestic violence by their alleged abusers. We need assurances that special measures will routinely be available in family court proceedings.
Mr Jim Cunningham
Does the right hon. Lady agree that what is really required is some form of witness protection scheme? We had a Bill on that many years ago.
Mrs Miller
I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, and that might be appropriate in some cases, but I have to say that many of the people who have spoken to me about this issue simply want these very basic measures in place—things that frankly should be in place already, but are not being given the priority that they need. I know that there are pressures on the court system, and on budgets, but we have to make sure that the courts see this as a priority, and at the moment, we could be forgiven for thinking that they do not.
A third element that I would like to see is proper training for family court staff, particularly on coercive behaviour—an issue that the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) spoke about eloquently. Lastly, but by no means least, there should be expert risk assessments in child contact cases when abuse is involved.
We know that the Government understand the problem. Just three months ago, the Prime Minister said at the Police Federation’s annual conference:
“Victims of abuse are still being let down”.
Improvements such as those announced today are welcome, but the change in culture is still not complete. We need the Lord Chancellor, the Under-Secretary—who is here today—my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister to continue to put this issue at the top of the Government’s agenda, because we need to tackle domestic abuse. We need to tackle the sort of tragic cases that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge mentioned in opening the debate. I hope that this debate will help to ensure that the issue continues to be at the top of the Government’s agenda for the rest of the Parliament.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) for securing this debate and putting on record that story and her campaigning on the issue. It is so necessary that Members understand what is going on. I thank Claire Throssell for bravely being here today and for having the courage to put forward her personal tragedy, which most of us could not endure, so that that can never, ever happen to anybody else. We would be letting her sons down if we did not do that. We will remember Jack and Paul.
It is a simple but awful fact that women bear the brunt of violent crime in England and Wales. Although violent crimes against men are falling, Office for National Statistics figures for England and Wales showed that between 2009 and 2014 violence against women, perpetrated by someone they know, increased rapidly. Alongside this dramatic rise in violence, the services that women rely on to escape violence and abuse are disappearing. Between 2010 and 2012, a third of local authority funding for domestic and sexual violence services was cut, and a third of all referrals to refuges were turned away. It is also true that domestic violence has a higher rate of repeat victimisation than any other crime.
On average, a woman will endure violence 35 times before making her first call to the police. Even once they have sought help and the case is going forward, women are often re-victimised and re-traumatised by the perpetrators during the prosecution process and in the family courts. One particular focus for that repeat victimisation are the fights that ensue between a victim and a perpetrator over contact with their children and the consequences of the decisions made. Sadly, this is something that women in my constituency have suffered first hand, and I am sure I am not alone in that. I shall give just one example out of the many that I could have picked.
A constituent came to me with various issues regarding custody and contact with her child. The father of her child had been extremely abusive, and these behaviours had been perpetuated by the father’s parents. Unfortunately, other legal issues on the part of the mother led to her losing custody of the child, who was placed in the care of the paternal grandparents. The mother was granted contact, but this was at the home of the paternal grandparents, who had both facilitated and taken part in abusive behaviour. The trauma experienced by the mother in order to maintain a relationship with her child was extreme. The judge in this case simply failed to understand or show any appreciation of the dynamics of domestic abuse.
This lack of understanding not only re-victimises survivors, but causes direct harm to the children. The NSPCC reports that 20% of children in the UK have witnessed domestic abuse—exposure that can cause anxiety, developmental delays and learning difficulties. Frequently, domestic abuse and child abuse co-exist. In 2015, SafeLives reported that 62% of children in households where domestic violence is perpetrated are also directly harmed. How can our family courts fail to see the inextricable link between coercive, violent and controlling behaviour perpetrated by men towards women and the threat posed to the safety of children in that family?
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that there are many cases of domestic violence where the woman, perhaps because she has hopes of the relationship continuing, or perhaps because of intimidation or factors, does not press charges? It is important that family courts nevertheless take those allegations into account. It is not just the cases that proceed to prosecution which should be taken seriously.
Sarah Champion
I agree. We need to give victims some of the responsibility for setting the way forward, whereas our court system seems to take everything away from them and to use evidence to penalise them, rather than to support them.
How can family courts knowingly place children directly in harm’s way? That is exactly what is happening. The 2015 Women’s Aid survey of women survivors of domestic abuse who had experience of the family courts found that 76% of respondents reported that the judge granted child contact to the father, even though they knew that the children had witnessed domestic abuse. Even more terrifying, more than 44% of the survivors surveyed reported that the judge granted child contact to the father, when they knew that the children had been directly abused by the father.
Will the Minister confirm to the House that there must not be an automatic assumption of shared parenting in child contact cases where domestic abuse is a feature, but that child contact should be decided on the basis of an informed judgment of what is in the best interests of that child? Furthermore, will the Minister support the Women’s Aid recommendation that judges, staff in the family courts and other front-line staff receive specialist training on the impact of domestic abuse on children?
Finally, it is important in this debate, as it is whenever this House debates violence and abuse, that we consider how to prevent these awful crimes from happening at all. Sadly, once a survivor is forced to seek safety and forced to face her abuser in court, the damage to her and to her children has already been done. Early intervention that supports a child from the earliest possible age to recognise and develop positive and respectful relationships will prevent children from growing up believing that abusive and violent relationships are normal. It will teach boys and girls to respect themselves and others, and teach them that their body is their own and that they must determine their own lives. Does the Minister agree that mandatory, age-appropriate resilience and relationships education in schools is a necessary way to prevent domestic abuse and violence? We ought to try to prevent this horrific crime from ever occurring.
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on securing this debate, which I am happy to support, and for her incredibly powerful opening speech. It was a fantastic job to put that on the record. I congratulate Women’s Aid for its important and hard-hitting report, “Nineteen Child Homicides”, which makes for difficult reading. It is always difficult to hear such examples, but hear them we must. The individual cases show that domestic abuse is not just an abstract issue. The lives of 19 real children were cut short, another two children were seriously harmed, three mothers were killed, seven fathers subsequently committed suicide, and four fathers were convicted and imprisoned. Many more people are likely to have been directly touched by these tragic events—siblings, grandparents, surviving wives, family and friends. All those men were known to agencies. Eleven of the 12 men were known to the police as well.
A number of constituents have approached me about their custody cases. Some mothers were unhappy, some fathers felt that they had been treated badly, and grandparents felt unable to get a look-in. Whatever the rights and wrongs of those individual cases, it is clear that the right thing to do is to put the child first, at the centre of decision making.
There are many examples of good practice in family courts, including at my closest court in Croydon, but as we have heard, there is much more that can be done and lessons to be learned. In a number of cases protective screens, video links, separate waiting rooms and separate entrances are available where appropriate, but as we have heard, that does not always work. The Women’s Aid report details a survey of people who have gone through the family court system, highlighting areas of concern. Some 55% of the women said that they had no access to any protection measures in the court. Extraordinarily, 25% of the women had been cross-examined by their former partner during proceedings, including one woman who described how the man who had raped her, beaten her and abused her over a six-year period interrogated her for three hours in the court. Imagine what that poor lady must have gone through, revisiting all those experiences.
The survey reveals that 39% of the women were verbally or physically abused by their former partner while on the family court estate, 44% reported that the judge granted child contact to the father when they knew that the children had been directly abused by the father, and 76% reported that the judge granted child contact to the father when they knew that the children had witnessed domestic abuse.
I want to touch on two cases. First, I shall add a 20th child to that list—Ellie Butler, who lived her short life in Sutton in my constituency. Her parents met in a club in Sutton in March 2006. Ben Butler had a criminal record including violence, attempted robbery and intimidation of a witness. He also had a conviction for assaulting his former girlfriend. Within weeks, Jennie Gray was pregnant with Ellie.
The first time Butler was left alone with Ellie—when she was just six weeks old—she sustained minor burns to her forehead and hand. Shortly afterwards, when that was brushed off as an accident, Butler again looked after Ellie. That evening, he took her to St Helier Hospital—our local hospital—where she was diagnosed with injuries that suggested she may have been violently shaken. He was arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm, and the London Borough of Sutton started proceedings to have Ellie taken into care.
In January 2008, His Honour Judge Atkins found that Butler had been responsible for both sets of injuries and ruled out Ellie’s mother as a long-term carer. In August of that year, he awarded temporary custody to Ellie’s maternal grandparents, Neal and Linda. Butler went to prison, during which time Jennie Gray discovered she was pregnant again and hid the birth from the local authorities. In October 2009, Butler was released on bail and walked free on appeal after three judges ruled that his conviction was unsafe.
However, the quashing of the conviction did not automatically reverse the ruling that the parents were unfit to care for Ellie, so Butler went to war with the authorities, and three years later, Lady Justice Hogg made a decision that was to prove fatal for Ellie: not only did she return Ellie to her parents’ custody—brushing aside convictions, commenting that the violent behaviour that they related to was not directed at children—but went on to write in her judgment:
“It is seldom that I see a ‘happy end’ in public law proceedings. It is a joy for me to oversee the return of a child to her parents.”
Ellie’s grandfather, Neal Gray, was said to have warned her, “You will have blood on your hands,” and how prescient he was.
In addition to the judgment, Lady Justice Hogg made an order that meant that all files held by the authorities should be amended to include a prominent reference to the fact that Butler and Gray had been exonerated of any blame for Ellie’s injuries and, effectively, that they should proactively inform other agencies of Butler’s innocence. What can the agencies make of that? How can they be denied the ability to review what was happening when a clean sheet was restored to these people?
It was not long after Ellie went back that she suffered a broken shoulder. The parents sought no medical help as they sought to hide things from the authorities. Then, in October 2013, Ellie was found dead, at the hands of Ben Butler. The parents concocted a plot to cover up the real cause of death—even sending Ellie’s younger sibling to discover the body as part of the plot.
Ellie’s grandparents had not given up fighting for her. They fought hard for the custody of the two children. Unfortunately, Linda, Ellie’s grandmother, died the day the trial started, but Neil, the grandfather, continues to speak out against the ruling, which led to Sutton Council and other agencies being unable to do their job—and they did do a very good job, but with their hands tied. My heart goes out to Neil and his other grandchild. I was able to catch a moment with the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who has had to leave the debate. Both of us remain open for Neil to approach us, and we would like to support him in any way we can.
Another case is far too close to home for me. It involves someone I know very well, and the situation is ongoing, so I will not be too specific. A few years ago, Anna met someone she later discovered had two children from a previous relationship. The mother and children had ended up going to a refuge—changing their name and moving away secretly. Even though social services were closely involved, he managed to track them down within months by trawling the electoral rolls, among other things.
Anna soon found herself in a very controlling relationship—we have heard about control this afternoon—stripping her away from her family and friends. He used drugs and was violent on occasions. She eventually had a child, but the situation continued to deteriorate, affecting the child’s upbringing and stability. Anna was helped by her partner’s mother eventually to leave and start again on her own, but that was not the end. Anna found a tracker in her car. She was continually harassed and stalked, as were family members. Agencies were aware. The police were aware. She was in and out of police stations to give statements. He would pound on the door at night, jumping over the back fence and smashing the glass to get in the door.
Anna has had to learn so much for herself about the system. Her former partner has a good solicitor, and he knows how to make the best of the system—not for the child, but for the solicitor’s client. She could not apply for a non-molestation order while he was on police bail. When the police were looking to arrest him, her family could not find out whether he was actually detained, because of data protection issues.
The police have Anna on an alert list, with a promised five-minute response time. Unfortunately, the last time, it took 25 minutes. Obviously, we can understand police pressures, but the promise of a response in five minutes or 25 minutes makes all the difference when someone is trying to plan for these eventualities. At least if someone knows that it will be 25 minutes, they can try and deal with that as best they can.
Anna has the support of both families—her own and her partner’s. Her parents discovered that they were grandparents quite a long time after she was stripped from the family. They now have a wonderful, happy grandchild. Anna has become the most amazing mother in the face of such diversity, and her child is thriving. She is lucky: she could easily have found herself on the Women’s Aid list. I am so delighted that she has not, although the matter is nowhere hear closed.
Please let us do more to support the work of the groups associated with Women’s Aid. Let us do more to improve the response for people like Anna and children like Ellie. We cannot let them down. Looking at families, I know how helpless they feel in these cases. I cannot begin to imagine actually being involved at the heart of such abuse, as we heard in the case of Claire. It is really important that the police, the agencies and, of course, the family courts do everything they can—and that we work to make those agencies and family courts work—so that these tragedies cannot happen again.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I want to start on a positive note in a debate that has so far been incredibly moving—even to those who are the most battle hardened and battle weary, like myself. The positive is that, this morning, the Government released information about the protection of women’s refuges from some of the changes going ahead to housing benefit legislation, and I pay credit to the Government for finally listening on that issue.
On these matters, we must work together in the House, and the stories that we hear today have got to go some way to getting change in this area. This is now our next fight, and I think it is a fight the public are going to get pretty involved with because I believe “The Archers” is about to enter the family courts, if what Rob Titchener said at the end of the episode on Friday is anything to go by. That has done a huge amount to raise awareness of the issue, and the family courts really need some of that.
I pay huge credit to my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Hove (Peter Kyle) and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing the debate. The testimony about Claire’s story from my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge was incredibly moving.
We have heard heartfelt and heart-breaking accounts of what is happening to victims of domestic violence in the family courts, and this debate is incredibly important for a number of reasons. The first is to send out a rallying cry to all the victims in this country and their children that, down here, in this bubble, we can hear them. The family courts in this country—for those who have never had anything to do with them, and for most of the people who have—are incredibly secretive. They are wrapped up in confidentiality, with children being called P1, P2 or X4. For that reason, the family courts get no media attention, and it is difficult to report on what goes on there. So, today, here in this place, is our chance to flood that darkness with some much-needed light to see what our institutions are really doing for the people in the UK.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that there is still much, much work to be done to ensure that the police get the cases to court? My constituent Louise suffered the most terrible abuse but has never had that day in court. That is not just a personal tragedy for her but a national scandal for us all.
Jess Phillips
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Actually, in this place, we have some reasons to be really proud of the efforts that have been made by successive Governments, year in, year out. The laws in this country are relatively good when it comes to domestic violence. Where we fail, time and again, is in how we implement those laws. We do not need to look much further than very many reports assessing how the police handle cases of domestic violence to see that we need to do more. Sometimes, in this place, we make up laws that open an enormous door into an empty room. That is a problem for victims.
I want to say something to the victims who may be watching this. Lots of them have been in touch with me to say that they want their stories to be told and heard. The most important message, which I am sure that everybody in this place wants to say and which victims of domestic and sexual violence rarely hear, is, “We believe you.” If every single one of us could tell everybody to stand up and say those three words—“We believe you”—we could change things for victims of domestic violence, who are frequently disbelieved by every agency they are put in front of.
The second reason this debate is so important is to educate ourselves as legislators. My hon. and very dear Friend the Member for Hove and I have chatted about this subject many times over the past six months. On many occasions, he has bounded up to me and said that he has been stunned by a case that he has, as though it is the worst case in the whole world. I am sure that he will give voice to some examples of those very shocking stories. He is always so shocked, horrified and angry about every case. For me, these cases have become more expected. My years of working with victims of violence have in many ways numbed me to some of them—although I am only human.
Mrs Moon
My hon. Friend talks about her years of working with victims of domestic violence. I, too, worked in that field, and one of the things that I found most frightening was that courts tend to think of domestic violence only in terms of bruises or injury. “The Archers” has been brilliant at showing the impact of coercive and abusive behaviour, but there is an incredible naivety in believing that coercive and abusive behaviour to mothers would not also happen to children. If legal aid were available, it would be huge help to those women in protecting themselves.
Jess Phillips
I could not agree more. I will come on to the legal aid issues in a minute.
The Government have tried, through the law, to address coercive control, but we are not far enough down the line with that legislation to see whether it can deal with something so complex. To me, it is actually not that complex. We are always making the excuse that it is difficult to understand, but I do not find it difficult, so I am not sure why I am constantly cutting everybody some slack on this. We should be able to understand the constant gaslighting that goes on. “The Archers” has definitely achieved something. In the case of Henry, the small boy in “The Archers”, there is no doubt that that child has been coerced and controlled. It is harrowing; I feel chills even thinking about it.
Going back to my lovely hon. Friend the Member for Hove, on one occasion he ran up to me and said, “Jess, I just don’t understand why people are still walking around in the street. How can they carry on with their lives when this is happening? Why are they not screaming out about the awful family court system?” Today, in this place, we have a chance to help colleagues, and, most importantly, Government Members, to see what we—all of us as a country—are sanctioning in our court system. Here, in this place, we have the power and agency to change this, for every victim in the country and especially for all the victims whose children have died. We must use our agency to do what they would do in a heartbeat if they were any near as privileged as every single one of us.
On our agency to change this, I turn to the report of the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, in conjunction with the report from Women’s Aid cited in the motion. I ask the Minister to give us some assurances about what we are going to do about this. I love warm words—I say them myself—but I want hard actions. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke and I had attempted to begin this conversation with the previous Justice Secretary. However, politics is a fickle game, and so it now falls to a fresh Justice Secretary to make her mark on the job.
It is important to state that we could be considered to be breaking the law on these issues in the UK. As a member—for now—of the European Union, we signed up to specific directives on protecting victims. One directive explicitly states that we must uphold the protection of victims within our court system and contact with offenders must be avoided. For example, all new court buildings that are built—chance would be a fine thing at the moment—must have separate waiting areas. Every day in the UK, we are breaching that law. We will hear today about victims who are not just in the same waiting area but are allowed to be cross-examined, even bullied, by the very people who have abused them for years. In the criminal courts, this would be considered a severe breach of human rights. It would also completely fly in the face of the “achieving best evidence” standards, and most likely the evidence would be thrown out.
For years, people in this place, before they came here, campaigned to have children taken into video rooms. We got partitions and separate waiting rooms: those things have all happened. A quarter of the women surveyed by Women’s Aid were found to have been directly cross-examined in the family courts by their abuser. This is increasing as a direct result of the cessation of legal aid and the rising number of citizens acting as litigants in person. When, a number of months ago, I asked the Justice Department for figures on the number of litigants in person in the civil and family courts, I was told that it does not monitor that information. Might I gently suggest to Ministers—I am in a good mood because they have done something good today—that that is simply not good enough. We have to look at the trends in what is happening in our courts.
There is a pervasive myth that family courts are unfairly biased towards mothers. I think we will hear today all sorts of examples of why that is not the case. It does not matter how many times people scale buildings dressed as Spider-Man—women are still badly treated in our family courts system. This is especially pertinent with regard to those with a history of domestic violence. The domestic violence APPG inquiry found that there is no evidence to suggest that women are favoured. On average, only 1% of applicants to family courts have access refused: only 1% are told that they can no longer see their children. Seventy per cent. of all cases in front of the family courts are victims of domestic violence. So, in 1% of 70% of all cases, people are told that they cannot see their children. In three quarters of cases where courts have ordered contact with an abusive parent, children suffer further abuse. Some children have even been ordered to have contact with a parent who has committed offences against the children themselves. As we have heard, children have even been killed as a result of residency arrangements.
I want to stress that an abusive partner can force a victim into the family court, or in fact any civil court in the UK, as many times as they like. This is not a judgment that they get handed down, their case falls, and then they do not get another bite at the cherry—they can go to court as many times as they like. They can chase a woman around the country making the same claim against her, and nothing will stop that. There is no doubt that in many cases violent perpetrators use the family court system not to get their children back but to continue stalking and continue a reign of terror.
The domestic violence APPG has seven recommendations that would dramatically improve the lives of women. They fall almost exclusively in line with the report from Women’s Aid. We want to see victims and children protected and respected in our courts—at the very least to the same level that we have in our criminal courts. I have a copy of the recommendations that I can hand over to Ministers today. I really hope that they will listen to what they are hearing and act, as some of their colleagues have today, to do the right thing.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friends on bringing this debate to the Floor of the House of Commons. I acknowledge Women’s Aid for the protection and support it provides to women and children, and for all the vital work it does to highlight the suffering caused by domestic violence. In particular, I pay tribute to Denise and all her staff at Grimsby Women’s Aid, and all the women I have met there. They are amazing and, despite some real tragedies and difficulties, they continue to face life with bravery and extraordinary good humour.
Several victims of domestic violence have come to my surgeries in Grimsby looking for help because they feel they have been let down. They feel that the whole system is stacked against them. They are the ones who have to move out of the area they lived in. They are the ones who have to provide the burden of proof; that all falls on them. They are the ones whose parenting is constantly questioned. They are the ones who live in fear of abuse and in fear of losing their children. They are the victims, but too often they feel that they are treated with suspicion rather than compassion, and that they are made to feel as though they are the guilty party.
The way in which family courts operate reveals a real lack of understanding of the situation in which victims of domestic violence find themselves. As we have heard in so many testimonies today, victims clearly should not have to share a waiting room with their abuser, and they should not have to face cross-questioning from them. As the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who has just left her place, mentioned earlier, it is too difficult for individuals to be faced with their abuser in a small space.
I want to thank Rochelle, one of my constituents, for allowing me to use her name—in fact, she was insistent that I use it—to highlight her very personal and individual difficulties, which represent the difficulties of so many women. She fled her abusive partner, yet she has been forced to face him in court several times during the last six years. He is using the court system to gain access to her, and as a means of getting around the restraining order. The courts have failed to provide security at their meetings. She has been made to sit at the same table as her former partner in a small room, and he has taken such opportunities to make horrendous sexually derogatory comments to her. This man had twice put her in hospital while she was pregnant. She should never have to be in the same room as him again, but she feels that the family court forced her back into the perpetrator’s presence and under his control. In addition, she has had no access to social housing, because the local authority deemed her to have made herself intentionally homeless, after having fled her home. That is incredibly common. As we have heard, she is not alone in being in such a situation.
Seema Malhotra
I thank my hon. Friend for her speech. She has highlighted a very important issue, which has certainly become increasingly apparent to me from my casework, about the training given to local authority teams—sometimes in social services and sometimes in housing—that deal with family issues involving domestic violence or domestic abuse. Does she agree with me about the importance of awareness, training and leadership in local authorities on such issues?
Melanie Onn
Absolutely. I agree with my hon. Friend that training plays a big part, and there is a lot more that could be done with cross-agency working and understanding.
When I visited a school in my constituency recently, I was really shocked to hear a support worker—she has worked in a school for nearly 30 years, and lives in the community in which she works—say she believed that about one in five children at that school were in families that had experienced domestic violence. The figure is shocking in itself. On the positive side, however, she said it was very important in a school environment that children should feel they have a safe space, where they feel they have good relationships with and can open up to the staff. My hon. Friend’s point about training applies to schools as well.
I believe that a lot of this is unreported violence. Will the Government consider how they can give people greater confidence in the system? People also need to recognise violence in the household as a problem. I think some people accept it as part of a volatile relationship and may not even recognise it as domestic violence. That is where the coercive element also comes in. That makes me believe all the more that good relationships education in schools can help children to realise that those are not normal relationships, and that that is not how loved ones behave towards one another.
Before the summer, I tabled some parliamentary questions relating to the effect of domestic violence on the children who are subject to it or who witness it, and I am very concerned that the Government do not seem to be sufficiently interested in that subject. I asked how many children the Government estimate live in homes where domestic violence occurs, and how they believe the educational attainment of children who experience domestic violence is affected. The answers I received from the Department for Education stated that, although it counts the number of referrals to children’s social care in which domestic violence is a factor, its figures do not include all children who experience domestic violence, and it does not publish attainment data for children who have been referred. Would not greater cross-departmental work ensure that domestic violence is better understood, highlighted and prevented? I worry that those answers show a lack of urgency in tackling this problem.
Finally, and quickly, I want to raise an issue that another constituent brought to me in relation to the Concentrix debacle that is currently being uncovered. A women with two children had her tax credit money stopped two weeks ago because she had been subject to a random check. She was told she was suspected of living with a partner. Concentrix would not disclose the name of the person it suspected to be living with her, and it would not make any home visits. She is a single parent, and she has been left to evidence the fact that she is single. She has now been forced to use food banks and to have meals at her parents’ house, and she has received assistance with her children’s school uniform costs. This is particularly difficult because my constituent is a victim of domestic violence. She has had to set up her life again from scratch to make sure that she and her children are safe. Again, it feels as though the state and all the agencies involved are working against her having a fresh start.
The lack of sensitivity, awareness and preparedness across state agencies—from the welfare system to family courts, as well as the police and the education system—lets down children and victims of domestic violence, and leaves them feeling as though the whole system is working against them.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
May I join the chorus of approval and gratitude expressed to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) for securing this debate? Not only did she give a voice so effectively to a family who so desperately wanted that to be done, but she set a tone for this debate that is very much appreciated by all of us following her. I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who spoke brilliantly. She joined in making a pitch for this debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who was present for the pitch for this debate. As a member of the Backbench Business Committee, she could not join in with it, but I could tell from her unrestrained facial expressions that she was offering support in many other ways during the process. Those Members and others in the Chamber today have championed victims of domestic abuse in Parliament, in Government and on the front line respectively. Together, they bring a wealth of advocacy experience to this debate.
I must admit, with some shame, that I came to realise the true brutal horror of domestic violence only relatively recently, when I became a Member of Parliament. Shortly after the election last year, I was in my office sifting through the rubble of my campaign, when a women walked in and asked if I was her new Member of Parliament. When I said yes, she told me that she had just fled her partner, after suffering the latest in a long series of very brutal attacks. She sat, bruised and shaking, and said that she was ready to move on, but that she needed help. She did not trust the police, so she had turned to me. That was my first experience of someone turning to me for help as an MP, and it was the first time I had sat down with a survivor of domestic abuse.
Since that time, I have got to know many women who have survived violent relationships, and I have tried my best to be the best advocate I can for them. It is through meeting and listening to survivors that I first came to understand how our family courts are being used to perpetuate abuse against extremely vulnerable women. Eighteen months ago, I did not know that a convicted criminal could represent himself and cross-examine the victims of his crimes over and over again by using the family courts. How could I get to this age and not know that? Why is it that so few people I talk to have the faintest idea this is going on daily in the British legal system?
One constituent I am in regular contact with has been cross-examined by her former partner on three separate occasions. The man who beat her, broke her bones, battered her unconscious and hospitalised her, and who was convicted for his crimes, still has the right to summon his victim to court for a spurious custody hearing. He will never win the case, but that is not the point—he is victorious the second he steps into the courtroom, because in that instant he gets exactly what he wants, which is to continue to inflict violence and abuse on a woman who has already suffered more than most of us could ever imagine.
Mrs Moon
Is it not important for the courts to understand that they are being manipulated in that way? The courts ought to record how often an abuser deliberately uses the courts to inflict further abuse. Concentrix should also be aware that when it receives reports of an unreported adult being in the home, it may well be the abuser carrying on the abuse by making false reports. It should take action to investigate that before it cuts off the benefits.
Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. The fact that many of the men who inflict this violence are not only extremely manipulative, but extremely careful in the way they manipulate people and systems, means that far more effort should be put into understanding the victims, who can explain the type of behaviour the courts are dealing with. If we did that, a lot of heartbreak and violence would be avoided.
Another constituent told me that she was shaking so violently after a family court hearing that she had to be assisted to the taxi. Soon after leaving, the taxi had to stop to allow her to open a door and vomit.
Those of us who have not experienced it cannot comprehend the fear that survivors suffer. It is all-encompassing and ever present. The prospect of seeing the man who reigned with such terror causes paralysis. The faintest possibility that the abuser could get access to personal details—addresses, bank account numbers or even medical records—is overwhelming. What is most grotesque is that abusers know this. They know that the family courts can be used to torment their victims, and in some cases they do so with unrelenting brutality. When one listens to survivors describing their experiences of being summonsed, approaching the hearing date, being cross-examined by their abuser and dealing with the aftermath, one simple truth is inescapable: the language and vocabulary with which they describe their family court experience is identical to how they describe the violence they experienced in the relationship they bravely escaped.
It should shock everyone that the family courts are being used in a way that inflicts, not ends, violence against women. Worst of all, from the abuser’s perspective, it works. One constituent told me last month that she was dropping harassment charges because there was a good chance that her abuser would gain access to her mental health files because he had chosen to represent himself. She could not bear the thought of him reading, and being gratified by, such intimate and personal information. Another told me that she simply could not face another cross-examination by her convicted abuser. She had been medicated in order to endure her last experience, and the recovery from it took weeks. She told me that if he tried again, she would capitulate and give him whatever he demanded simply to avoid the experience. She said:
“I simply do not have it in me to survive another cross examination”.
If there is one example that sums up the sheer horror of abuse and its continuation in the family court, it is that of Jane Clough. Jane was in an abusive and violent relationship until she finally took action and went to the police. Her ex-partner, Jonathan Vass, appeared in court charged with nine counts of rape, one of sexual assault and three counts of common assault. Some of this had taken place while Jane was heavily pregnant with his child. Inexplicably, Judge Simon Newell decided that Vass was not a threat and freed him on bail.
Jane lived in so much fear that she moved in with her parents for comfort and protection. Vass eventually found out where Jane was working and, in July 2010, he attacked her as she headed home from work. He stabbed her 19 times and then slashed her throat—wounds from which she died. The next day, he was arrested approaching Jane’s parents’ home. He was on his way to murder either his baby child or Jane’s parents, or both.
I have had the honour of talking to Jane’s parents and sister. They are a family whose grace and dignity shine above the horror they have endured. However, there is more to this terrible episode and they are desperate for people to hear about it and learn from it. Once in prison, Vass began demanding parental rights over his child. This was the child whose mother he had beaten and murdered, and the child he would, in all likelihood, have murdered if only he had had the opportunity. None of us can imagine the pain this caused Jane’s family, but it gets worse still.
Jane’s sister began adoption proceedings in order to break the link with Vass. From that moment onwards, the family experienced a legal system that was stacked in his favour, rather than the baby he had tried to kill. Without access to financial support or legal aid, the family had to find separate representation for the baby and the rest of the family. Had a legal firm not donated pro bono representation, they would have had to sell their house to cover the costs.
A five-day hearing was scheduled in the family court, and the family were informed that Vass had exercised his right to self-representation. The man who had brutally murdered their sister and daughter would be cross-examining them. Jane’s sister told me that she simply cannot find the words to do justice to the brutalising effect this had on her as the court date approached. On the day of the hearing, they were informed that he would be appearing by video link, but they were stunned to discover that this was because of concerns for his safety and had nothing at all to do with the wellbeing of the family. As Jane’s sister told me,
“It was so shocking. It was all about him—what was best for him, how best to protect his rights. Nothing was balanced against our rights.”
During the cross-examination, Vass asked personal questions of the family members. He asked Jane’s sister, in reference to the baby,
“What will you tell her about me?”.
He asked her husband:
“What makes you think you can be a dad to my daughter?”.
The trauma meted out by the family court process is simply inhuman. This family had suffered enough.
The family have asked me to pass on their thanks to two advocates who have made a difference to them during and since these terrible events. The first is Dame Louise Casey who, as Victims Commissioner, learned from their experiences and took steps towards greater recognition for victims in the family court. The second is my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who joins us here today. As Director of Public Prosecutions, he got to know the family well and they speak in the highest possible terms of him and his advocacy for them.
Progress has been made, but it has been glacial. We have not seen the transformation that is desperately needed. The abuse and brutalisation of women and families is being perpetuated via our legal system. To abusers, the family court is simply another tool through which to extend their hate, their violence and their control of extremely vulnerable women—exactly the kind of people the state exists to protect. Every day that these practices are allowed to continue, shame is heaped on our system of justice, on this House and on our Government, because we have the power to stop this happening and yet it continues.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
I, too, thank the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) for securing this important debate and for her moving speech. I pay tribute to the other Members who have shared moving stories of their constituents’ experiences.
I commend Women’s Aid for the publication of the “Nineteen Child Homicides” report. It makes for harrowing reading, but as legislators, we must not stay silent on the issues it raises and we must speak up for the children whose safety, wellbeing and lives are being put at risk by unsafe and poorly risk-assessed contact with parents who are known perpetrators of domestic abuse. The fact that over the past 10 years in England and Wales 19 children have been murdered, two mothers have been murdered, two further children have faced attempts on their lives and seven fathers have killed themselves after killing their children indicates that there are systemic shortcomings in the approach to family contact that need to be addressed.
I wish I could stand here and say that all is rosy in Scotland, but in reality we face very similar challenges. Obviously, we have always had a distinct legal system, and since devolution the Scottish Parliament has had responsibility for legislation and policy in this area. In some respects, we have a fairly robust legislative framework, but its application sometimes falls very far short and we know that there is a lot more to do. I am glad that Nicola Sturgeon announced last week that a new domestic abuse Bill will be part of the new programme for Government. There is recognition that psychological abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour can be hard to address under our existing laws, and proposed new legislation will seek to put that right.
As understanding of coercive control has grown, however, it has given rise to difficult questions about child contact arrangements and the extent to which abusers can use them and court procedures to continue to exert control over a former partner and their children. The underlying issues on both sides of the border are very similar, and I want to highlight the shortcomings in the implementation of our existing legislation and identify those areas where new legislation or regulatory guidance could strengthen the safety and wellbeing of children and limit the opportunities for former partners to perpetrate further harm.
Section 24 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 refers to orders made under section 11 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, and rightly puts child welfare and children’s interests as a priority. The law states clearly that when a court is considering the welfare of a child in relation to parental rights and responsibilities, it must take into account the need to protect the child from any abuse, or risk of abuse, that affects, or might affect, the child. It also states that courts must take into account the effect such abuse, or risk of abuse, might have on the ability of the person who has carried out the abuse to care for, or meet the needs of, the child, and the effect that any abuse might have on the person carrying out those responsibilities.
When a parent raises an action for contact or residence for their child, the court is also under a statutory duty to give the child the opportunity to express his or her views,
“taking account of the child’s age and maturity”,
and it has to
“have regard for such views”
as he or she may express, giving them due weight relative against the child’s age and maturity. That ensures that the legislation complies with article 12.2 of the UN convention on the rights of the child.
So far, so good. Unfortunately, however, that is not how it always works in practice. I fear that the law is not being consistently applied; that it can still prioritise the rights of a parent with a history of violence over the wishes of children; and that it takes inadequate account of their safety and scant account of the safety of the parent with care.
Earlier this week, Edinburgh University hosted a conference that grappled with some of the difficult issues regarding child contact. I was not able to attend, but one of the keynote presentations was made by the Rev. Tracey Hart, who last October was sentenced to 12 months in jail for contempt of court, having been accused of attempting to keep her children away from their father, who press reports suggest is a convicted murderer with a history of violence. Ms Hart spent eight days in jail before being freed on appeal. The Appeal Court judges ruled that the sentence was “incompetent” and said that she should never have been convicted in the first place, much less jailed.
What disturbs me most is that not one, but two sheriffs were involved in those outrageous proceedings. That brings home to me that we are still battling vestiges of an institutional and attitudinal culture where the dynamics of coercive control are very poorly understood; where the impact of domestic abuse is underestimated; and where the voices of children are diminished. The experience of Tracey Hart and her children suggests that, in some parts of our judiciary, parental rights still override the wellbeing and safety of children. Children’s own rights to have their voices heard and respected are not taken seriously enough, and mothers who seek to protect themselves and their children form abusive and dangerous former partners are still seen in some quarters as bitter or vindictive troublemakers. Despite the law being unambiguous, we still seem to have some way to go to ensure that all sheriffs are properly equipped to preside over such cases.
Tracey Hart has been extremely brave in speaking out, but another troubling issue that arises from her experience is the extent to which court processes and the child contact arrangements ordered by courts can be used by abusive ex-partners to continue to perpetrate abuse. That point very much echoes the comments of previous speakers. We need to ask whether contact arrangements are sufficiently robust in protecting families form further abuse, and to find ways to prevent contact from becoming the vehicle through which an abusive ex can continue to abuse their former partner. We need to look at how contact is properly risk-assessed; how staff in courts and contact centres are trained to spot signs of controlling and manipulative behaviour; how a safe environment is maintained; whether new regulator guidance needs to be introduced; and how we can really put the interests of the child at the heart of decisions.
At the moment, there is a presumption that contact with parents is a good thing, but if a parent has a history of violence and abuse, is that really the case? I do not think that we have yet got the balance right. Tracey Hart says that her children were reluctant to spend time with their father. A psychiatrist’s assessment of her children indicated that contact was damaging their mental health, and she describes her elder son even vomiting before a contact session. But those children were still compelled to attend sessions and cajoled by staff into spending time with their father when they did not want to do so.
Frankly, that is just not good enough. We need to ensure that all parts of these islands become a safer place for those fleeing domestic abuse. It is incumbent on every single one of us to name these abuses of power for exactly what they are, and to speak out on behalf of those whose lives are damaged and endangered under present approaches. We can and must do much better. I hope that Ministers are listening and that we will do so.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Before I begin my speech, I would like to pay tribute to the Backbench Business Committee for bringing this debate forward, and to other hon. Members for the moving testimony we have heard today, particularly the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who told us harrowing tales of their experience with constituents.
This extremely important debate follows in the wake of the publication of the Women’s Aid report, “Nineteen Child Homicides”. There is no doubt that much more reflection and circumspection is required on the experiences of those who have been subject to domestic abuse and how they are treated in family courts.
“Nineteen Child Homicides” tells the tragic and appalling stories of 19 children, all intentionally killed by a parent who was also a known perpetrator of domestic abuse, over a 10-year period. Those killings were made possible by unsafe child contact arrangements, both formal and informal. Shockingly, the report uncovers a range of concerns with the system of managing child contact, including routine failings to follow legal protocols and a lack of professional understanding of the power and control dynamics of abuse.
Domestic abuse itself has not been a criminal offence, so single incidents are prosecuted under a range of offences, such as common assault or rape, although there is a new criminal offence in England of coercive control. However, because it may prove difficult to prosecute that kind of abuse in a court of law, the First Minister has announced a new domestic abuse Bill as part of the Scottish Government’s programme, putting Scotland at the forefront of nations in tackling the true nature of domestic abuse. The Bill will criminalise psychological abuse and provide a range of associated measures to modernise the justice system and how it responds to domestic abuse. The issue is being debated in the Scottish Parliament this very day.
Although it is clear that domestic abuse is under-reported, there is a growing understanding of the damaging impact that non-physical forms of abuse can have on those who are subject to it. They include methods of control and even threats to harm others, including children.
In Scotland, the creation of a new offence of domestic abuse is an extremely important development, and I urge the Minister to reflect carefully on it. Creating the offence has the potential to have a significant impact on how society views domestic abuse, by ensuring that there is clarity about what is unacceptable under the law. That will make the efforts of the police and prosecution services much more effective in dealing with domestic abusers. Importantly, it will also bring clarity to those who have been subjected to domestic abuse that the justice system is focused on their needs and those of their children. Protecting people in abusive relationships, and their children, which we have heard so much about today, must be the overriding objective.
We spend a lot of time in this Chamber talking about children’s literacy and education and, indeed, even their obesity levels, but before we can tackle any of those issues we must ensure that sufficient measures are put in place to keep them safe from harm—even, when necessary, from an abusive parent; family courts must be mindful of that.
Where domestic abuse is an issue, it has to be presumed that contact with the abusive parent is not in the best interests of the child or the non-abusive parent who could be required to leave them in considerable danger. It is important that the family courts consider the parenting capacity of the abusive parent and the likely impact of past and future abuse on their ability to parent their child safely and on the safety of the non-abusive parent.
It is absolutely vital that family courts prevent further child deaths by always putting children first in family courts. This really requires something of a cultural change within the family court system to ensure that the safety and wellbeing of children and non- abusive parents is understood and consistently prioritised. We have heard plenty of cases today in which that has apparently not been the case. Where a partner is in an abusive relationship, children in the household are not safe either. That is an obvious reality towards which all the evidence points.
I would urge the Minister to look carefully at the measures being put forward by the First Minister in Scotland. It does not matter from where Governments learn or which examples they follow; the only thing that matters is that lives are improved or, as we have heard today, that lives are saved, most specifically the lives of children. The “Nineteen Child Homicides” report should give us all pause for thought. One child killed by a parent or carer is one child too many. These children have no voice; we must be their voice. We must ensure that our justice systems—in all corners of Scotland and all corners of the United Kingdom—serve our children well and keep them safe.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on securing this important debate, and by paying tribute to her constituent, Claire Throssell. As a Sheffield resident, I well remember hearing the shocking news of the murder of her two sons, Jack and Paul, and being horrified to find that this came at the hands of their own father—a man known to the authorities for his history of domestic violence. I am inspired by the bravery Claire has shown since that tragedy in working with Women’s Aid to raise awareness and push for change in the way that the family courts operate. I am pleased to see so many Members joining in her struggle in today’s debate.
Sadly, what happened to Claire’s sons was not an isolated event. As we have heard, between 2005 and 2015, 19 children in 12 families were killed by perpetrators of domestic abuse. All the perpetrators were fathers to the children that they killed. All of them had access to their children through formal or informal child contact arrangements. As the Women’s Aid report makes clear, the blame for these deaths lies solely with the abusive fathers who killed their children. The failures of the family court system do not in any way detract from that.
Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that, when it comes to cases involving domestic abuse, the family courts too often fail to put the safety of children and abused partners first, potentially exposing them to further risk. The Ministry of Justice practice direction 12J, “Child Arrangements and Contact Order: Domestic Violence and Harm”, puts a clear onus on the family courts to put the safety and best interests of the child first when considering child arrangement orders in cases where domestic violence or abuse has occurred. This guidance, one would think, is simple common sense. Unfortunately, it is not always properly implemented.
Family courts understandably take the view that a child should have sustained contact with both parents. Clearly, in the majority of cases, this could be the desired outcome. The problem arises in many cases where domestic violence is a factor—where contact with an abusive parent is likely to lead to further harm to the child, but that is outweighed by the perceived importance of maintaining contact with both mother and father. In other words, the belief is that a child’s best interests are to have safe contact with both parents. Although that is usually the case, it has become an article of faith from which family courts find it difficult to deviate, even for the child’s own safety.
What is more, this skewing of priorities is encouraged in part by legislation. The Children and Families Act 2014 enshrines in law the principle that contact with both parents is best for children. As I say, while this is certainly the case for the majority, it does not recognise that, in circumstances where a parent has a history of domestic violence, such contact can put the child in harm’s way.
Whenever there are allegations of domestic abuse, there must be a serious assessment, authorised by the court and carried out by experts, of the implications for the child’s and the non-abusive parent’s safety. For too long, the abuse of a partner and the safety of children have been viewed as two separate matters by the courts. We must encourage a courtroom culture that views them as part of the same issue.
Women’s Aid is calling for national oversight of the implementation of practice direction 12J, and I urge the Minister to look carefully at how we can bring about a shift in the thinking of the family courts so that child safety is put back at its heart. It is not just the decisions of the family courts that are in need of scrutiny, but their working practices, too. While victims of domestic abuse can be provided with a number of protections when in criminal court, such as giving evidence from behind a screen or through a video link, these are not available in family court.
On top of that, thanks to the Government’s cuts to legal aid, more and more people going to family court are forced, through lack of funds, to represent themselves rather than take on a solicitor. The National Audit Office estimates that there has been an 80% increase in the number of cases taken to the family courts where one of the parties is not represented by a legal professional, and a 30% increase in cases where neither party has such representation.
The upshot of all this is that it is increasingly common for victims of domestic abuse not only to have to face their abusers in court, but to be directly questioned by them as well. Thankfully, there is a greater understanding now than there was in the past that abuse within relationships does not only take the form of physical violence. We know that intimidation and coercion are just as much a feature. It takes a great deal of courage for those suffering from domestic abuse to break free from these relationships, and we must ensure that they are offered all the support and encouragement that can be mustered. What they should not have to put up with is facing their abuser’s questioning directly in court, and being placed in a position in which the intimidation they have escaped from is inflicted on them once again.
The protection that applies to criminal courts should likewise apply to family courts, and I trust that the Minster will take some time to reflect on the ordeal that appearing in these courts so often is for the victims of abuse. Above all, I urge the Minister to instigate a full review, as other hon. Members have called for, based on the reports submitted by Women’s Aid and the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence. We must ensure that Jack and Paul and all other victims are never forgotten.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I pay huge credit to all the speakers who preceded me in the debate, particularly the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who spoke about the heart-breaking case of her constituent, Claire Throssell. I am absolutely in awe of her strength and her dignity in the face of unimaginable trauma. I am glad that we can be part of putting Jack and Paul’s names on the record today. I would also like to pay tribute to the amazing women’s aid organisations across these islands, particularly Scottish Women’s Aid, which assisted me in preparing for this debate and works daily to support women and families through the ordeal of domestic abuse. It has told me that child contact issues are still a huge problem. I also pay credit to Glasgow women’s aid and the Glasgow rape crisis centre for the work they do to support women, which includes going through the court process. I long for the day—I am sure we all do—when women and children can live their lives without fear, but until then I am glad that these organisations and their committed staff and volunteers continue to carry out their vital, life-saving work.
The Scottish Government are responsible for child protection in Scotland. Members may be aware that a debate is also happening in the Scottish Parliament today on the proposed new domestic abuse legislation, building on the excellent work of the Equally Safe strategy. There is ongoing work from the Equally Safe group on all areas of gender- based violence. I commend all partners involved for continuing to strive to make improvements in policy in Scotland.
The proposed Bill in Scotland will create a new offence of domestic abuse. It will include criminalisation of psychological abuse such as coercive and controlling behaviour, which can be difficult to deal with under existing laws. It will also ensure appropriate penalties are available to deal with domestic abusers, and it will provide a range of associated measures to modernise the justice system to respond to domestic abuse.
In Scotland, we already have the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014 which allows special measures in courts, automatically in criminal cases and by application in civil cases. That can be very important. I have spoken to a number of the organisations involved in this, and it does help hugely to have these measures in place.
The basis for the system is good, but, sadly, Scotland is not immune from the difficulties described in this debate. Our court processes are not yet perfect, and this is reflected in the lived experiences of women and children going through this system. Scottish Women’s Aid tells me it remains concerned by the situation in the courts, where women are not believed and their experience of domestic abuse is downplayed. The significance of being able to tell your story and be believed is huge. Women are consistently undermined by abuse, their confidence shattered. Even getting as far as going to court is a massive ordeal. For the legal process then to remove any last part of dignity a woman has is unforgivable.
As the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge and others have mentioned, there also exists an artificial separation between an abuser’s actions and their ability to carry out their role as a parent. It would seem entirely logical to most people that if someone is of a mind to abuse, threaten, undermine, rape and control their partner, their ability to care appropriately for their children would come into question. That is not always the case, however, and the notion that a court would decree that contact with a parent who has demonstrated their capacity for violence is more important than the safety of that child terrifies me. I have had testimony sent to me by Women Against Rape in that respect, which in the interests of time I will post on Twitter later.
The prospect of having to deal regularly with an abusive ex-partner is incredibly daunting. Scottish Women’s Aid has said to me that the court process
“denies women and children their right to be protected and recover from abuse. The processes and decisions in our…courts are guilty of re-victimisation.”
This issue of re-victimisation is very important and needs to be looked at right across government—right across the practices we have. Concentrix was mentioned earlier, and the fact that it puts people in a position where they are being re-victimised. Benefits tribunals can put people in that situation, too, where their experiences are called into question. The Department for Work and Pensions is in that position as well. I will mention here, as I have mentioned many times before, the issue of universal credit and household payments. I will also mention the two-child policy and the rape clause. That a Government Minister, Lord Freud, could tell me in a meeting that he thought women suffering from domestic abuse should just flee is deeply worrying, and the Government need to reflect right across government on how we value women and children and how we make sure they are protected in every aspect of their lives.
The views of children must be taken into account, too, because they experience the trauma of domestic abuse and can carry that through their whole lives. Their voices are not always heard as they should be. A new project, Power Up; Power Down, is currently under way with Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People in partnership with Scottish Women’s Aid. Looking at this in that way has the potential to change how court processes are carried out, to allow young people’s voices to be heard, and to allow them the chance to determine what would make them feel safest, and what their needs and desires actually are. They do not want to be put in a position where they are in fear of their lives, and where they worry about the impact on their mother of their going to visit an abusive parent.
Finally, I would like to read from a card from the Recounting Women project, which Scottish Women’s Aid and other women’s aid agencies in Scotland have carried out. It is a participatory photo-voice project allowing women to share their personal experiences of domestic abuse and it is available online as well:
“This is the Sheriff Court where I experienced so much injustice, including unsupervised visits and Bar Reports that weren’t fair for me and my children. How much abuse can a father do to a child that puts his children out on the street, changes the locks, puts their clothes outside in bin bags. Then they force the children to see their dad while I'm trying to help them forget the trauma.”
I ask Ministers to reflect on this, and for us all to reflect right across government on how we can help women and children to be safe.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate those who secured this debate and everybody who has spent so long working on this issue—in particular, the all-party group on domestic violence and Women’s Aid on raising the issue of how domestic violence cases are dealt with in the family courts. The statistics and examples of domestic abuse, some of which have been given this afternoon, are so continually shocking that we have a duty to come back to this debate over and again.
I do not intend to repeat anything anybody has already said. I want to address two issues: first, what has been happening in the criminal courts to make the position better, and to raise the question of why some of that has not been done in the family courts; and secondly, to go to the question of abuse of process, where individuals are clearly using the civil courts for a purpose they were not intended for.
The criminal courts are not perfect. There are all sorts of problems still with our criminal courts in dealing with domestic abuse, but anybody who has worked on this—people across the House have done so—will recognise that real strides have been made that make a real difference in relation to the criminal approach over the past 10 to 15 years. I want to outline why I think that has happened, because this is a time to reflect on the processes in the family courts and to see whether some of that can be replicated.
The first thing that happened was that we began to count the cases. Back in 2002-03, nobody knew how many domestic abuse cases were going into the criminal court, so we could not begin to have a policy or strategy. We started counting the cases, and if the number of cases where litigants in person before family courts is not being counted now, that needs to start, and we need to understand how many of them may be victims of domestic abuse. So counting is the starting point.
We then need a policy to understand, so that everybody who plays a part in the process has a policy that helps them make the right decisions in the area they are responsible for. That happened in the criminal process about 10 or 12 years ago—those policies began to be rolled out, and they have been improved over the years. A policy on its own does not do the job, so we need a strategy, too, that makes it clear what we are trying to achieve and is proactive and forces things to change. We also need leadership: people who are prepared to go out there and say, “We’re going to change what’s going to happen.” All that has helped in the criminal sphere, with lots of different people leading in different ways. When we put it all together, it is clear the position has undoubtedly changed, so that it is now unrecognisable.
I will go through some of the features. Independent domestic violence advisers and independent sexual advisers are extremely good and are relied on by victims to help them through that part of the process. Specialist courts for domestic violence made a real difference, where everybody in the courtroom was trained and understood the issues; there were separate courts and lists, and the environment made it easier to deal with domestic violence cases. There was better co-ordination and support, with groups like Women’s Aid and many others out there to provide the support victims need for the journey they were going to go through in the criminal courts. And then there were practical measures that took the strain off the victim.
It is particularly important for a 999 tape, recording the person who phones the police to report what is happening, always to be secured, and for a police officer to arrive at the scene wearing a body cam. Those two bits of evidence will secure a conviction in almost every case of domestic abuse. It is amazing that they are still not the norm even in the criminal sphere. With the 999 tape and the body cam, it will almost certainly be possible to prove a case without putting a strain on the victim by requiring him or her to make that case in court.
Then there are special measures. When I went along to the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence and heard some of the evidence about family courts, I was struck by the fact that what I was hearing simply would not be tolerated in the criminal courts any more. Special measures are a norm in the criminal courts, and it would be thought to be the duty of the prosecution, the defence and the court to ensure that they are in place.
Some of the changes that have taken place have undoubtedly improved the situation in the criminal courts, although I am not pretending that it is perfect, and I am not suggesting that there is not much more to be done. I think that those improvements came about because a number of individuals decided to listen to what people were saying to them. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) mentioned the terrible case of Jane Clough. Her parents, Penny and John, came to see me, and I just sat down for the afternoon and let them tell me what had happened to them during their journey through our courts. It reflected on the organisation that I was running and it reflected on the criminal justice system, of which I am very proud, but I listened, and other people listened. We need to listen, and that is why today’s debate is so important.
We also need to be non-defensive. In my experience of criminal justice, the moment our organisation or system is criticised, we circle the wagons and try to protect what we think is good, rather than accepting that it might not be so good. It is necessary to listen, to give a non-defensive, open response, and then to have an absolute determination to change things. Jane’s parents asked me to go with them on a journey to change some of the things that had gone wrong for them, and I am proud to call them friends and co-advocates on that continuing journey.
There are real lessons to be learnt, and when I say that I look, obviously, to the Government Front Bench. There are lessons to be learnt about what has happened in the world of criminal justice in the last 15 years and to ask searching questions about why some of that cannot be replicated in family and other courts—starting, as I have said, with listening, non-defensiveness and an absolute commitment to change.
The second point that I want to make concerns the abuse of process, an issue that I think is rising on the agenda. Perpetrators of domestic abuse use our courts—both criminal and civil, but it is on the civil courts that the torch has not been shone—to continue the perpetration of control and harassment of victims. I pay tribute to Claire Waxman, herself a victim of harassment. She and Voice4Victims have raised this issue on numerous occasions.
There are two types of abuse of process. First, there are the individuals who bring proceedings in which they have no legitimate interest: they are doing it simply to ensure that the person whom they have been stalking or harassing is forced to come to court to strike out their claim. Because these are people with no legitimate interest, the courts will strike out the claim when they get to grips with it, as a vexatious claim. However, the victim will have to go to court to argue that it is vexatious, and that is all that the perpetrator wants: for that person to come to court. That is what happened to Claire Waxman, and it has happened to other victims.
This problem could be solved by Christmas. Again, I am looking straight across at the Government Front Bench. It ought to be possible for someone working for the senior judiciary to devise a way to ensure that such cases are subject to a special strike-out procedure that does not require the victim to go to court and take the initiative, and some third party does it instead. I honestly think that a month or two of hard work, and some real courage and determination, could produce a system whereby a practice direction could be issued and the problem could be put to one side.
The second type of abuse of process is more difficult to deal with. In these cases, the perpetrator has an interest—a child, for instance—and it is therefore not possible to say that that individual simply should not be allowed to be in court at all. In those circumstances, it is a question of looking at special measures, support and different ways of arranging family and other courts to ensure that they are not used with ulterior motives, because there is growing evidence that is happening. These are difficult cases, but it must be possible to provide support for victims, special measures and, indeed, a more proactive role for judges. A big change in the criminal courts was that judges began to be much more proactive and to say, “This is my problem. I must deal with it. It is my duty to provide a better environment for victims on their journey through our courts.”
What today’s debate throws up is that these issues are not going to go away. They need to be solved, and I think they can be solved across the House, but that will require listening, non-defensiveness and commitment to bringing about real change. Real change has already happened in the criminal sphere; it can happen in the family courts as well, and it need not take 15 years if lessons from one jurisdiction are borrowed by the other.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
As is often the case in the main Chamber, I am the last Back Bencher to speak, but I look forward to contributing none the less. I was very touched by all the contributions, but particularly that of the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who set the scene so well—no one could fail to be moved by her contribution. Other right hon. and hon. Members put their cases eloquently and powerfully, and it is good to have them on the record. None of us in the Chamber today, or I suspect outside this place, will have heard those stories without having an ache in their heart.
In the short time available, I want to offer a Northern Ireland perspective, as I always do in this place. I wish that I could say that the figures for Northern Ireland are better, but unfortunately they are not. When Members hear some of the statistics I will give to illustrate the situation, they will start to understand some of the problems we have back home.
This matter requires much thought and consideration. It affects far too many homes and families across the United Kingdom. The statistics are shocking. During this contribution, police forces across the UK will receive at least 10 calls regarding domestic abuse, which is simply horrific. Multiply those 10 calls by the number of Members who have spoken and we get an idea of the number of domestic abuse cases that have taken place since this debate began.
In 2014-15, 28,287 incidents with a domestic violence motivation were reported to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The PSNI responds to a domestic incident every 19 minutes of every day. I am not sure what the reasons are for that—people with much more knowledge will explain—but it might be down to our conflict of 30-odd years, or to economic changes. There are certainly pressures in our society that can make it difficult to have safe and compatible relationships. Some 13,426 domestic abuse crimes were reported, which is approximately 13% of overall crime in Northern Ireland. In the same year, six murders were found to have had a domestic abuse motivation, which is 37.5% of all murders in Northern Ireland. The statistics therefore indicate that the level of domestic abuse in Northern Ireland is very worrying.
At 13,426, the number of domestic abuse crimes was over two and a half times that of drug offences. We know how important it is to address drug issues, but there were just over 5,000 drug offences in that period. The number of burglaries was 9,000. There were 2,734 sexual offences recorded, including 737 cases of rape. Again, those are very worrying figures. Since January 2010, 8,363 multi-agency risk assessment conference cases have been discussed, including 10,856 cases in which children were living in the household, and in 7,955 of those cases the victims were female.
I want to give a few examples, without mentioning any names or going into too much detail, of the cases that I have been confronted with as an elected representative. I have a case of a lady from my constituency who I have known since she was a wee baby. She was married and had two children. She went to live in another part of the Province and she and her husband became estranged. He became quite violent. One night he arrived at her house with a sledgehammer and smashed the backdoor in. I have to say that the police responded very quickly and were there within five minutes. They arrested her husband and took him away. That relationship broke down. This is not just about the violence perpetrated on the doorstep; it is also about the trauma and the mental and emotional effects upon that lady and her two children.
I had another case—I do not think this has been mentioned so far, but I am sure that Members will relate to it—in which a constituent was pursued by her ex-partner at home, at work and on the streets, to the extent that she feared for her life. The thing is that that lady took her own life. Sometimes, we have to look at the after-effects as well.
Stop me if I am wrong, but there is a massive issue that we must be certain that we are handling in the best possible way across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We must make changes to handle the issue in the best way possible. In 2014, a report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary found that the police response to domestic abuse was not good enough and that the responses were inconsistent. A reinspection in December 2015 found that, although some positive changes had taken place, there was still room for improvement. That is why we are raising the issue again in the Chamber today.
I know that the Minister will give us some idea of the responses that have taken place and how the improvements have happened. I understand that there is no one blueprint that suits every case. Every case we have heard about today has been different. If there has been a theme, it is that every case is particular and peculiar to the individual person. None the less, they do constitute domestic violence. The term “domestic violence” covers a multitude of sins and each case should be treated individually. There must be a scheme in place that allows that to happen.
In this debate, we are focusing on the changes needed on domestic violence cases in family law courts. However, many cases of domestic abuse do not end up in court as the victim is unwilling to testify. That is the position in many of the cases I have in my office. The couple fall out; they drift apart; they get back together again; and the difficulties continue, with all the “sorrys” and apologies from the partner to the lady concerned. Some do not find the strength to face their abuser, and it is for them that I stand here today and ask: how much more can we do for them? I understand that there have been changes to the statute of limitation and that has to be welcomed, but what more can we do on that matter?
An essential part of change is recognising that domestic violence is not simply against women and children. Women’s Aid in Northern Ireland has released its statistics for 2014-15, which paint a picture of the different scenarios that it is dealing with every day, which we in the debate would recognise. It runs a 24-hour domestic and sexual violence helpline, which received 27,923 calls—almost the same as the PSNI received across the Province. The majority, by miles, of calls to the service continue to be from women. The percentage of male callers this year rose to some 2.2%; the previous year, the percentage was 1.5%. There were 611 sexual violence calls to the helpline from 518 female callers and 93 male callers—sometimes, let us be honest, men themselves have to contact the organisation and I want to put that focus into the debate—262 calls came from foreign nationals and black and minority ethnic women; 35 calls came from the LGBT community; 58% of women callers disclosed mental health issues; and 533 women, an increase of 79 on the previous year, and 226 children, a decrease on the previous year, were referred to Women’s Aid refuges.
I pay tribute to Women’s Aid for what it does in my constituency. It is a marvellous organisation. It is very receptive and responsive. I know the matter is devolved. I always encourage the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that moneys are available for that organisation, too.
This is a hugely diverse range of issues and the fact is that we need improvement in the service provided in all these areas. Although I understand that the task of creating a system that can offer support on the different types of domestic violence appears almost overwhelming, one thing is clearly needed in each case: compassion. We need to ensure that all responders understand that in some cases we cannot understand why someone goes back into an abusive situation. I cannot begin to understand that, but it happens. They deserve and need no less help and compassion than anyone else. Let us help them all. People need to know that there is a safe place and help available anytime they need it and that we have a system in place that will aid people in getting their lives back together. I want to say a big thank you all those Government bodies—the housing services, the police, social services—and all the organisations and charities, including Women’s Aid, which is an independent body, that work together.
This is a big problem that is complex by its very nature. The contributions in the House today have shown that we want the change that is necessary, especially for those who need it most. We must do our best to make the situation better for them. It is my belief that the hard work must begin in this place today.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I want to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), along with the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and all the other hon. Members who have together secured this vital debate. I should also like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for affording Members this time in the Chamber to discuss this issue. Having listened to today’s discussions, I am sure we can all agree that the contributions have been powerful, moving, thought-provoking and well informed. I also want to take this opportunity to pay tribute, as other hon. Members have done, to Claire Throssell and to thank her for all her work with Women’s Aid in trying to ensure that other mothers are protected in a way that, tragically, she and her children were not.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) has mentioned, the issues that we have discussed today have been brought into focus in recent weeks and months by a storyline in “The Archers”, which has dominated the news cycle over the past week. It is inspiring that a charity appeal inspired by the storyline on that radio show has raised more than £150,000 for the charity Refuge. I read this week about the tragic case of Mary Shipstone, whose estranged father murdered her before taking his own life. She and her mother had fled a life of violence and were living in a safe house. It was an act described by the serious case review as a “spite killing”, cynically designed to take the child from her mother and leave an indelible memory of Mary’s death. Another high-profile case, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), was that of Ellie Butler, who was murdered by her father following her return to her parents. These are events that no mother and no family should have to endure.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge told the Backbench Business Committee when she applied for this debate, it is important that the voices of these women should be heard. I especially want to congratulate her on fulfilling her promise to the Committee in her speech today. She made sure that the voices of those women were heard and put on parliamentary record the words of Claire.
I also congratulate Women’s Aid on publishing its urgent and important work, “Nineteen Child Homicides”, 12 years on from a similar shocking report. Much time may have passed since that original report’s publication and, although progress has been made in respect of domestic violence and the family courts, much more needs to be done. That 2004 report influenced the landscape of the family courts, and there is every reason to hope, following the debate today, that the latest report will also have a big effect. As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), there needs to be a transformation of our family courts. They need to be an arena for justice, not a weapon with which those who have done wrong can seek to inflict further pain on those who have been wronged.
The case studies described in the report are truly shocking. All the perpetrators were fathers to the children they murdered, and all the murders took place in the context of child contact, whether informally or formally arranged between the parties. The cases to which the Women’s Aid report refer tend to show a deeply worrying pattern in which the fathers involved are actually known to agencies as perpetrators of domestic abuse. The reports’ findings show that a culture of “contact at all costs” has unfortunately arisen in our family courts. As long ago as 2006, however, the then Lord Justice Wall said in response to the first report from Women’s Aid on this subject:
“It is, in my view, high time that the Family Justice System abandoned any reliance on the proposition that a man can have a history of violence to the mother of his children but, nonetheless, be a good father.”
Against that background, it is particularly alarming that Women’s Aid found that the justice system still views the abuse of a mother by a partner or husband as somehow separate from the child’s safety. Anyone reading the report will agree that a review is necessary, but as shadow Justice Secretary I was particularly struck by the barriers identified in the report to ensuring that granting of child contact is safe.
Access to justice is no access at all if it does not also include access to advice and representation. As mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), the coalition Government inflicted large cuts on the legal aid budget, and private family law cases were no exception to that damaging trend. Although the Government introduced interim regulations for family legal aid earlier this year, the picture has scarcely changed. Those seeking publicly funded legal representation must provide evidence. The time limit for submitting evidence may have been extended from two to five years, but many will wonder why there is a time limit at all. It may be more appropriate for an assessment of relevance to be made rather than to set an arbitrary period of time. It is the provision of evidence itself that causes difficulty and the report makes it clear that much of the required evidence is either “unavailable or unobtainable”. Practitioner groups I have met also report reluctance by some professionals to put the required evidence in writing. Those who do sometimes find their form returned because it is not in the prescribed format and so the process begins again.
At the time, the Government committed to review the effects of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 within three to five years. To date, not only has a review not been published, but no such review has started. It is alarming that some 38% of women were not in a position to obtain the necessary evidence to persuade the Legal Aid Agency that, as victims of domestic violence, they should be eligible for legal aid. More than a quarter of those women had no option other than to represent themselves in court as litigants in person. As outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), that can mean being cross-examined in court by the perpetrator of the abuse and the extra stress of having the sole responsibility for navigating the complex case law and legal processes. As mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, when a defendant has no legal representation in the criminal courts they will be prevented, quite rightly, from cross-examining a complainant who alleges domestic violence. Instead, the court will appoint an advocate, paid for with public funds, to conduct cross-examination. If that is good enough for the criminal system, why is it not good enough in the family court system?
At her first Justice Committee appearance last week, the new Secretary of State for Justice stated that one of her three objectives was to realise a justice system that works for all, something with which we can all agree. If that is the case, she must turn her mind rapidly to the experiences we have heard today—the experiences of those in the family courts—because the clear evidence of this report is that this is not working for all. To that end, I was disappointed to hear that the all-party group on domestic violence has received no response to date to its “'Domestic Abuse, Child Contact and the Family Courts” report. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the all-party group and its chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. I hope the new Justice Secretary will do more. I hope that she will take on the task of responding directly to the work of the all-party group and consider carefully the seven recommendations its report makes. As with the Women’s Aid report, it emphasises the need for better adherence to practice direction 12J. As we have heard, that relates to protecting the child and the parent they are living with, and ensuring that the best interests of the child are elevated above other considerations when determining child contact.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) so eloquently said, combating violence against women and girls must be a priority for all parties. Labour’s general election manifesto committed to establishing a commissioner on domestic and sexual violence, to influence priorities across all Departments. We also said that we would publish a violence against women and girls Bill, and provide more stable central funding for women’s refuges and rape crisis centres. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, we welcome the Government’s change of position on women’s refuges and changes to housing benefit. But, fundamentally, the Government should heed this motion and implement a review as soon as possible. I commend the motion to the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)
I will not be taking any interventions, in an attempt to get through all the questions that have been asked in this important debate, so I ask hon. Members to forgive me. If I do not answer all of the points raised, I will be writing to hon. Members. Let me begin by thanking the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and other Members for securing this debate. On a personal level, I believe that she is an impressive Member of Parliament, and her core decency, which was visibly displayed today, came through. I think that is why she is such a valued Member of this House.
I recognise the strength of feeling on the subject of domestic abuse and the importance that hon. Members from all parts of the House attach to addressing it. The more we talk about this issue, the better. I am very grateful for the opportunity to discuss such a pressing issue, not least because in clinical practice I have encountered a number of cases of domestic violence, primarily against women, but I must say that it also affects men—that should be mentioned. I also think it is important that today we have heard contributions from both men and women; this problem blights our society and we are all responsible for sorting it out.
Domestic abuse appals every one of us. As the Prime Minister made clear in the House only last week, tackling such abuse is a priority for the Government. This debate centres on an important report by Women’s Aid, which was published in January and is entitled “Nineteen Child Homicides”. It calls on the Government to review the treatment and experiences of victims of domestic abuse in the family law courts. It examines a number of serious case reviews published in the 10 years up to 2015, all involving children who were killed by their fathers—19 children in total. The fathers in question all had access to their children through formal or informal contact arrangements. At this point, may I mention the story that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge vividly described? I gather that the mother, Claire, is here, and the story of the loss of Jack and Paul horrified us all. I am in awe of her courage, not just because she is here today, but because her attempt to find some positive outcome to such an appalling tragedy deserves the respect of us all.
The Women’s Aid report makes for harrowing reading. No child should ever die or live in such dreadful circumstances, and it is incumbent on all of us to consider whether more can be done to prevent such tragedies. The report underlines the need to prioritise the child’s best interest in child contact cases involving domestic abuse, and to make sure that known risks are properly considered. The law is clear on that: the family courts’ overriding duty is the welfare of the child.
In March, the Government launched a new strategy on violence against women and girls. We committed £80 million of funding and set out a comprehensive action plan. The Ministry of Justice is playing a central role. Although there remains much work to be done, we have already made progress. We are working closely with the Home Office to protect victims, including introducing the new offence of coercive control, new stalking laws and domestic violence protection orders.
This year, we allocated around £68 million to police and crime commissioners to support victims of crime, including victims of domestic abuse. Today, we announced our plans to allow vulnerable and intimidated witnesses to be cross-examined earlier in the criminal process through digital recording. As well as improving the quality of evidence provided by such witnesses, this should make the experience of giving evidence less traumatic.
This Government’s work to improve the criminal justice response to domestic abuse is also beginning to bear fruit. Last week, the Crown Prosecution Service reported that the number of prosecutions and convictions for domestic abuse is now at its highest level. More victims are seeing justice.
We in the Ministry of Justice remain committed to working closely with partners the CPS and the Home Office, particularly when responding to domestic abuse, but our role does not end there. The Ministry of Justice is acutely aware of the particular responsibilities of supporting victims of domestic abuse going through the family justice system. The issues at stake in family proceedings are sensitive and often complex, and the courts’ decision can have far-reaching implications for the individuals involved, particularly for children. Domestic abuse only exacerbates an already traumatic situation.
We have therefore taken a number of steps to make sure that victims of domestic abuse who find themselves in the family justice system have the support and the protection that they need: we have protected legal aid for individuals seeking protection from abusers; we are investing in the court estate to improve the physical security of family courts and the emotional support available for users; and we have placed renewed emphasis on training for those who work in the family justice system.
Where arrangements have been found wanting, we have taken action. For example, when the Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that elements of the evidence requirements for making legal aid available to victims of domestic abuse in private family cases were invalid, we changed the regulations as an interim measure. In parallel, we began work to explore fully the issues at play in these cases. We are determined that victims of domestic abuse should be able to access legal aid when they need it, and we want to understand better the experience of victims in these situations so that we can be sure that we have workable arrangements for the longer term.
Over the summer, we have been working collaboratively with domestic abuse support groups, legal representative bodies and colleagues across Government to gather information on the legal aid evidence requirements. I for one welcome the collaborative approach to this work, and would like to see it adopted on other issues.
We are not complacent. We know that there is room for improvement, and we are working closely with the judiciary in particular to consider what additional protections may be necessary for vulnerable victims and witnesses in the family justice system.
Another important report on domestic abuse and the family justice system was recently published by the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence. It highlighted a number of issues of concern, which we are now examining carefully.
I was struck by the unfavourable comparison the APPG’s report made between the treatment of domestic abuse in the family justice system and that in the criminal justice system, which has done a great deal in recent years to develop a coherent, system-wide response to the matter. As the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) pointed out, it is fair to say that the family system can learn valuable lessons from criminal justice, and in particular from the focus that criminal justice agencies have brought to developing a joined-up response, which takes full account of the needs of the victim. The Government agree that it should never be a case of “contact at all costs”.
Judicial guidance issued to family judges by the president of the family division of the High Court—practice direction 12J—makes it clear that the court should make an order for contact only if it can be satisfied that the physical and emotional safety of the child and the parent with whom the child is living can, as far as possible, be secured before, during and after contact.
Compliance with judicial guidance is properly the responsibility of the independent judiciary, as are a number of the issues raised in the two reports. The most senior family judge, the president of the family division, has asked a High Court judge to review the practice direction in the light of recommendations made by Women’s Aid and the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence. I will meet the president later today, and intend to raise this with him in person.
I shall now respond to points made by hon. Members during this discussion. We have heard from the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), for Hove (Peter Kyle), for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), and for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Each made a thoughtful and powerful contribution.
I read both reports with interest; they were a difficult read. I can inform the House that I will meet Polly Neate, the chief executive of Women’s Aid, on 17 October, when I look forward to discussing the recommendations with her in person. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley made an important point about the lack of data on the number of litigants in person; I agree that we have insufficient data on trends in the family justice system. I assure the House that evidence-based policy will be at the heart of everything I do as a Minister.
On vulnerable witnesses in the family court, the hon. Members for Rotherham and for Birmingham, Yardley, asked about “controlling or coercive behaviour”, and the understanding thereof in courts. The law is clear: the definition of “harm” includes a child witnessing domestic violence, which includes controlling or coercive behaviour. We are working with the judiciary to consider what additional protections for vulnerable victims and witnesses may be necessary.
With regard to training on domestic abuse—an issue raised by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke—responsibility for judicial training rests with the Judicial College, which runs modules on domestic abuse. Court staff receive training on various aspects of domestic abuse. We are reviewing the training, and have shared the training materials with Women’s Aid to assist us in the review. All family court CAFCASS advisers must complete core training, including on the assessment of domestic abuse, coercive control, and the impact on children.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam raised the case of Ellie Butler. We have all been shocked by the circumstances of that case, but my hon. Friend will appreciate that I am unable to comment on individual decisions of the independent judiciary.
In closing, let me again thank hon. Members for the opportunity to discuss this important subject. I do not need to be reminded of the impact of domestic violence on people; as a doctor, in the last three months I have had two cases of domestic violence, and it is truly shocking when one encounters women in those circumstances. I am determined to do everything that I can to improve our management of cases when they come before the criminal justice system, and indeed to try to get rid of this scourge, which blights our society. I am hopeful, particularly after this debate, that we can work together across the House, and indeed beyond, as we continue efforts to improve the way in which the family justice system responds to domestic abuse.
Angela Smith
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for having given us this very important debate, which I think has shown the House at its finest. We have heard not only the arguments, but the stories and the voices that needed to be heard. Claire is here today, and I know how much this means to her, but all of this means nothing until we see effective change.
The extent of the challenge was made clear to me this afternoon by a rather unpleasant tweet sent to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and me in response to my hon. Friend’s comments about the high quality of the debate; it said:
“man-hating at its finest…well done”.
If that does not spur us on to make the changes necessary to put children first in our family courts, nothing will.
I thank the Minister for his thoughtful and considered response, but I urge him to act as quickly as is reasonably possible to make the changes that we know are necessary to stop children dying at the hands of their father.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes the Women’s Aid report entitled Nineteen Child Homicides, published in January 2016; and calls on the Government to review the treatment and experiences of victims of domestic abuse in family law courts.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. About an hour ago the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, published a report on the use of UK-manufactured arms in Yemen, accompanied by a press release.
As a member of the press I know that very often, to save time, one reads the press release, not the report. I would be grateful for your advice, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to make it clear that there was a majority report and a minority report. The minority report was tabled by myself and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins). Nowhere in the press release is the minority report mentioned.
I think it is very misleading to put out a press release which suggests that the report is supported by all the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. We specifically supported the reports from the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and the Department for International Development. That is included in the report, and we say quite clearly that the arms export licensing regime has not worked, and we recommend that the UK suspend licences for arms exports to Saudi Arabia that are capable of being used in Yemen, pending the results of an independent United Nations-led inquiry into reports of violations of international humanitarian law, and that the UK issues no further licences. That should have been included in the press release.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The right hon. Lady knows that I have no jurisdiction over press notices and press releases on Committee reports, but as she has made good use of the Chamber today, I am sure that all the newspapers and the media that are looking on will have taken notice of that, and I am sure it will be highlighted. It is not a point for the Chair, but it is certainly on the record now.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am concerned about the lack of information that we are getting from the Government about how the funding that we are giving Yemen is being managed. May we have a report? When was the last time a British diplomat visited Yemen? We need to put on the record that we are not getting proper reporting back on what is happening there with our funding.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Once again, that is not a matter for me, but it is on the record. The hon. Lady made the point clearly about British diplomats going out there. I am sure the Leader of the House will have noted that. It is also a point that can be raised at business questions. The hon. Lady has taken advantage of the opportunity and put it on the record.
Quantitative Easing
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House calls on the Bank of England to provide a detailed analysis of the effect of its quantitative easing programme on the financial markets and the wider economy which includes an assessment of the future development of the quantitative easing programme and other monetary policy measures it may consider appropriate to achieve its objectives.
I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I understand the motivation to introduce the quantitative easing programme back in March 2009. The need to restore confidence and take action to stimulate lending and growth after the financial crisis was well understood. As QE was put in place, many commentators were worried about unfounded risks of inflation, which betrayed an ignorance of what the effects of QE would be.
My primary concern about the Bank of England’s QE programme, the asset purchase scheme, was not that it might lead to some kind of hyperinflation, but instead that it would not necessarily lead to an increase in lending. That was the evidence from Japan, where for a significant period after the introduction of its unconventional monetary policy, lending actually fell. Of course, that outcome has been mirrored here. If we look at M4—also referred to as broad money—its value in January 2010 was £2,220 billion. The figure for July 2016 was £2,210 billion—a slight fall in the value of broad money. Now, the improbable counter-factual is that lending might have been lower without QE; the inescapable fact, though, is that engaging in quantitative easing to the extent we have has not resulted in an increase in the money supply in the UK. It does seem that the asset purchase scheme has predominantly enhanced the balance sheets of financial institutions, without a commensurate increase in lending.
We understand the difference between QE and simply printing money, which is that QE should eventually be unwound, although the mechanisms and timings are the great unknowns of today. Just to put this into context, the Bank of England now owns an eye-watering quarter of all outstanding Government debt—in effect, we have borrowed against ourselves.
When I sought the agreement of the Backbench Business Committee for this debate, it was ahead of the Bank of England announcing further measures in August to add to its QE programme. That means that this is a very timely, much-needed debate, and it is right that, seven and a half years into the QE programme, we in this House take stock of what has been achieved and, indeed, what the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy should be to deliver confidence and growth for our economy.
With the measures announced in August, the Bank of England has authorised a QE programme of £445 billion. The desire to drive down interest rates, coupled with the effect of the QE programme, has seen investors seek other, higher-yielding assets, with a commensurate increase in asset prices and a decline in yields. Given those circumstances, the financial markets have seen a great bull run. The FTSE 100 was at a level of 3,529 on 6 March 2009, ahead of the launch of the QE programme. Last night, the index closed at 6,673, representing a gain in value of 89% over the last seven and a half years. The QE programme has helped to deliver an outcome that means that those owning financial and property assets have done well—that was perhaps an unintended consequence of QE—while, on the face of it, there has been no net positive impact on growth in the money supply.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
I note what the hon. Gentleman says on the money supply. The Bank of England reports do indicate an increase in growth in the economy as a result, certainly, of the first round of QE immediately post the first financial crisis, so it may yet have had a positive impact on the level of inflation in the economy and GDP growth—clearly of benefit to us all.
Ian Blackford
My contention would be that we have actually had very limited reporting from the Bank of England on the actual effect of the QE programme, and we need a much more detailed analysis. I accept, of course, that there would have been some limited impact on the economy from the QE programme. I will go on to discuss whether we need to balance some of these monetary measures by taking additional fiscal measures, which may have done more to boost sustainable economic growth. That marriage of our responsibilities for monetary and fiscal policies has to be relevant to the point the hon. Gentleman made.
As the Prime Minister herself said:
“Monetary policy—in the form of super-low interest rates and quantitative easing—has helped those on the property ladder at the expense of those who can’t afford to own their own home.”
On this occasion, I agree with the Prime Minister—I do not intend to make a habit of that though.
There has to be a policy response from the Government that recognises that fiscal measures must be taken as part of a balanced approach to deliver the circumstances of sustainable growth. If we look at the growth in financial wealth, we can see the contrasting experience of those who have benefited from this wealth effect at a time that real wage growth has stagnated. We know from an analysis published by the Bank of England in 2013 that QE had boosted asset prices and that the top 5% of households owned 40% of those assets. The analysis from the Bank of England at that time estimated that the top 5% of households had become richer to the tune of £128,000 on average. QE has demonstrably exacerbated wealth disparity between rich and poor.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I would have to agree with elements of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. We have had these ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing in place for a hell of a long time, and they have had a distorting effect along the lines that he has suggested. Does he not recognise, though, that when, in March 2009, we entered a phase of emergency interest rates and started down the road to quantitative easing, no one would have envisaged that this far down the line the British economy—indeed, more importantly, the world economy and the European economy—would be in such a state that it would be difficult for us to raise interest rates? In other words, the policy in 2009 and for the next year or two afterwards was entirely acceptable and understandable, but it was not envisaged that it would carry on for so long.
Ian Blackford
I find myself agreeing with the right hon. Gentleman. As I said, we all recognise that it was a necessary step to take in 2009. I am really grateful that the Backbench Business Committee has granted this debate, because it is important to reflect on how the monetary policy initiatives that have been taken need to be balanced by other measures to make sure that we can deliver the sustainable economic growth that he mentions. We need a detailed analysis of what has happened to the £445 billion that has been invested in the asset purchase programme. As he says, given the economic circumstances we have no idea at this stage when we are likely to see that begin to unwind. Indeed, it is likely to be some years into the future.
We need to reflect on the experiences that I have discussed and be prepared to consider what we need to change in both monetary and fiscal policy in order to foster inclusiveness and fairness. We have not created circumstances where there has been a material enhancement to business confidence that has led to an increase in business investment that is necessary to drive up productivity and enhance living standards for society as a whole. Post-Brexit, much is talked about those who have been left behind. In this context, there must be an examination of QE and an assessment of alternative measures both monetary and fiscal. In my opinion, there has been a disconnect between growth in financial assets and growth in the wider economy.
There is also the issue of the impact on savers of lower interest rates, and the impact on pensions and pension savings. The difficulties experienced by the BHS pension scheme and the desire to change the arrangements for the British Steel pension scheme are just two examples of situations where there are risks to members of defined-benefit pension schemes. Today in the UK, there are about 11 million citizens in about 6,000 defined-benefit pension schemes. Figures that I obtained earlier this year suggested that the then combined deficit in defined-benefit schemes was about £384 billion, with about 600 schemes in a danger zone in terms of meeting their long-term obligations.
One of the challenges that pension schemes face is the impact of QE particularly with regard to the declining yields on Government gilts. Let me put that into context for the House. A movement in UK gilts of 50 basis points equates to an approximate increase in defined-benefits pension schemes deficit of £120 billion. When we consider that the 10-year Government bond yield was at 3.1% in March 2009 and we are at 0.5% today, we can see the scale of the challenge that pension funds have faced from the decline in yields. We have invested, if I can use that term, £445 billion in driving down yields and creating a pensions black hole, undermining in the process the attractions of savings and, in particular, pensions savings.
It is not just the impact on future income streams for pension funds, but the effect on declining annuity rates, which is of considerable concern. This effect was identified by the Treasury Committee in a report of 2012 which stated:
“Loose monetary policy, achieved through quantitative easing and low interest rates, has redistributional effects, particularly penalising savers, those with ‘draw-down pensions’, and those retiring now.”
We need to reflect on such statements and consider how to adapt our approach. Standard & Poor’s stated in a report this year that QE has exacerbated wealth inequality.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I welcome this debate. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman saw the editorial in The Daily Telegraph of 13 September headed, “A pension scandal at the Bank of England”, which discussed the fact that senior staff had been given massive increases in their pension contributions in order to fight the phenomenon he mentions. I am afraid that what is sauce for the goose in the case of the Bank of England is not sauce for the gander. Does he agree that the Bank of England is in danger of being accused of hypocrisy again and again as this proceeds?
Ian Blackford
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I have not read the article, but I have seen the press headlines about it. That is exactly the point I have tried to make in painting a picture of the inequality. Those at the top or in the vanguard of society, if one wants to put it that way, are seen as benefiting from the quantitative easing programme—it benefits the pension schemes of those in the Bank of England—while ordinary workers and savers have been penalised. He is absolutely right, and one therefore recognises why we have the disconnect in society.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
One of the problems caused is obviously inflation in house prices, which I will say a little more about later. In response to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), is it not also the case that the Bank of England is still subsidising the mortgages of its staff and helping them up the very steep property ladder?
Ian Blackford
I must say that I have no particular knowledge of that, but if it is the case, I agree with the hon. Lady that it is not helpful. I did not specifically mention house prices when I was talking about the rise in financial markets, but quantitative easing has clearly led to an increase in property prices, and we know the problems that people suffer from, particularly in the south-east of England, as a consequence. That is one of the unintended consequences I mentioned.
I hope that the Minister will reflect on all this and, when he responds, tell us how the Government can bring forward measures that will address specifically the issue of rising wealth inequality, which concerns Members right across the House. While I recognise the desire of the Bank of England proactively to take action to support confidence in the financial markets and the wider economy, the Treasury has been almost completely absent in the deployment of fiscal policy tools to grow the economy and counter the negative impact of Brexit. One cannot divorce monetary and fiscal policy; they have to work in tandem. There is a particular challenge in encouraging companies to invest through their seeing a growth opportunity in the wider economy. We all have responsibility for creating the circumstances in which there is a realisation of such growth opportunities.
I appreciate that the illogical desire of the previous Chancellor to achieve a fiscal surplus in the current Parliament has now, thankfully, been abandoned. We should all share in a desire to cut the deficit and debt, but the question of how to get there requires a much deeper debate. I am pleased that voices across the Chamber now seem to recognise that we have to accept our full fiscal responsibilities, as well as our monetary responsibilities, to strengthen confidence and growth.
In particular, we need to consider infrastructure investment, as a counterpart to our monetary measures, to build capacity, improve efficiency and create an environment that will encourage business investment to allow us to improve productivity, competitiveness and, as a result, living standards. It is about making sure that we move away from a situation in which QE has been beneficial to those owning financial assets to one in which wider society sees a greater benefit from a more balanced approach.
My party, the SNP, has long advocated ending and reversing the Tory Government’s programme of austerity, which has failed our economy and harmed our social fabric, and using fiscal tools to create a fair, resilient and balanced economy. The productivity and inclusive growth Bill proposed in the SNP’s alternative Queen’s Speech would bring about an inclusive, prosperous economy through a modest investment in infrastructure and vital public services. Such a balanced approach would return the public finances to a sustainable path while continuing to invest. The Bill would boost investment, halting the austerity programme that has strangled economic progress. It would oversee increased spending on public services by a modest 0.5% a year in real terms between 2016-17 and 2019-20, which would release over £150 billion during that period for investment in public services, while ensuring that public sector debt and borrowing fell over the current Parliament. In doing so, the Bill would stimulate GDP growth, and support wage growth and tax receipts. By transforming productivity and innovation, it would act as a major signal of confidence in our economy. Such a modest increase in expenditure would stop the cutbacks that disproportionately burden the most disadvantaged groups, cause widespread suffering and inequality, and deny opportunities to so many.
The International Monetary Fund, in its latest “World Economic Outlook”, has revised growth projections down, signalling the headwinds ahead, and urged policy makers to engage in more active policy responses to tackle the underlying challenges. It called for advanced economies to “strengthen growth” by engaging in
“structural reforms, continued monetary policy accommodation, and fiscal support—in the form of growth-friendly fiscal policies where adjustment is needed and fiscal stimulus where space allows.”
Furthermore, in an article entitled “Neoliberalism: Oversold?”, the IMF revisited the effectiveness of austerity and concluded that these policies increased inequality and jeopardised long-term economic growth.
In its latest economic outlook from June 2016, the OECD encouraged policy makers around the world to
“break out of the low-growth trap”
and deliver economic prosperity by deploying fiscal policy “more extensively”, as well as by taking advantage of the low-interest rate environment created by monetary policy. It suggested the use of structural policies to enhance market competition, but also urged Governments to intervene to enhance labour market skills and invest in infrastructure that would deliver long-term productivity and economic growth.
Even the US has pressed other G20 countries for more fiscal policy activism to put growth ahead of austerity. Ahead of the September 2016 summit in China, the US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, said a “consensus” had formed around the US position on the need for countries to “use all policy tools”, including monetary, fiscal and structural reforms.
The UK Government’s failure to co-ordinate fiscal and monetary measures to rebalance the economy following the financial crisis has left a toxic legacy of stagnating growth. The SNP understood the use of quantitative easing by the Bank of England as a response to the financial crash and a temporary measure to regain stability. However, the effectiveness of monetary policy has been gravely undermined by the austerity agenda and it leaves a legacy of unintended consequences that will put an unprecedented burden on future generations. The Bank of England should evaluate the effectiveness of its QE programme and the wider consequences of its continuation after the UK’s decision to leave the EU. The UK Government should reflect on that and put in place effective fiscal measures.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I am delighted to participate in this debate and congratulate the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) on securing it. I certainly support him. Like him, I am pleased to agree with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s comments on monetary policy. That is certainly a first for me, and I hope to explore more with her how we should move forward.
I pay tribute to the journalist Tim Price of MoneyWeek for bringing forward a petition on the parliamentary website against QE, which has so far secured more than 4,700 signatures. I hope that by the end of this debate, with the enormous audience it is bound to draw, there will be a few more signatures.
One of the great tragedies of this subject is that, although we might think it is one of the most important issues of our time, it is not well understood, as can be seen from the attendance in the Chamber. Although the public feel the effects of it widely, their representatives are not as well equipped to participate in debates on the subject as they might be.
I will talk about the two areas mentioned in the motion: the effects of QE and the future development of policy. It might be helpful first to turn to page iv of the last inflation report, which sets out the channels through which monetary policy works. The first is by bringing forward spending by lowering the “real interest rate”. The next is by lowering debt servicing costs, which is the “cash-flow channel”. There is the lowering of funding costs, which is the “credit channel”. It also mentions the “wealth channel”, which is people selling assets to the Bank, so that they can
“reinvest the money received in other assets”,
thereby supporting asset prices. The “exchange rate channel” bears consideration, given that our exchange rate has just dropped. That is an object of Bank policy. There is also the “confidence and expectations channel”, which demonstrates that the Governor, the Bank and the Monetary Policy Committee are aware of the importance of their role in the markets of creating expectations and the effect that that has on the real economy.
The hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber made some good points about wealth inequality—a matter on which I will dwell. In 2012, the Bank of England wrote a report on the distributional effects of asset purchases. It states:
“By pushing up a range of asset prices, asset purchases have boosted the value of households’ financial wealth held outside pension funds, but holdings are heavily skewed with the top 5% of households holding 40% of these assets.”
After the MPC’s last inflation report, the Treasury Committee picked up on wealth inequality and the extent to which it is promoted by what I would call “easy money” and by QE specifically. The Committee is increasing its focus on the issue. I am glad to see present the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who serves with me on the Committee, and I look forward to hearing what she has to say. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House are converging on a genuine concern that the processes of the market are being undermined in their justice by the current set of monetary policies.
If anything, QE has an upside: it has made explicit a phenomenon that has been going on for a long time. The hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber mentioned the quantities of M4 outstanding. If we look back a bit further, we will see that M4 outstanding in 1997 was about £700 billion. If we plot the quantity of M4 outstanding, we will see an accelerating rush through that supposed moderation and in the quantity of M4 outstanding. Is it any wonder that we seemed to have abolished boom and bust, and seemed to be getting better off, when actually there was an enormous acceleration in the supply of credit, leading to a crisis, broadly a stagnation in the creation of money, and the categorically different economic environment in which we find ourselves today?
This has gone on for a long time. The Office for National Statistics and the Library published a paper looking at price inflation back to 1750. It has an instructive chart—I regret that I cannot put it on the record—which shows, on a linear scale, that the value of money was broadly flat until about 1914-18. There was some inflation during the wars and then, from 1971, the value of money collapsed. What happened in 1971? The final link to gold was severed and money became inflationary. As ever, Governments’ third means of financing themselves after tax and borrowing has been currency debasement, and it is that continuous, chronic expansion of credit that has brought us to the position we are in. Although we are now increasingly concerned about the wealth equality effects—the justice effects—of QE, the point is that the money supply has been chronically expansionary since 1971, and therefore those effects have been going on throughout my lifetime.
I will not read out the whole passage, but in “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”, Keynes wrote:
“By a continuing process of inflation”—
that is, increasing the money supply—
“governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.”
What has changed? Nothing much. That was, of course, only Keynes; I am not quoting some wild-eyed libertarian monetary scholar.
Is it any wonder—I have given advance notice of this—that we see reported in The Daily Telegraph today a speech by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), in which he said:
“We’ve got to demand systemic change. Look, I’m straight, I’m honest with people: I’m a Marxist… This is a classic crisis of the economy—a classic capitalist crisis. I’ve been waiting for this for a generation!”?
He went on to say, if the House will forgive me for repeating this:
“For Christ’s sake don’t waste it, you know; let’s use this to explain to people this system based on greed and profit does not work.”
I have covered this theme before. The point is that, if this is capitalism, I am not a capitalist. It is not capitalism when money, under the centrally planned and directed policy of a committee of wise men and women at the central Bank, creates a chronically expansionary environment, which we are now beginning to realise has real wealth effects. That is not capitalism. If the outcome is unjust, that is because of our monetary arrangements, in my view. There will be other factors, but I think that that is potentially a profound cause of wealth inequality and injustice in the market economy.
Jeremy Quin
I am interested in my hon. Friend’s speech; as is so often the case, he is sharing interesting ideas with the House. I totally get a lot of what he is saying about the inflationary trajectory, but, as a monetarist, would he have supported QE when the policy was launched in 2009—I know that I am going back a bit—given the circumstances at the time? He seems to think that it has run its course and ceased to be effective, but would he have supported it initially?
Mr Baker
My hon. Friend asks a magnificent question, one that is discussed on the website of the Cobden Centre—a think-tank that I co-founded. [Interruption.] There, I said it. The question is, “Would Hayek have supported QE?” The consensus of Hayek scholars is that, given all the circumstances at the time, he would have supported it, to prevent the money supply collapsing and the horrific humanitarian consequences that that would have involved. But would he have supported it now to try to stimulate the economy, creating patterns of economic activity sustained only by that expansion of the money supply? Flatly, no. I was not in Parliament at the time, and I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that I did not have to make that decision. We are where we are.
My second point is that I believe policy is now ineffective and counter-productive. The Governor told the Treasury Committee that we have “extraordinary, if not emergency” monetary policy; we have had it since 2009. I believe that if, during that seven-year period, productive investments could have been made, brought forward and induced by these low interest rates, they would have been made by now. When it comes to real productive investment, I think we are into the law of diminishing returns. We therefore run the risk of inducing firms to engage in activities that will not have a return—in other words, banks will make non-performing loans. That is, of course, the problem afflicting the Italian banking system, as we sit here.
The question is whether this monetary policy can produce a self-sustaining recovery and do it in a non-inflationary way. One of my advisers wrote to me before this debate to say that if we
“remove the base effects from the collapse in oil prices—as will happen over the coming months—and then just let the underlying ‘core’ inflation trends continue as they are, CPI would be 4%+ by mid-2017.”
That is something I shall ask the Governor about next time we see him.
Further to what the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said, Andrew Lilico, an economist at Europe Economics, has pointed out:
“In the three months to July 2016…the UK’s broad money supply (on the Bank of England’s preferred ‘M4ex’ measure) grew at an annualised rate of 14.7%”.
When I raised this with the Governor at the last Treasury Committee meeting—I used the monthly figures; it is far starker if we look at it quarterly—I asked whether, if the money supply is currently growing by 14.7% annualised over three months, we should expect more or less inflation next year. I think that I know the answer, but when I put it to the Governor, his answer was that aggregates had moved away from the whole problem of inflation targeting. I encourage the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber to have a look at exactly what he said. I shall return to some of the Governor’s remarks in a few moments.
Ian Blackford
I am very much enjoying listening to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. Given the case that he outlines, does he consider that there is a bubble in financial assets and, indeed, in property assets, and if he does, what would he do about it today?
Mr Baker
I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman. Indeed, the Bank of England’s Andy Haldane said that the Bank had deliberately inflated the biggest bond market bubble in history. That is not a literal quote because I do not have it before me, but that is broadly what he said. If we look at the period 1997 to 2010, the period before the crisis, and look at the regional distribution of house prices, we find an eerie correlation between it and the increase in the money supply. That distribution of changes correlates with what one might expect of Cantillon effects—in other words, in London and the south-east, house prices rocket away quicker and earlier, while in the north-east and Scotland, house prices increase more slowly as the money spreads out. My point is that there is a good case for saying that Cantillon effects and the increase of the money supply have a profound effect not only on particular assets, but on the regional distribution of prices. It is something that the Bank should consider in its report. It should speak to and address the issue. Speaking as a humble aerospace and software engineer who has only read a few books, it is not within my gift to produce the research.
My next point is that this is a deliberate policy of manipulating asset prices, disrupting the price mechanism in the capital markets. Therefore, there will be a misallocation of capital. The Governor made a speech in New York at a monetary policy conference in which he acknowledged this phenomenon. I have tried to raise it further with him, but he is very good at moving the subject on. His speech was in defence of inflation targeting, and he dealt with four criticisms of it. The first was that price stability does not guarantee financial stability. He went on:
“Second, the stronger critique of the Austrian school is that inflation targeting can actively feed the creation of financial vulnerabilities, especially in the presence of positive supply shocks… From the Austrian perspective, this misguided response”—
the response of the central bank—
“stokes excess money and credit creation, resulting in an intertemporal misallocation of capital and the accumulation of imbalances over time. These imbalances eventually implode, leading to crisis and ‘bad’ deflation.”
It cannot be said that the Governor of the Bank of England is unaware of the somewhat unfortunately titled Austrian school of economics, which I believe in and which tells us that money creation has real structural effects on the economy that affect people’s everyday lives. I was going to challenge the Bank to include in its report an assessment of these things, to demonstrate whether or not it was aware of these effects, but the Governor’s speech has shown us that the Bank is aware. It should not only show in its report that it is aware, but justify what the Governor went on to imply, which is that, by using other instruments, it could deal with these structural consequences. That is one of the big questions of our time: whether or not the structural consequences of easy monetary policy can be dealt with using its other instruments. I am absolutely convinced they cannot be dealt with, and therefore we will have a worse crisis later than the one in 2008.
I sense that Mr Deputy Speaker would like me to wrap up, so I will just make the following point. This has gone from an exercise in saving the financial system to an exercise in kicking the can down the road. How will it develop in future? We have gone from low rates to QE, and I think we will go to negative rates. There has already been talk of banning cash. There have been discussions of helicopter money, too, and at the recent inflation report meeting, out of four people, only the Governor would rule out helicopter money. It is encouraging a misguided belief that if only we printed money and gave it to everybody, there would be justice. This kind of naive inflationism is madness.
Mr Baker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for agreeing with me.
We have got to get to a point where we escape from easy monetary policies. That will come through one of three mechanisms: a self-sustaining recovery, which I emphasise I very much hope for—I hope that the Bank, and all the central banks, are right on that—or the next phase will be massive inflation, or there will be an abandonment of easy monetary policies before either of those things, at which point there will be an horrific correction.
The great question for society and us as representatives, and indeed for monetary economists, is going to be what went wrong. Will people blame the free market and vote for the policies of certain Opposition Members, which will lead to more statism and I would argue impoverishment and misery? Or will people blame central planning by central banks, which is deliberately dislocating our economy, manufacturing injustice and undermining faith in the market economy and has dropped us into a profound crisis of political economy?
I very much welcome this motion. I shall certainly support it, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber on moving it.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) on securing this important debate, and I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), with whom I have discussed these issues on several occasions.
Inequality is one of the most profound problems facing this country and it is getting worse. The problem of inequality is exacerbating differences between different social groups, dividing families, because there are big intergenerational gaps, and also dividing this country geographically, with very significant regional inequalities. So to learn that the Bank of England’s quantitative easing is expanding these gaps between rich and poor is extremely alarming.
As the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said, the Bank undertook its own analysis of the impact of QE in 2012. I think that what it found was that the top 5% had seen an increase in their wealth of £185,000 and the bottom 50% got no increase in their wealth because they did not have assets.
Unlike the hon. Member for Wycombe, I am not critical of QE in principle or of the package the Bank of England unveiled in the early summer, because I think Brexit is a real shock to the economy and we do need to take action to stabilise it and avert the reductions in growth that would otherwise occur. None the less, I am not satisfied that the Bank had demonstrated that the way in which it was carrying out quantitative easing was the best way, which is why I think it worthwhile for us to examine the issue in more detail.
Just to set in context the increase in the asset holdings of the top 5%—a considerable part of it being in the housing market and property prices—it is worth observing that the average house price in Britain is now £212,000. What we are saying is that, in practice, the Bank of England has given the top 5% enough money to buy another house. Were the Chancellor of the Exchequer to stand up at the Dispatch Box and say, in the Budget or the autumn statement, “I am giving £85,000 to the richest people in the country”, I think that even Conservative Members would be alarmed and concerned, and perhaps even slightly rebellious. But because it is being done by the Bank of England and is rather hidden, we are not seeing the same level of concern, and we need to see the same level of concern.
Moreover, it is a problem when the ratio of average earnings to average house prices is eight to one. That puts the possibility of home ownership way beyond many millions of people, which is why home ownership is falling. Of course we need to address the housing market, and of course we need an increase in the supply of housing, but we are not seeing that at the moment, and QE is making the situation worse.
Jeremy Quin
I entirely understand the point that the hon. Lady is making, and I accept what she said about the Chancellor of the Exchequer coming to the Dispatch Box and so forth, but I would not wish the message to go from the House to a broader audience that that was an intended aspect of the policy. When QE was introduced by the last Labour Administration, it was introduced with the perfectly admirable intention of ensuring that GDP growth was improved and inflation targeted. I would not wish the wrong message to go out on the intention of the policy; we are debating potential side-effects that may or may not have occurred.
Helen Goodman
What the hon. Gentleman says is absolutely fair, and I agree with him. I would not go so far as to say, “Labour QE good, Tory QE bad”—I think that would be slightly Orwellian—and, as I said initially, I was not saying that I did not think there should have been another package this summer. My questions are about the way in which that is done.
Along with the hon. Member for Wycombe, I have quizzed the Bank of England about the matter on three separate occasions. On the first occasion, when I asked the Governor about the distribution impact, he said that taking account of distribution would be political. I cannot see how giving wealthy people more assets is not political. However, we have questioned the Bank more recently, and it seems to me that people in different parts of it say different things. I think it would be unfair to say that they speak with forked tongues. However, on one hand the chief economist, Andy Haldane, has said that monetary policy
“cannot close other structural faultlines across the UK economy – for example, regional, socio-economic, inter-generational… Monetary policy cannot set different interest rates for different regions”,
and also that UK recovery has been
“for the few rather than the many”.
That seems to be a criticism of an unequal society. Andy Haldane seems to be saying that this is not good socially and it is not good economically.
On the other hand, when the Treasury Committee questioned Sir Jon Cunliffe on the matter, he said:
“I would only point out that we have the tools we have.”
That is a bit like “Brexit means Brexit”. It is a rather gnomic and unhelpful approach. I think it is stalling; I think that the Bank does not want to look at different ways of carrying out QE, and I do not think it is being sufficiently imaginative.
In January I visited the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and asked how it does QE. It does it in different ways, and it is able to do so in part because the financial infrastructure is different in other countries. For example, it does not just buy Government bonds and gilts; it buys bonds in KfW and CADES—the German and French infrastructure banks—and it has a special strand that aims to get more money into the small and medium-sized enterprise sector. So I do not accept the Bank of England saying, “We have the tools that we have and there is nothing different we can do.”
I commend to the Bank some work that the New Economics Foundation has done on this. It seems to me that the Bank could be buying investments in housing associations, for example. In fact, that would be a much better way of dealing with our housing crisis than giving a lot of money to rich people, thereby pulling up property prices. I do not think that the Bank has a very good understanding of the housing market—we have quizzed its officials on that as well. For example, the Governor told us last week:
“Housing finance in this economy is quite sophisticated”.
I do not think that it is sophisticated; I think that it is quite dysfunctional, because we are seeing more and more money going into people exchanging properties, rather than going into more building, which is what would actually make a difference to the housing crisis.
I really hope that the Bank will not only better analyse what it is doing, as the motion suggests—it did commit to come back in September 2018 with renewed analysis of the impact on assets and wealth distribution of this further round of QE—
Ian Blackford
Will the hon. Lady just confirm that the Bank of England said that it would come back in September 2018? I hope that it will come back before then, because otherwise it suggests a complacency and unwillingness to analyse the situation and give us the information that I think this House should be demanding.
Helen Goodman
Well, that is probably my fault, because I asked it to do so by September 2018. We could ask it for something here and now, but obviously the new package was only announced in August and its impact will be felt some way down the track. My thinking was that there will be no point trying to analyse the new package by Christmas, because we will just not see it.
In addition to having a better understanding of all the effects of its QE programme, the Bank needs to look at what other central banks do, including the European Central Bank because there could be some useful lessons. I think that we might get some better effects if we tweaked it a bit. I have to say that it has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the issue of distribution. When we quizzed its officials about their purchase of corporate bonds, they said that they were distributionally blind. In other words, they wanted to be completely neutral and not take a position. When we asked them about the distribution of wealth among households, they seemed to confuse being politically neutral with not taking a view on the significance of distribution. I think that is a mistake. I also think that if we are piling lots of money towards richer and richer people, the monetary impact is likely to be much less, because the propensity of the wealthy to consume is much less than that of people on low incomes, so it is not even being done in the most effective way.
I will read what the Bank said:
“the Chairman made some points a little earlier about accountability and the Bank being involved in decisions that were the province of politicians, or some might think would be the province of politicians.”
It went on to say that the tools it has
“are not perfect…However, we have a clear objective, which Parliament has given us…and we have certain tools to implement it. It does have distributional effects, and if we were to be in the business then of deciding what the distributional effects should be, we would be straying even further into areas that are really the province of elected politicians.”
That is a fundamental misapprehension. The hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) pointed out that QE was embarked upon in 2009 to speed up growth; the distributional impacts were not in mind. However, now we know that it is producing those wealth effects, it is disingenuous to ignore them. That is the position the Bank is trying to take and we need to push back. I am grateful that the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber has given us the opportunity to do that in the House today.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
It is with some inevitable trepidation that I stand to speak in the debate, given the eloquence and experience of those who have spoken before me, not least the experience of a modest crofter from Skye, my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford). I was taken not only by his great eloquence but by every contribution this afternoon in what, inevitably, is one of the most important debates that I have taken part in. It is also one of the most thoughtful. While others can wax eloquent given their experience in the financial sector over many years and their distinguished careers, I come to this issue trying perhaps to give voice to others who do not have that background.
The ordinary person in the street would recognise that we live in troubled times. There is increased uncertainty and the stability and certainties of the past seem to have flown past. For example, who could have foreseen at the outset of QE that today many economies would be experiencing weak growth, low business investment, collapsing prospects for pensions, near negative interest rates penalising savers and a huge increase, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said, in wealth inequality.
I would like to add something else to the equation. We need to recognise the political instability that has arisen. People are feeling that they are disfranchised, have no voice and are losing hope. That is one of the profound social and political consequences that deserves to be considered.
It was not supposed to be like this. It may be wise to cast a critical eye over what seemed to most people, myself included, an entirely logical response to the crisis some years ago. It is good that people are able to reflect. Although it comes hard for many politicians, it is good when we, too, are modest enough to recognise that we do not always get it right and that we need to learn from experience. For example, many people in recent years feel that the UK Government’s economic plan has been blind to some of the consequences of QE. That is seen in the poverty, in many cases, of the fiscal response to aid those who are not benefiting from the increasing wealth. The Treasury needs to think about doing more to achieve a better balance between the fiscal response and the monetary response. The time is surely right for it to mount a rigorous and open appraisal of the balance between monetary policy and fiscal measures, and of whether each of the rounds of QE has had the desired effect. The Bank could also look at that question.
Let us recall some of the antecedents of QE. I might not have worked in a bank at any time—the only time I go into the bank is when I receive a phone call from it—but in a past life, I used to read quite a lot about this subject. Everyone attending this debate will recall that it was back in 1969, in a paper by Milton Friedman entitled “The Optimum Quantity of Money”, that the idea of what we know today as QE was created. Friedman contended that if policy interest rates reached the lower bound of zero, it would be appropriate for a central bank to purchase assets—Government bonds in the first instance—to create a wealth effect that it was no longer possible to achieve through the conventional interest rate policy of the central bank. Friedman’s notion of quantitative easing was that asset prices would be boosted, leading to an increase in confidence and spending through the wealth effect. In turn, economic activity would be given a boost.
In more recent times, however, even that great monetarist Allan Meltzer—who has written widely on the development and application of monetary policy and on the history of central banking in the US—has questioned the efficacy of QE, arguing that it has not led to what Friedman expected. In particular, the key aim of creating an increase in confidence and therefore investment has not transpired as hoped. Today, too, central bankers seem content to see inflated asset prices. But who speaks for the millions of savers around the world? Who speaks for the ordinary men and women who have paid the price of banking failure? Where were the UK Government when our economy failed to diversify or balance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis? Where were the necessary fiscal measures when it transpired that the relatively poor were paying the price for the mistakes of the wealthy? The SNP and others understood the use of quantitative easing by the Bank of England as a response to the 2008 crisis to be a temporary measure to help to regain stability. How long, I now ask, is this temporary measure going to last?
I agree with my hon. Friend the crofter that the effects of monetary policy have to a great extent been undermined by the austerity agenda, which is now leaving a legacy of unintended consequences that is placing an unprecedented burden on future generations. Broadly speaking, the policies being followed by central banks around the world benefit a relatively narrow group of people—equity-rich individuals and investment banks, for example—but few others. It is the unintended consequences—I admit that they are unintended—of QE that must now be the focus of policymakers.
Mr Baker
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. The Bank of England is not represented here, and I do not agree with it, but if it were here, I suspect that it would say that everybody benefited, given the reality that there would have been a worse recession if it had not acted. Does he agree that that argument is now wearing thin?
Roger Mullin
The hon. Gentleman must have read the next part of my speech. However, that allows me to haste along and agree precisely with what he has said.
A friend of mine, Dr Jim Walker, wrote to me recently and pointed out that
“interest rates throughout history have not only been the cost of capital (or the reward to thrift) but have also been a signalling mechanism about the future”.
We now know that zero interest rates and QE tell business owners and entrepreneurs that there is little or no growth coming. They therefore encourage businesses to hold cash and be extremely cautious about investment. The signalling mechanisms have had a different effect from those predicted by Friedman. It is again time to review the situation. It would be difficult to argue that QE has therefore led to the increase in confidence and investment that was the argument for it.
We can also see other consequences. Despite eight years of near zero interest rates, UK real gross fixed capital formation is 2.8% lower than its 2007 peak. Therefore, investment in the real economy has not been boosted in the way that was originally thought. A similar phenomenon has being going in other aspects of the economy on the demand side, such as in how households have been afflicted. Zero interest rates and asset purchases were supposed to convince ordinary people to borrow and spend more immediately, but some key groups have reacted to zero interest rates by saving more. Why? In order to provide for old age, they can no longer rely on the positive compounding effect of above zero interest rates; nor can they rely on getting the type of annuity for which they may have planned. Instead of encouraging that group to spend, policies have encouraged them to save more due to fear for the future. Such savers are understandably angry. After years of saving some of their income, many people have zero income from their savings.
I am not somebody who is disadvantaged—I have a well-paid job in this House—but I wonder how people who, like me, have a cash ISA are feeling. Before the crash, it was fairly common to get 6% interest, but I received a letter a few weeks ago to point out that from 1 December the interest rate is going to be reduced yet again to 0.1%. The time has come to undertake a critical review of the policies of recent years.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I say to the Front-Bench spokesmen that there are three of them and we are going to finish at 5 pm.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
We are a small but enthusiastic band this afternoon, but it strikes me that there is something serious here. For the last eight years, the entire western world has been undertaking the most extraordinary monetary experiment in 100 years. If it goes wrong, as pointed out by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), the consequences will be devastating for the world economy. We may find that all we did in 2008 was delay the explosion of the world’s economy. It is that serious. I hope that the Bank of England and the regulatory authorities are watching via the camera lenses around the Chamber. This debate should not be seen as an attack on the Bank of England, however. There was an emergency in 2008 and the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England stepped in, and quantitative easing was an interesting device—an emergency brake on the banking crisis. As hon. Members have said, eight years on we should be looking at what else needs to be done.
To use a homely analogy that I hope the technical experts in the Chamber will not blanch at, in 2008 there was a fire in the financial system and we used a high-pressure hose called quantitative easing. Once the fire dampens down, if we keep on using the hose and hose everything in case the fire comes back up, we destroy everything in the house. If we look at the unintended consequences of QE, it is contributing to global deflation. There is inflation in parts, bubbling up through the system, but we have had deflation, which attacks the incentive to invest. We are destroying the propensity to save by bringing interest rates down to near zero. We are destroying bank profits. Has anyone looked at bank share prices over the past couple of years? We saved the banks in 2008 only to destroy their business model through the unintended consequences of QE. Who is going to do something about that?
If we do not do something about it, we will be into another banking crisis of a different kind. In the last two rounds of QE, in the EU and Japan, over the past 12 months, we have started a process of competitive devaluations. We are back to the 1930s; everyone’s response is, “Let’s devalue the currency. That will help our exports.” Once everyone does it, we are in the 1930s situation of beggar-my-neighbour, which inevitably leads to all sorts of political tensions. The Chinese Government are at the moment saying that they are not devaluing, but they are privately devaluing, as we can see if we look at what is happening in the international markets. Exchange rate competition is a dangerous, toxic thing, and it is a direct flow from what QE is now being used for.
As the hon. Member for Wycombe pointed out, the whole process has grossly distorted asset prices, so that when we unwind, it will be a case of, “Who knows what we have been investing in, and whether it has been the right thing or the wrong thing?” There has been discussion about house prices, but it is clear that a series of industrial investments and other kinds of investment could be seen to be the wrong ones once prices rebalance, which of course is making people nervous.
It is rare for me to do this, but I will disagree gently with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), because I do not think it is a question of using QE for something else in a better way. If we look at the Bank of England’s recent announcement of the £10 billion it is trying to put into company paper, we see that it has chosen 300 companies’ bonds in which it is considering investing this money over the next 18 months. What bonds was it choosing? The Bank of England said it was those of companies that had made
“a material contribution to the UK economy”.
Let me read out the names of some of the companies whose corporate paper the Bank of England is planning to put that £10 billion into. They include: Apple; AT&T; McDonald’s; Pepsi—not Coke, but Pepsi; Proctor & Gamble; UPS; Verizon; and Walmart. We are funding Wall Street. What about the EU? We are supposed to be pulling out of the EU, with Brexit. The Bank’s list includes BMW, Daimler, Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Telekom, E.ON and Siemens. There are also some fabulous entrants: Moët Hennessy is on the Governor’s list, so the champagne is all right. Even EDF—
Helen Goodman
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the Bank’s definition of “material contribution to the British economy” is inadequate. Like him, I do not think it is very helpful to be investing in fizzy drinks, but we do need to acknowledge that Siemens has a fantastic development in east Yorkshire and that that is good; that is a proper contribution. I do not think he is really arguing against me—
George Kerevan
I take the hon. Lady’s point, but underlining what I am saying is the fact that only six British manufacturing export companies are on the list of those 300 bonds that the Bank of England thinks are quality enough to invest in. The whole thing that undermines the trajectory of QE is that it is concentrated on saving a banking system at the expense of our manufacturing system.
What do we do next? We have not said enough about that. We should consider shifting the Bank of England’s targets. The inflation target is the wrong one, and we have spent years ignoring it in any case, which means the Bank has no intellectual anchor, and that raises dangers in respect of the accountability of the Bank of England. We should be looking at nominal GDP targeting, in which case the Bank or the monetary authorities would have to be looking at automatic fiscal buffers, whether we are in a recession or in boom. That brings us back to the whole question of how we rehabilitate the fiscal intervention. At some stage, we are going to have to unwind QE. We have to do that in a controlled fashion, so one thing the Bank should be looking at in any evaluation is what timetable we use. If we have a timetable for the unwinding, that will help the markets to adjust in a better fashion. There is a danger, which we might find when we start to unwind, that the natural rate of interest has fallen so low that monetary policy has been undermined in a historic or generational sense, which again means we have to look seriously at how we combine fiscal policy with monetary policy. It would be unwise to unwind QE in the UK alone. What we should consider is a concerted international approach, which must involve some of the surplus countries such as Germany using their trade surpluses in a controlled fashion to boost consumption.
In the autumn statement, it is incumbent on the Government not to leave all the heavy lifting to the Bank of England. It is time that the Government made an intervention in a strong fiscal policy to allow the transition from QE.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
It has been geek central in the House this afternoon. I thank the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) for bringing this debate to the Chamber. I agree that a marriage between fiscal policy and monetary policy, which works in a constructive fashion, is a fair point. I also agree with the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) about the wealth inequality and wealth justice effects of QE, but that is probably as far as our agreement goes given that he is a member of the Austrian school.
As for my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), she is always lively and insightful on these matters. She talked about inequality per se and the regional inequalities in particular, and how QE may be able to overcome them. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) is modesty itself, and was as interesting as ever. Again, he talked about inequality and a better balance between fiscal and monetary policy. He said that the unintended consequences of QE must be a focus of attention. Finally, the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) also talked about the unintended consequences of QE.
In response to a question about his confidence in the efficacy of quantitative easing, Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, half-jokingly said that it worked in practice but not in theory. Such an off-the-cuff comment had some validity to it, but to an extent it is a moot point, and that is the very essence of today’s debate. Many Members will recall the former Labour Chancellor, Lord Darling, standing in this Chamber in 2009 talking about quantitative easing, or QE. Difficult times called for resourceful measures and the Labour Government had to consider all the potential policy responses to prevent or ameliorate a recession. This was not an isolated action; other countries have taken a similar path to some degree or other.
As Members will know, the first round of QE resulted in several tranches of gilt purchases—that was referred to earlier. By the 2010 general election, around £200 billion had been added to the Bank of England’s balance sheet, which still remains there to date. The predictions of wild hyperinflation, which came from some quarters, have been long forgotten. As I will suggest later, the precise effects of this relatively new approach are still being hotly debated, but we should all acknowledge the willingness of the Labour Government to consider policy measures outside the usual range.
Not long after taking office, the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), restarted the QE programme, giving authority to the Bank of England to print almost another £200 billion for the purchase of Government bonds. However, unlike the QE process under the last Labour Government, the post-2010 QE incarnation took place at the same time as the coalition Government were budgeting, year after year, for more and deeper cuts to public spending. As alluded to earlier, opinion remains sharply divided about the effectiveness of QE, but to judge its effectiveness, we must first agree, if possible, on what its aims were. However, there is little consensus on even that matter.
First, if the goal was to support nominal demand and prevent a deflationary spiral, there would seem to be broad agreement that inflation should have been lower without QE. Academic studies have consistently indicated that inflation, some five years ago, was around 1 percentage point higher than it would have been without QE.
Secondly, if the aim of QE was to support real GDP growth, there is, unfortunately, little agreement. The Bank of England estimates that economic growth would have been at least 1.5% lower in the absence of the first round of QE. Other economic studies have ranged from close to zero—no real effects at all—to around 2 percentage points of extra growth. The debate is likely to continue for some time, and of course the Labour party will watch developments closely.
A third potential motivation for QE was to increase the supply of credit. There is still considerable uncertainty about the extent to which QE has achieved this aim—a point touched on today. Last July, a post on the Bank of England’s blog argued that there was little evidence of QE having boosted the supply of credit:
“we find no evidence to suggest that QE boosted bank lending in the UK through a bank lending channel”.
Of course, other opinions are available.
When we look at the success or otherwise of QE, we must of course take into account the circumstances in which it happened. The first round of QE took place under conditions of supportive fiscal policy, as was referred to. Unfortunately, the Chancellor of the Exchequer between 2010 and 2016 adopted a fiscal approach at odds with that of almost every respected macroeconomist; he repeatedly targeted a smaller deficit, even when austerity measures failed to achieve their stated aim. His record will not be looked on favourably by history.
The Labour party welcomed the statement by the new Prime Minister and her Chancellor that they would ignore the only remaining target of the latest charter for budget responsibility, which lies in tatters after less than a year. A dawning realisation that a surplus is unlikely to be achieved in 2020 may have finally put an end to the failed economic approach that has characterised the past six years, but we remain in the dark about what will replace it. Britain is on hold while we wait for another two months to find out even the most basic outline of the new Government’s fiscal policy. The Labour party, and millions more nationwide, will hope that the new Chancellor, who sat at the Cabinet table throughout the last Administration, does not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Until the Chancellor pulls his finger out and finally outlines his plans, the Bank of England has sole responsibility for ensuring that the economy gets through the post-Brexit uncertainty. Last month, the Monetary Policy Committee announced the restarting of QE, including further purchases of £60 billion of Government bonds and up to £10 billion of corporate bonds. It is obviously too early to say whether these actions, which the hon. Member for East Lothian referred to, have delivered against any of the criteria mentioned earlier. Indeed, the statement of the MPC today in essence indicates that the Bank continues to keep a watchful eye on the effects of QE in particular and, more generally, the broader macroeconomic environment.
Last year, the European Central Bank began its own full-speed QE programme, similar in many regards to our own; it, too, includes bonds issued by institutions and agencies, including the European Investment Bank and the Nordic Investment Bank. Of course, if we had a UK national investment bank, another possible policy tool would be made available to the Bank—a point alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland. Any decision about the potential use of QE in the context of a national investment bank would be made by the MPC.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), the shadow Chancellor, pointed out in a recent Financial Times article that
“The operational independence of the Monetary Policy Committee is sacrosanct.”
That would include any decisions about QE, conventional or otherwise. However, set against any benefits of QE, there must be a serious consideration of any distributional impacts. As early as 2012, the Bank of England released a report looking at potential outcomes. It raised questions about the effect on pension schemes, especially those already in deficit. It concluded that the QE that had already taken place amounted to an increase in wealth of £10,000 per person, if it was equally distributed. Of course, as was said today, few think that the benefits of that increase in wealth have been equally distributed.
The Bank’s research suggests that as the action increased the value of assets, those who already hold assets will have benefited disproportionately. It notes that the wealthiest 5% of the population hold 40% of non-pension assets, but no one should be surprised by that: one of the aims of QE has always been to push down interest rates, and one of its effects has unquestionably been to push up the value of shares and other assets, including housing, and ownership of shares and other financial assets is distributed unfairly.
We would welcome any further study, to be conducted by the Government or others, on the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy, so we support the motion. Most importantly, however, the country needs a signal from the Chancellor about his intentions for future fiscal policy, and waiting till November is not good enough. We know that lowering assumptions about future interest rates will keep down public borrowing, but we need to know whether or not the investment that the country urgently needs is finally on the way. We cannot afford to rely on the Bank of England alone to take responsibility for managing the macro economy.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Simon Kirby)
I thank the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) for securing the debate. The subject of quantitative easing attracts a wide range of opinions, as has been convincingly demonstrated in the Chamber today. This Back-Bench business debate has been an example of something that is small but perfectly formed. It has been a very interesting debate. The topic is extremely important to our economy and I know that Members across the House will join me in thanking the hon. Gentleman for giving us the opportunity to discuss it.
Let me begin by setting out briefly the Bank of England’s role in the monetary policy of this country. The first thing to stress is that the Bank of England, and its Monetary Policy Committee, are rightly independent from the Government. The MPC holds responsibility for setting monetary policy to meet its clearly defined objectives, as set out in law. Its primary objective is to maintain price stability, defined by the Government’s inflation target of 2%, as measured under the consumer prices index. The MPC is empowered to deploy unconventional policy measures, such as quantitative easing, when necessary, to meet this objective. Wherever such instruments are used, the committee is expected to work with the Government to make sure that appropriate governance arrangements are in place to ensure its accountability.
Following the financial crisis in 2009, as Members are aware, the Bank of England was authorised to begin quantitative easing, establishing an asset purchase facility to improve liquidity in credit markets. This provided an additional tool by which the Bank’s committee could adjust our monetary policy. In August this year, the MPC judged that in the absence of monetary stimulus, there would be undesirable volatility in output and employment, and a sustainable return of inflation to the target in the medium term was less likely. As a result, the MPC expanded its programme of asset purchases and established the term funding scheme as a mechanism to ensure that banks passed on the benefits of low interest rates to our businesses and to the public as a whole.
Although financial markets have reacted positively to the latest round of quantitative easing, it will take several months before we know how the economy has responded, as is always the case. Time will need to pass before it is possible to make a full assessment of the latest round of asset purchases. Both the Government and the MPC place enormous weight on the need to research the wider impacts of our monetary policy across our society. In line with our determination to make sure that this is a country that works for everyone, we want to ensure that our businesses and the general public all benefit from the lower borrowing costs established through the Bank’s monetary policies.
Let me deal with some of the points raised. The hon. Gentleman, the modest crofter from Skye, mentioned the need for fiscal stimulus. Monetary policy tools are the first line of defence against a macroeconomic shock, and the Government will set out their fiscal plans in the usual way in the autumn statement. The hon. Gentleman suggested that there had been little growth in M4 in the past eight years since QE was introduced. However, the relationship between monetary aggregates and inflation is tenuous, and monetary aggregates are not systematically targeted by central banks. To target monetary aggregates, there would have to be a direct relationship between the monetary supply and inflation. For this to be the case, there would have to be a degree of stability in the velocity of money—the speed at which money circulates around the economy. I hope that is clear.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the impact on savers. Building a strong economy is in everyone’s interests, and the MPC’s remit makes clear that ensuring price stability is the prerequisite for economic prosperity. He also mentioned pensions, and the best possible protection for pensions comes from strong, sustainable employers and a buoyant economy, so it is important that action is taken to support that economy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) speaks with passion on this subject, and it is obviously of great interest to him. I have looked at his excellent website, stevebaker.info, where he considers, among other matters, whether the whole economic system runs on funny money. He mentioned wealth inequality and wealth justice, and those are two very important areas. The Governor of the Bank of England has stated that this package will ensure a better economic outcome for all. Economic recovery will boost incomes and help all individuals, including those at the lowest end of the economic distribution. Inequality is lower—we should not forget this—than it was in 2010.
Simon Kirby
I would rather not give way, because I am genuinely trying to answer everyone’s points. I do not have a lot of time, because everyone has been so full in their contributions, but the hon. Lady can speak to me afterwards. If she wants to raise an additional point, I would be really pleased to deal with that.
The hon. Lady mentioned that QE is the responsibility of the MPC of the Bank of England. She questioned whether that was right, and she questioned the accountability of the Bank of England. I say to her that Members have the opportunity to engage with the MPC through, for example, the inflation report hearings of the Treasury Committee. The MPC is also accountable to the public. For instance, in October the Governor and the deputy governors will spend the day in the midlands meeting a wide cross-section of society to listen to the feedback and ideas of the public, and I am sure that they will take that feedback and those ideas very seriously.
The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) was very interesting—perhaps the most interesting point was the description of the crofter from Skye. He clearly feels passionately about this subject, and he made a useful contribution to the debate.
The hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) wanted to hear more about the autumn statement. I am very sad to tell him that he will be disappointed; he will just have to wait and see, as happens every year in the normal manner, no matter who is in government.
The hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) reminded us of what is now a dim and receding memory—the last Labour Government. He talked about how there was going to be hyperinflation and it did not happen, and about how the whole issue of QE was hotly debated at the time. I imagine that it is something that we will continue to hotly debate for some time.
To conclude, the independent MPC of the Bank of England has a hugely important role to play in these difficult times in maintaining monetary stability in this country. It has taken a range of steps to achieve this objective and will be closely monitoring the impact of this action. Let me remind the House once again that Members can take an interest; the MPC remains accountable to Parliament, and I would suggest that many more people take an interest in the inflation report hearings of the Treasury Committee.
Ian Blackford
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and all the Members who have participated. We have had a well-informed, fascinating debate. I hope that this the start of something whereby we have signalled to the Bank of England, which I am sure will be getting a report of our proceedings, that we wish to see a more fundamental analysis of the outcomes of the QE programme. There has been a very clear message to the Government—as shown by all the actions that we have seen internationally, with the words from the OECD and even from the US authorities—that there has to be a linkage between monetary and fiscal policy. A number of Members have delivered a very strong message that we really have to make sure that we deal with wealth inequality. I look forward to carrying on this debate, and look forward to the Government addressing the issue in the autumn statement.
Helen Goodman
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Five minutes ago, the Minister said at the Dispatch Box that inequality in this country is lessening. On some measures of income inequality, that is true, but this afternoon we were debating wealth inequality.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The hon. Lady has been here a long time, and she knows that is not a point of order. I cannot continue the debate because it is now past 5 o’clock. If she had not wasted time when she was trying to make the intervention, she could have got her point across.
Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise for the late notice of my point of order, but it is about a situation that has been developing this afternoon. Dozens of my constituents have approached me this afternoon having had their tax credits withdrawn arbitrarily by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs through the Concentrix contract. HMRC has designated a team of people to deal with these issues, which are apparently UK-wide. It takes a 45-minute call to deal with one case. I have dozens of constituents this evening who literally have no money to feed themselves or get the kids out of the door tomorrow morning. I am very concerned that the House is rising at this point and I will not be able to bring these matters to the attention of the Department for Work and Pensions or the House today, tomorrow or on Monday, to cajole some action to get this fixed. There are people who are literally about to starve and the House is about to disappear on recess. Is there anything that you could offer me by way of advice?
Mr Deputy Speaker
One thing I would say is that you have got it on the record. I think that Ministers are listening and they have got the point. This issue has been debated this week on a couple of occasions; in fact, there was an urgent question on it yesterday. There are still Ministers here, and I would have thought that the message will be going straight back to HMRC. I think there has been an indication from the Minister to say, “Let’s have a conversation,” so if nothing else, at least you have made progress in making him aware now.
Financial Services: EU Markets
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Twelve per cent. of our country’s economic output derives from financial services. We have over 2 million jobs in the financial services sector, mostly outside the capital city. In Nottingham alone, companies such as Experian, Capital One and Ikano, and over 500 other firms, operate in the financial services sector. Crucially, it generates £60 billion of revenue for the Treasury—money that, in turn, pays for schools, policing, and the NHS. We have more exports of financial services, and more financial services headquarters, than any other country. In short, Britain excels at financial and related professional services: not just banking but insurance, accountancy, legal services, asset management, and much more besides. We all rely on the future success of this sector.
We cannot forget, of course, that the banking crisis shook confidence in the sector—not just among traders and businesses themselves but among the public—and taxpayers were left to pick up the pieces. Since 2008, the UK has seen its markets hit, with fewer IPOs—initial public offerings—and stiff competition internationally. This is far from a static sector, and there are so many opportunities for the UK in a positive sense, from fintech and from innovation flowing from sharing economy developments. Yet the competitors are circling, with big growth in Asian financial centres and New York expanding very quickly into investment management. Now the sector faces a virtually existential challenge: how to exit from the European Union without undermining this important cornerstone of our economy.
Some parts of the financial services sector will be more affected than others. Domestic retail banking may be marginally affected, but for some in the wholesale sector, leaving the single market would not mean tariffs rising by 10% or 40%, but ending their right to sell products in such markets completely. I wanted to raise this issue with Treasury Ministers, and I wrote to them in advance of this debate to ask specifically about five points of particular concern.
The first point, which may seem blindingly obvious, is that we need to retain the UK as the global financial centre. It is essential that we do nothing to undermine the UK in that leading role. That may seem an obvious request to make to Ministers, but it is worth getting them to put on the record a commitment to maintaining our country’s front-runner status. Will the Government commit to maintaining our breadth of specialisation in this unique cluster of services? An erosion in the economies of scale or in our concentration of skills and services would be detrimental to the wider economy at large. That is the first commitment I am looking for from the Government.
The second point it is vital to talk about is alignment. Are the Government aiming to maintain as much of our existing access to the single market and European economic area as possible, or will they look to adopt a lower regulation, lower tax approach relative to the countries in the rest of the European Union? This is a crucial point because maintaining an equivalent and comparable regulatory framework with the rest of the EU will help us to retain crucial access to those markets. If Britain takes the divergent path, we not only risk having market access restricted, but increase the hazard for our taxpayers, who need robust regulation to protect them from any future financial disaster. I therefore urge the Minister not to listen to, for example, the noble Lord Lawson, who wrote in the Financial Times—last week, I think—that
“the benefit of intelligent deregulation…which we demonstrated in the 1980s…offers the prospect of the greatest economic gain.”
I do not believe that the Government should follow that path, and I hope the Minister will resist such siren voices.
If we allow Brexit to cloud our judgment or take it as a chance to forget the catastrophic impact of excessive risk taking, opaque products and reckless behaviour, we will be taking a big step backwards and unlearning the lessons of the financial crisis. Britain was the driving force behind the creation of the global Financial Stability Board after the G20 in 2009, after the financial crisis hit, and Ministers should reiterate a commitment to linking in to its principles and ensuring worldwide compliance for those transacting business in the UK. I believe this is a crucial political choice, as well as one about access to markets. There is a happy coincidence in that choosing the right path for robust regulation will help to maintain the best access for trade. Maintaining rights to passported sales depends on retaining equivalent standards, so I want the Minister to recommit to this broad set of standards, which exist for a reason, and which Britain was at the forefront of creating.
The third question on which I want to press the Minister is about stability. Keeping rights to trade must be a permanent situation. Some people just shrug and say that there are lots of directives—MiFID 2, CRD4—and other EU rules, such as AIFMD, meaning that third countries outside the European Union have rights to trade if they have “equivalent” regulation. However, not all parts of the sector have equivalent rights, so such directives do not cover all parts of the sector; many of the rights are still quite theoretical, because they have not yet been put into practice in lots of cases; and what the European Commission grants, it can very easily take away.
Will the Minister therefore acknowledge that a stable, long-term settlement for access to EU markets is essential, and that leaving others the power unilaterally to disallow equivalence, perhaps with only a few weeks’ notice, would represent a great risk for business? The Treasury should ensure that the passporting of financial services or equivalence arrangements cannot be terminated without consultation and several years’ notice. Our membership of the European Economic Area or a bilateral treaty between the UK and the EU must be based on a long-term commitment to mutual recognition. Ministers should acknowledge the reciprocal nature of these markets. Just as we seek long-term commitments from the EU, many European organisations are looking for long-term access to the UK because of our position as a financial centre of excellence right on the doorstep of the rest of the EU.
My fourth question relates to sectors in which we currently excel, such as clearing and settlement—an area that is crucial to the fabric of connectivity in the networks of financial transactions across the world. I urge the Minister to acknowledge that it is essential that the UK continues to have rights for euro-denominated clearing, because of its importance in creating the wider environment and infrastructure that are so valuable to other financial services, be they underwriting, syndicating, trading, execution venues or banking.
Last year, the Treasury successfully fought off the attempt by the European Central Bank at the European Court of Justice to limit rights in the clearing of euros outside the eurozone, but I suspect that that issue will rear its head again. There is a danger that the UK and the EU will lose out entirely if the wholesale market decides to up sticks and go to New York, which has the right infrastructure to present a competitive opportunity for many in that sector. Maintaining the UK’s rights to euro-denominated clearing is therefore important.
My fifth question is about the orderly transition that we need to have whatever the new arrangements are. I have raised this with the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and it is important that the Treasury commits to it again. I hope the Government will agree that we must have parallel negotiations on our new trading and regulatory relationships during the Brexit process and reject the notion of sequential dialogue. The need for an orderly transition to new arrangements means that although we have to talk about the divorce process—Brexit—and how we leave, we must simultaneously talk about what our new relationships and rules will be. There is a case for making it clear that if we are to trigger article 50, there should be a condition on the concept of parallelism to ensure that we can have the discussions simultaneously.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is outlining a lot of concerns that have been raised by my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn. The Office for National Statistics found that 1,000 of my constituents are employed in financial and insurance services. During this divorce, as he puts it, their daily commute is riddled with uncertainty, because of the possibility of relocation or, much worse, redundancy. Does he agree that securing our vital passporting rights is crucial in ensuring that my constituents gain back control of their own future?
Chris Leslie
Absolutely. My hon. Friend represents many people who work in this sector, as do all right hon. and hon. Members in the Chamber, because this is something that affects not just the City of London, but all parts of the country.
In respect of transition, I worry very much about what some people call the “boiling the frog” syndrome. After the referendum, people said, “There wasn’t a cliff edge. What’s the problem?” This is a process that will take many years and we might see a steady decline in our opportunities and our economy; it will not necessarily happen in one go overnight. However, there are serious cliff-edge worries, particularly if we do not have parallel discussions during the transition. I hope that we can secure regulatory co-operation with countries in the EU and continue with the current arrangements, as far as is possible, during the transition. That should be the Government’s objective.
There are other issues that I would have raised with the Minister if there had been time. For example, the UK is a centre for investment management activities, which require worldwide access and, crucially, regulatory co-operation. Many funds are located in jurisdictions around the world, but at present they can delegate many of the actual tasks of fund management into the UK. Continuing those rights to delegation is very important in an area where long-term guarantees are needed.
There is also a very big question regarding what would happen if those who work in the sector and are currently able to move to and work in the UK, which is part of our appeal, faced restricted access. A conclusion needs to be reached soon on the rules for skilled employment movement between the UK and the rest of the EU. That is an important piece of that jigsaw. Other EU countries also face reform of the general concept of free movement, and a skills-based approach may be an option for common agreement.
Britain must not fashion itself as a new, low regulation, offshore haven. Our history—trust, the rule of law, the perfect location, our word is our bond, specialist services and professionalism—is our best selling point. We need to opt for the path that wins businesses through high-skilled, high-calibre and well-regulated products, and not be tempted by diluting important protections and chasing the mirage of undercutting.
Ministers have a crucial choice to make, and it will certainly divide those on the right of the political spectrum. That is one of the key issues on which I want to press Ministers. I urge the Treasury to choose the path that remembers the lessons of the financial crisis and that, as a happy consequence, also gives us access to EU markets and business opportunities, in the best interests of jobs and growth across the UK, not only in the City of London, but in other great cities, such as Nottingham.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Simon Kirby)
May I start by thanking the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) for highlighting the importance of passporting in financial services and for securing this debate? He has made a reasonable case and I thank him for his thoughtful and vital questions. He will not be disappointed to hear that I fully attend to answer all of them, although not necessarily in the order that he asked them. Indeed, if he wishes to raise any other issues, I am always willing to sit down and discuss them with him.
This is a very important issue, not just for the City, but for ordinary people who work in the sector and its related professions up and down the country. Many of those services are provided by more than 2 million people in this country, and they pay a lot of tax. I am very happy to commit to doing all I can to maintain the UK’s global financial status. That is clearly very important. The issue also matters to many more of the British electorate who benefit from the £66 billion of tax revenues that financial services provide each year, and the role that they play in financing businesses up and down the UK and around the world.
I share the hon. Gentleman’s view that the financial services industry brings considerable benefits to the UK economy as a whole, and we want to retain them as we forge our new relationship with the EU. In general terms, the financial services passport means that firms authorised in one member state or in part of the European economic area are able freely to passport their services across the whole of the EU. Alongside the passport, other rules affect how firms operate outside the EU, interact with it and have access to the European market. Those are collectively called equivalence regimes, whereby the EU assesses whether foreign rules are broadly compatible with its own and can be used instead as the basis to provide services to and across the EU.
I make those points as part of achieving a shared understanding of what matters when we talk about passporting and access to the single market, whether on the basis of a pure passport or an equivalent mechanism, to ensure market access to the EU. That is necessary for us to consider together the options available to the UK when it enters its negotiations, and to recognise that there are various precedents for accessing the EU market on which we can and should draw.
It is worth dwelling on why we shall seek the best possible deal for financial services in the EU negotiations. Under current arrangements, based on the UK’s membership of the EU, UK firms hold over 5,000 different financial services passports across various sectors and activities. They are not all actively used, but it is clear that a significant number of UK-based firms depend on access to the European market today, offering global services to a global client base at least in part via the EU passport. Around a third of UK services’ exports are in financial services, of which about a third are to the EU—about 11%.
For larger internationally active financial institutions, access to the EU is critical to their business model. I have certainly met a few of them in my new role to date. Even those with a large UK client base might find themselves needing to offer a European and a global service to their UK clients. Many of these are major employers across the UK as a whole. For them, the whole of the UK is important; the City is important, but financial services span the length and breadth of the country.
The UK is home to a genuinely international financial centre, resulting in a £55 billion trade surplus in financial services last year. This global hub means that the City is, put simply, greater than the sum of its individual parts. It has a critical mass. It relies substantially on the clustering of expertise in one place and the presence of a number of firms that are highly dependent on one another and inter-connected. Financial services provide capital-efficiency to the real economy because of this market concentration.
To illustrate my point, I note here the concern raised by the right hon. Gentleman about euro-denominated clearing—the ability to net very complex networks of trades in different currencies against one another saves the market billions in capital each year. The London stock exchange believes it has saved global clients around $25 billion-worth of regulatory capital. That is not a small sum. In short, European firms looking to raise finance for investment and growth rely on the UK’s deep capital markets. If this market is allowed or encouraged to fragment, the result is likely to be a reduction in businesses’ ability to secure investment right across the spectrum.
It is also important to financial stability to ensure that we and our European partners understand the effects of possible business restructurings, so we can continue to ensure that the sector is properly regulated and supervised. Getting this wrong is in the interest neither of the UK nor the EU. I hope that that reassures the right hon. Gentleman, who raised the importance of the UK’s specialist cluster. There are benefits—not only to the UK, but to Europe—of the City remaining a cluster of expertise that can serve the EU. Financial services is highly interconnected activity that depends on economies of scale.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman—actually, I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Nottingham East is honourable or right honourable.
Simon Kirby
It is only a matter of time, I am sure.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we will need to look carefully at the structures needed to ensure regulatory cohesion and stable, long-term access to EU markets, which I believe is in both the UK’s and the EU’s interests. The EU benefits from the deep pockets of the UK’s financial centre status, and the UK benefits from access to the EU in acting as its financial centre. High quality and consistent regulation is an essential underpinning of a stable, competitive, global financial sector.
In conclusion, I want to reassure the House that we are working as hard as we can to consider the opportunities ahead, to safeguard UK financial services for the long term not just the short term. We understand the importance of market access, transition and continuity—points that the hon. Gentleman raised—and we also understand that access to skilled workers internationally will be essential to this sector.
Lastly, I want to reassure those looking perhaps from around the world that we are the same outward-looking, globally minded, big-thinking country we always have been.
Question put and agreed to.